Learning from the floods: To prepare for an unpredictable future, Valley farmers think big

By Jacob Nelson

“So much was just about to bloom,” says Suna Turgay of Flowerwork Farm in Northampton. “And then the flooding came.”

Warmer, wetter, and less predictable weather are all on the rise in New England as our climate changes. The idea of normal is constantly evolving, as each year seems to bring new challenges forcing local farmers to adapt.

Last summer’s persistent rainfall and catastrophic flooding left many farmers scrambling to keep their farms intact and businesses afloat. Dedicated farmers, individuals, community organizations, and public officials rallied in support in their hour of need. Now that waters have receded, many are reflecting on what lessons can be learned from last year’s ordeal.

Suna Turgay and Stacia Potter of Flowerwork Farm harvest bouquets at the end of a difficult season (Gazette photo/Carol Lollis)

It is worth noting that while flooding made the most headlines, local farmers contended with examples of extreme weather fueled by climate change on several fronts this year. Cold snaps in February and May destroyed peach buds and other fruit and berry blossoms, respectively. Meanwhile, many farms that were not flooded still faced low yields and rampant fungal disease caused by the rain.

However, the lessons learned from flooding raise ideas that are applicable to other challenges farmers face from extreme weather events.

With future growing conditions becoming both riskier and less predictable, building generalized resilience is becoming more important than ever. On the farm level, farmers are reassessing how they work with their land. At a community level, greater collaboration may help.

At a societal level, many are starting to question why farmers, who grow the food we need to survive, are not supported on par with other professionals who protect our basic needs and safety.

A flood in July?

The relatively new Flowerwork Farm sits on an eighth of an acre of leased land within the Northampton Community Farm run by Grow Food Northampton. There, next to the Mill River, Turgay and her farming partner Stacia Potter grow a mix of annuals, perennials, and herbs that become materials for floral arrangements sold locally or used in grand designs they create for weddings and other events.

Suna Turgay harvests flowers in October, which were replanted after flooding in July (Gazette photo/Carol Lollis)

“Stacia is more the artist, and I feel like a farmer growing the art supplies,” Turgay says. “We follow permaculture principles —  growing within nature’s patterns — and we don’t use any herbicides and barely any fertilizers, just compost.”

The farm’s layout is carefully designed to maximize yield in a small space while providing a welcoming habitat for wildlife and humans alike. With a differently abled child and a desire to welcome visitors to volunteer and learn, accessibility is central to Turgay’s vision.

The farmers knew flooding was a risk, but neither predicted anything like the events that unfolded on July 10. As Grow Food Northampton’s Michael Skillicorn describes, “When the Mill River jumped its banks that day, it flooded approximately 40 acres of our farm in just 20 minutes. Nine out of ten farmers on the land were affected, some with a complete crop loss and some with less. About three-quarters of the 320 community garden plots were also submerged.”

What was shocking about this flooding was the timing. In the Northeast, rivers and streams often swell past their banks in the spring when melting snow oversaturates the soil. The nutrients laid down by seasonal flooding of the Connecticut River and its tributaries are what make this region’s soils so coveted, and Indigenous and settler farmers have reaped the benefits of this fertility while accepting the somewhat predictable risks for thousands of years.

Yet as climate change shifts weather patterns, flooding is much less predictable. A warmer atmosphere is holding more moisture and letting loose more intense storms throughout the year. In fact, the Fifth National Climate Assessment just released by the federal government shows that days with 2-plus inches of rain have increased by almost 50% in the Northeast since the 1950s, while days with 5-plus inches of rain have doubled.

Now that this increased risk of flooding has gone from probability to reality, many local farmers have clearer ideas about how they can better prepare for the next one.

Farming smarter in a floodplain

“If I had gotten things in earlier, I would have had some harvest beforehand.”

That was Turgay’s first thought as she grappled with what the July 10 flood took from her. This past spring, she delayed planting until maintenance on the Northampton Community Farm’s water lines was complete, then rushed to plant everything right away, making up for lost time. As a result, many flowers were poised to bloom at the same time right before flooding destroyed them.

“It was a huge lesson in timing,’ she says. “Farmers are always thinking about succession planting (planting one crop after another in the same space to stagger the harvest) as a sales strategy, but reducing risk is a whole other reason to do it, and we learned that.”

Spreading out the harvest is one strategy that creates generalized resilience to any extreme conditions. Diversifying the kinds of crops planted is another. In a floodplain specifically, Turgay notes that perennial trees and shrubs with more established roots have a survival advantage, pointing to Smith College researcher Piyush Labhsetwar’s pawpaw orchard on the same community farmland, which mostly survived.

