Climate Change Hits Home: Adapting Together with Stonebrige Farm and Keshtyar Seed
Published September 7, 2024 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Climate Change at Home: Adapting Together
Local support and federal funding help farms respond to climate change
By Jacob Nelson
Three people. Two businesses. One piece of farmland. Countless ways that climate change is making farming harder.
And yet plenty of hope, because these farmers have a plan. With support from peers, nonprofits, and even Uncle Sam, they’re building resilience to keep people fed, whatever happens next.
The three farmers are Brook Bullock, her partner John Collector, and Leila Rezvani. They met at a teaching farm in New Orleans, where Bullock was the executive director, Rezvani a lead farmer, and Collector a frequent volunteer. As they got closer, they talked about starting a commercial farm together. When Bullock and Collector were able to buy Stonebridge Farm in Chesterfield in 2022, they invited Rezvani and Rezvani’s partner to join them on the land. Soon, collaboration blossomed.
For various reasons, it made sense to create two separate businesses. Under the existing Stonebridge Farm name, Bullock and Collector today raise cattle for beef, sheep for lamb, chickens for eggs and meat, and rabbits along with several kinds of fruit. Still getting established, they sell eggs and a few other things at the Chesterfield General Store, Oliver’s Farm Stand in Goshen, and the Hilltown Mobile Market.
The other farm on the land is Keshtyar Seed, a hand-scale vegetable and seed farm run by Rezvani and Bullock. They grow a wide variety of produce sold in many of the same markets, as well as rare and threatened plants grown specifically for seed.
“These seed plants are mainly from the SWANA region (Southwest Asia and North Africa), where my father is from,” Rezvani explains. “We sell to two small seed companies – Experimental Farm Network and True Love Seeds – and a few other people.”
As these young farms get started, a big part of the farmers’ focus is on preparing for climate change and all its repercussions. Among them, the toll of increasingly extreme and erratic weather has already left an impression.
“I was responsible for a farm in a very vulnerable place in New Orleans,” recalls Bullock. “Hurricanes came, everyone I loved evacuated, and I had to stay for our animals.”
Rezvani is equally pensive, adding from her experience in the South, the Hudson Valley, and now Massachusetts, “It seems like we have to be prepared for anything at this point.”
In truth, they can’t prepare for every possibility. Instead, these farmers are focusing on practices that offer general resilience to many different impacts of climate change.
For Stonebridge, that starts with improving the health of their pasture soil and the mix of plant species that grow from it. “To do that we’re using rotational grazing,” says Bullock. “Basically, using livestock as a tool to grow strong, healthy soil and grasses.”
Rotational grazing involves moving groups of animals through a field one small section at a time. The animals eat everything down to a certain point before moving on, giving that area time to rejuvenate with the help of their manure. This mimics how herds of grazing animals naturally behave. Done well, rotational grazing decreases soil compaction and encourages more fertile soils, plant growth, and species diversity. All are good for livestock, pollinators, and overall ecosystem health.
Soil with more organic matter also drains after heavy rains and traps moisture longer, keeping pastures productive when it’s hot and dry. All of this is helpful as climate change spawns more heat waves and more intense and spottier rainstorms, both of which have been felt this summer already.
Keshtyar Seed’s operation also benefits from improving soil health, but their biggest concern is protecting their plants from extreme weather.
“If you get rain at the wrong time, you can ruin an entire seed crop by getting it wet,” says Rezvani. “Wind protection is important too – we get really strong winds here in the hills.”
Their main adaptation strategy is growing more plants under cover, whether that’s small “caterpillar tunnels” over single rows of plants or larger “high tunnels” covering a whole area.
For both farms, “Diversifying is also so important,” adds Bullock. “We might have a year where the sheep don’t do well, but we still have cows. If the blueberries fail, we still have pears, and our income doesn’t crash.”
Whether starting a new farm or retrofitting an old one, figuring out how to adapt to climate change is both costly and risky. New equipment, materials, and technical assistance all cost money. Trying new farming strategies takes time and effort too, and success isn’t guaranteed. Yet climate change is affecting farms around the globe, and to grow enough food to stay in business and feed everyone, many will have to adapt.
Given the stakes, most people would say these risks and costs are worth it. The question is, who takes on the risk and cost? Often, it’s farmers, but they as a group have little time or money to spare. Most would love some help.
Some nonprofits and mission-driven companies are standing with farmers, encouraging climate-smart farming practices with funding to defray costs and technical advice to guide the way. For example, Stonebridge Farm received funding from American Farmland Trust to buy fencing for rotational grazing. Meanwhile, Keshtyar Seed received one grant from Sky High Farm, a nonprofit supporting historically marginalized farmers, to build a future high tunnel, and another from Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) to pay longtime farmers at Crabapple Farm, also in Chesterfield, to help them learn the quirks of Hilltown farming.
“Coming from Louisiana where this kind of support wasn’t accessible, it felt like a fairytale,” says Bullock. “But now that I’m here starting a production farm, it feels absolutely critical.”
Critical, but maybe not enough. At least not for all farms.
So far, small grants are helping keep Stonebridge and Keshtyar above water, but the farmers started with a few uncommon advantages. They were already educated about climate change and motivated to design their farm around it, and all three have off-farm income allowing more financial flexibility. For farmers not in these positions, a handful of grants may not be enough to enable a similar transition, leaving them more vulnerable to climate change’s impacts.
“To encourage farmers to shift how they farm and basically do climate resilience research, there needs to be a higher payback,” says Bullock. “Farmers are risking their livelihoods to do this.”
Many farmers and supporters say that farmers provide a public service by feeding people and innovating to keep our food supply stable, and that service is worthy of more public financial support. Recently, lawmakers acknowledged this in a big way.
As directed by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the US Department of Agriculture has invested over $3.1 billion in the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. Much of that money will go directly to U.S. farmers, paying them to transition acreage into pre-identified climate-smart farming practices. Farmers will also be paid to collect data on how these practices influence carbon sequestration, soil health, and other indicators of climate resilience.
Locally, CISA is part of a team of organizations helping farms apply for funding. Stonebridge Farm is among the first local farms to do so, and CISA will work with dozens more in the coming years.
As climate change brings more extreme and unpredictable weather, new pests and diseases, and even makes some areas too risky to farm, undoubtedly farmers will still find a way to deliver. Policies that shift risk and expenses off farmers’ backs may help. So may steady patronage and advocacy from the local community.
As Congress renews the Farm Bill this year, many local farmers and advocates are lobbying in favor of programs like the Partnership for Climate Smart Commodities. Closer to home, many are taking part in a local Climate Change and Farming Week from September 15-22 organized by CISA. Public events range from farm tours to cooking demos and film screenings, all aiming to spark collaboration towards climate solutions within the local food system. Learn more at buylocalfood.org/climateweek.
“If we value farms growing food that’s good for people and good for our world, we need to invest in them,” says Bullock. “I really hope policy makers keep putting money towards local farms, not taking it away.”
Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA.
