Regenerative Grazing to Mitigate Climate Change
Timeline
Fall 2019 - Spring 2021
Description
Regenerative Grazing NC is a multi-year, student-led project to increase the adoption of regenerative grazing systems in North Carolina. We believe that regenerative grazing is the key to sustainable meat production in a climate-constrained world. Changing food systems is a tremendously complex undertaking and our community partners are doing amazing work advocating policy, providing extension support, conducting research, and developing robust supply chains to connect producers with consumers. Regenerative Grazing NC is supporting these efforts by developing policy recommendations and novel funding streams to help our farmers continue to do what they do best—produce high-quality food—while becoming an integral part of the solution to climate change.
Our policy team provides a menu of options for policymakers and advocates on the federal, state, and local levels that will galvanize adoption of regenerative grazing practices on North Carolina farms. These targeted policy recommendations reward early-adopters--farmers who have already embraced regenerative grazing practices--while addressing barriers to adoption to help new farmers enter the regenerative grazing space.
Our protocol team is diligently exploring new funding streams for farmers interested in adopting regenerative grazing practices. In the project’s inaugural year, they developed a carbon offset protocol for use through the Offset Network. Upon peer-review and validation, this protocol would allow farmers to earn money for sequestering carbon in the soil. A demonstration project is underway in partnership with the Triangle Land Conservancy and Newbold Farms to ensure the protocol is accessible to the operations and scale of most North Carolina graziers.
Team
Members
Paelina DeStephano, Bridget Eklund, Hannah Elson, Hannah Kelley-Bell, Courtney McCorstin, Emily McNamara, Erik Reiger, Corey Sugerik, Olivia Olsher, Annie Roberts, Amy Yoon
Leaders
Matthew Arsenault, Leslie Wolverton, Michelle Nowlin
Sponsors
Duke Carbon Offsets Initiative, Triangle Land Conservancy, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, North Carolina State University
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