Piyush Labhsetwar speaks with lawmakers after flooding hit his research farm in July 2023. His pawpaw trees and perennial grains fared better than many neighboring farms’ veggie crops (Paul Shoul photo)

Another takeaway is that nonedible crops are a safer investment on flood-prone farmland. Since floodwaters are often contaminated by chemicals and pathogens, farmers cannot sell anything edible that gets submerged, and must wait weeks or months to replant, depending on the crop. Growing flowers, Turgay could use what survived and replant immediately.

Stepping back a bit, flooding has also highlighted equity ramifications of who farms where. As the Valley’s fertile river bottom land floods more often, less-resourced and historically marginalized farmers cultivating smaller areas are the least able to absorb losses. The footprint of a small farm might be entirely within a floodplain, while a larger farm has greater flood resilience simply because they spread across more land with differing levels of vulnerability.

It is much less likely that flooding completely wipes out a large farm, but smaller farms might lose everything. With less resources behind them, historically marginalized and smaller farm owners are also less able to move out of harm’s way.

Addressing these inequities is complicated, yet crucial to the pursuit of justice in our food system. Says Skillicorn, “As land stewards, we are grappling with the responsible and appropriate use of land, including which farms and people are using it. Ideally, the farmers working with flood-prone land should be able to better withstand the impacts of a flood.”

Thinking beyond the next flood

As climate change brings more risk of flooding, adapting farming strategies will be important. The same goes for addressing the disproportionate impact flooding has on the most vulnerable farmland — and the most vulnerable farmers. But flooding is just one concern of many.

Courtney Whitley of Ras Farm, located on the Northampton Community Farm, speaks to elected officials in front of his flooded fields (Paul Shoul photo)

“Next year we could have a late frost, or a drought,” Turgay says. “And farmers like me don’t have the resources to prepare for big disasters. Small disasters, maybe. But it’s hard when there’s so much to consider.”

And her comments are only about weather patterns. In recent years, economic volatility has also been a considerable burden on farmers, particularly rising costs for basic materials. From COVID-19 to avian flu, health emergencies added further complications. All these challenges were possible. None of them were forecast.

How do you prepare for a future you can’t predict? That is the core question in farmers’ efforts to persevere and keep feeding everyone.

“And it can’t be just a question for farmers to figure out,” says David Fisher, a farmer at Natural Roots in Conway. “We’re such a small, overworked, underpaid slice of the population. It has to be a question society answers as a whole.”

Natural Roots lost over 95% of their harvest last July when three floods swept through their cropland in the span of 12 days. Between efforts to keep the business afloat and to feed the farm’s community-supported agriculture members, Fisher has given this conundrum a lot of thought as well.

Leeks laid bare by floodwaters at Natural Roots (Paul Shoul photo)

Farming has always been uncertain, and with climate change the risk and probability of weather disasters is increasing. Plus, these impacts are global, wreaking havoc on farms everywhere. Importing more food grown elsewhere when local farms struggle is a less reliable strategy every passing year. Yet farming remains one of the most vulnerable jobs on the planet. As Fisher puts it, “We can’t back our work up to the cloud.”

This makes disaster relief a critical part of any strategy to ensure a reliable food supply in the age of climate change. In 2023, it’s unknown how many local farm businesses would have been pushed over the edge if not for incredible support from lawmakers and community members, particularly through the philanthropic Massachusetts Farm Resiliency Fund and the state-designated Natural Disaster Recovery Program for Agriculture. Together, both funds distributed over $23 million to embattled farmers, ensuring they could remain in business and keep feeding their communities.

“At the same time,” Fisher says, “disaster relief is like treating symptoms of an illness rather than working towards intrinsic health and resilience. What does an intrinsically healthy farm economy look like? I don’t know myself. But when I don’t have answers, I look to other models that seem to be working better.”

David Fisher of Natural Roots directs volunteers helping with flood clean up (Paul Shoul photo)

One familiar model Fisher points to is how communities support fire departments. Like farms, fire departments protect a basic human need, in this case shelter rather than food. But communities don’t invest in food security the same way they do public safety.

“My Conway Fire Department is funded by the community no question, no matter the circumstances,” he says. “Come hell or high water, they will be here to keep us safe. We don’t fund them based on how many fires they put out.”

Fisher and others acknowledge that these ideas might feel new, but they are not unprecedented. Many European countries provide farmers with far more assurance, funding resilience for farm businesses, the local food supply, and the environment. These policies are not aimed at enriching small and mid-size farmers. Instead, they provide a floor that prevents farmers from sinking into ruin.

“Eventually,” Fisher says, “I would like to see farmers and farmworkers financially supported so we can take care of the land, take care of ourselves, and feed our community without being squeezed for all we can sacrifice.”

In an age of big challenges, pursuing a brighter future might mean leaving behind some long-held strategies and ways of thinking and embracing new ideas. No one has it all figured out, but when it comes to the food system, local farmers have a ground-floor view of what might work.

Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To learn more about CISA’s work and ways to support local farms confronting the impacts of climate change, visit buylocalfood.org/climateaction.

By Jacob Nelson

In many ways, farming is an act of faith. Faith that nature will provide for a harvest, and a farmer’s faith in themselves to figure out whatever challenges arise. Some years bring bumper crops, others disappointment, but with climate change fueling more volatile and extreme weather, losses are becoming bigger, more common, and harder to predict.

Inflation, supply disruptions, and rising costs to access land don’t help. Many farmers are adapting well, yet many also say today’s safety nets don’t acknowledge how risky farming has become.

David Fisher speaks with legislators and reporters while volunteers clean up fields flooded during July 2023 rains (Paul Shoul photo)

After this year’s flooding, Massachusetts residents and lawmakers stepped up and set a new precedent for supporting farms in crises. Still, bureaucratic change moves slowly. When farmers need help in the moment, it’s often other farmers who rise to the occasion. After catastrophic flooding last July at Natural Roots, a farm in Conway, the support of fellow farmers saved their season – and maybe their farm.

Natural Roots is a small, diverse farm on the banks of the South River. They grow veggies, fruit, and herbs, raise chickens for eggs, and farm with horses instead of tractors. Through their CSA (community supported agriculture) program, they feed over 240 families who pay upfront for regular shares of the harvest throughout the season. A small on-site farm store open to the public also carries their produce and eggs, along with meat, bread, dairy and staples from other local farms.

Owner David Fisher always wanted to connect more deeply with nature and people while exploring how the two could exist in harmony.

“I’ve found some of that through farming,” he says, “and I want to share that. To invite people to the farm to connect with the earth and each other, and (through the CSA) to take some degree of responsibility for the farm.”

It’s been a hard but rewarding life. With a few longtime employees and a rotating cast of apprentices, they made it work. They survived serious flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. But even that didn’t compare to July 10, 2023.

Flooding and a flood of support

For days, persistent rain saturated the soil of the South River watershed. That day’s forecast didn’t call for much more precipitation, but the ground could not absorb it. Instead, it flowed into the river, which built into a raging torrent.

Plants of all kinds were flattened by the South River during July 2023 flooding at Natural Roots Farm in Conway (Paul Shoul photo)

“We didn’t realize how little rain it would take to dramatically flood,” Fisher says. “Before we knew what was happening, machinery was getting washed down the river. Chickens were floating by, and we were catching them and wading to higher ground, arms full of chickens. We just rescued anything we could.”

Thanks to a quick response by farmers and draft horses, most of their chickens and critical equipment were saved. Yet the receding water unveiled severe damage. Roads were washed out. Many plants were completely uprooted by floodwater blasting by. Anything edible left standing was ruled unsafe to sell or eat due to contaminants in the water — a devastating blow so close to harvest time. In all, Fisher estimates they lost over 95% of their crops.

Looking over a revised budget post-flooding, the outlook was grim. They had limited cash on hand and no vegetables to distribute. Anything they planted would not be ready for weeks. No veggies meant no CSA pickups, and a big drop in farm store sales.

Potatoes uprooted and contaminated by floodwaters (Paul Shoul photo)

“We were five weeks into a 22-week summer CSA,” Fisher says. “Our customers sign up to stick with us through thick and thin, but offering our customers nothing from then on would be extreme, and we weren’t in a position to refund everyone.”

“We weren’t expecting much,” he relates, “but we asked neighboring farms if anyone had extra produce we could glean from their fields to feed our customers. The response was … incredible.” They had more offers from neighboring farms than they could handle. As news spread, support poured in from farms as far away as Boston and the Hudson Valley.

“The generosity was staggering,” Fisher says. “And it was a little hard too, asking for help. Would we keep asking every week through November? Initially that felt uncomfortable. But over time, we realized many farmers seemed genuinely fulfilled to offer something. It was a positive experience for them, too.”

Rachel Foley and Isadora Harper, apprentices at Natural Roots Farm in Conway, harvest greens donated to their CSA from Hart Farm in Conway (Gazette photo/Carol Lollis)

One of those farmers was Ray Young, owner of Next Barn Over Farm in Hadley, who made produce available to Natural Roots Farm throughout the summer and fall.

Says Young, “Our season was challenging — we were mostly spared from flooding, but wetness led to disease that damaged several of our crops. That said, those that made it through were quite beautiful, and we were grateful to be able to pass on so much to Natural Roots as well as the organizations we typically donate to.”

Adds Fisher, “Max and Kerry Taylor at Brookfield Farm in Amherst also gave us so much. Gideon Porth and his crew at Atlas Farm in South Deerfield offered acres for gleaning. Old Friends Farm in Amherst gave us salad mix. Stone Soup Farm in Amherst, Riverland Farm and Kitchen Garden Farm in Sunderland, and Red Fire Farm in Montague and Granby have all helped us out, and so many others, too.”

The culture of farmers helping farmers is already strong in western Massachusetts. For example, some farmers share specialized equipment so neighboring farms don’t need to buy their own. Other farms share or lease land to each other in different configurations each season. Most are willing to share advice and techniques to help their neighbors succeed.

A chalkboard in Natural Roots’ CSA barn shares which farms donated produce for members; weekly shares (Gazette photo/Dan Little)

Farms in our region also benefit from longstanding community support. Those connections are another resource farmers can tap when things get tough. In Natural Roots’ case, press coverage and strong ties to their customers and community helped them fundraise almost $92,000 to rebuild.

“People have said and their actions have clearly shown that they want this farm to exist,” Fisher says. “But even with all this support, it’s still really hard to make it work.”

A piece of the puzzle

While their experience makes for a heartwarming story, as Fisher implies it’s not the whole solution. The support system woven by relationships between farmers and community members isn’t foolproof. There are holes, not everyone is connected equally, and there are limits to the kinds of help social networks and generosity can provide.

Farmers and farm support groups gathered in September 2023 to discuss present and future needs as extreme weather intensifies

After 26 years of farming in Conway, Fisher is well networked among his peers. “But when I went to the event CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) put on for farmers to talk about disaster relief,” he says, “I looked out and thought, I don’t know most of these people.”

Bringing together farmers and supporting groups to network and collaborate is one way CISA helps strengthen the local farm support system. Other organizations help farmers market products together or advocate collectively for policy change. At a very grassroots level, many local farmers connect with their peers through a farmers-only email listserv — the one Natural Roots used to coordinate gleaning and food donations.

These networking opportunities are helpful, but also limited by technological barriers and whether everyone feels welcome. For example, a seventh-generation dairy farmer might be more comfortable speaking their mind in a group than a recently resettled refugee. Both may have difficulty with listservs and video calls.

A farm’s business model also impacts its access to these relationship-based safety nets. “We are extremely privileged that our community feels so connected to us through our CSA,” Fisher says. “Farms that sell wholesale and don’t talk directly to customers are much more alone when they struggle. Not because they aren’t worthy, they just operate differently.”

The big picture

Neighborliness only goes so far, especially when extreme weather and other impacts of climate are increasing and becoming more widespread. Says Next Barn Over farmer Ray Young, “I’m a firm believer in mutual aid, but our local capacity is limited, especially since extreme weather tends to affect farms across entire regions. As we look forward facing climate change, we will need broader safety nets than our local networks.”

Elected leaders and MA Department of Ag officials survey flooding damage and discuss their response (Paul Shoul photo)

When individual action can’t support basic needs — like reliable access to food — that’s often when collective action and governments step in to uphold the public good. In Massachusetts, this is already starting to happen.

Last summer, local officials heard farmers’ need for grants to keep businesses afloat, not just loans options that would put them further into debt. Within weeks, the Natural Disaster Recovery Program for Agriculture was written into the state’s supplemental budget, making $20 million available to cover crop losses from both flooding and the freezes that decimated peaches in February and berries and early veggies in May.

Among those leading the charge were local politicians, Rep. Natalie Blais and Sen. Jo Comerford.

In contrast to Massachusetts’ quick response, efforts to strengthen federal support programs are moving slowly. Most of these are funded by the Farm Bill, a sprawling piece of legislation typically revised and renewed by Congress every five years. Amid congressional disarray, a new bill was not finished on schedule this fall. Instead, most 2018 Farm Bill programs were extended through September 2024 — a win for program continuity, but a missed opportunity to address new needs exposed by worsening climate change, COVID, and other recent events.

Tim McVaugh of Deerfield and his son Liam, 4, pick up produce from the Natural Roots CSA on Saturday in Conway (Gazette photo/Dan Little)

Advocates like the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which represents mostly smaller and more diversified farms like those common in Massachusetts, are already lobbying for changes to the new bill. One change the coalition proposes is “fixing a flawed farm safety net and restoring fair competition” by reforming crop insurance programs to work better for new and smaller farms, not just large farms growing commodity crops. Other suggestions emphasize better support for farmers adapting growing practices for a changing climate.

Farming amid climate change and economic uncertainty is a tricky puzzle. At times, Fisher has felt quite alone trying to solve it.

“I used to think it was just me struggling, and I just needed to get smarter or work harder,” he says. “But I’m realizing that farmers are struggling all over the place. We’re facing some real challenges.”

While society organizes around big-picture solutions, local farmers have each other’s backs. By shopping locally, donating to relief funds, or with other acts of goodwill, the local community shows they stand beside them.

To learn more about supporting the local food system as it adapts to climate change, visit buylocalfood.org/climateaction.

Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). As a frontline supporter of local food and farms in western Massachusetts, CISA helps farmers get the help and funding they need to thrive, even amid challenges like climate change. Learn more at buylocalfood.org/climateaction.

Stephen Taranto, CISAs climate program coordinator, thanks Jacob and Monte to preview CISAs Climate Change and Farming Week, with events across western Massachusetts running from this Sunday, September 17 to Saturday, September 23

These events are a great opportunities to see how local farms are innovating to keep us fed in the age of climate change! Check out the full schedule at buylocalfood.org/climate-week2023

CISA’s Climate Program has been up and running for nearly a year and a half now and in that short time span we have been both inspired by the innovation and perseverance of farmers in our region and alarmed by how quickly, and often severely, the impacts of climate change are affecting them.

We will never forget the photos of flooded fields sent to us by Dave’s Natural Garden during the epic rainfalls of 2021 and the accompanying message of desperation that went something like “We’ve lost about 80% of our farmable land to this rain, it’s enough to make us throw in the towel … or tractor!” 

On the other hand, Lincoln Fishman at Sawyer Farm sent us photos of market-ready brassicas thrusting up among perennial White Clover last summer, in the middle of a drought. Like many growers, he’s trying to figure out how to optimize soil health, reduce erosion, grow food, and get a fair price all at once–while also working to share information and strategies with other growers in a way that might convince other farms to do the same.

Providing direct technical support on climate change adaptation to farms like Dave’s Natural Garden and Sawyer Farm is one of the most important ways CISA’s Climate Program can help. Our conversations and collaborations with members of the farming community certainly have their fair share of head-shaking and hand-wringing about the changing climate, but we also hear and see in action creative ideas, valuable experience, and specific questions that we can help answer. 

This Climate Change & Farming Bulletin shares another round of resources for local farm and food businesses addressing the local impacts of climate change. While you’ll find a diversity of news, research, and events, there are two topics in particular that we’d like to call your attention to this time around. 

The first is the 2023 Farm Bill. The Farm Bill governs much of the federal government’s food, nutrition, and emergency food policy and it’s up for renewal every five years. There is a lot to do to make sure that the bill includes new and larger provisions to help farms of all shapes and sizes adapt to climate change and increase access to fresh, locally grown produce for all types of communities. You’ll find several resources and opportunities related to the Farm Bill in this edition; we hope you’ll get involved in encouraging our legislators to advocate for programs appropriate for increasing the climate resiliency of farms here in the Northeast.

Second, in response to what we have learned this past year and the wealth of programs and organizations starting to come on line to support the transition to landscape level sustainability, CISA will be launching an online Climate Change & Farming Resource Hub this Spring, brimming with easy-access information on a wide array of climate change adaptation resources for local farm and food businesses, from grants to technical assistance to risk management. We’ve reviewed mountains of available resources and picked those we think are most useful to our food system here in Western Mass and central New England. Keep your eyes peeled for the hub launch and if you have suggestions for additional materials to include, send the it our way to climate@buylocalfood.org.

Thanks for checking out the bulletin, we are in this together and CISA is here to help!

Stephen Taranto

CISA Climate Program Coordinator

stephen@buylocalfood.com

413-665-7100 ext. 17.

Celebrating 30 years of ‘Buy Local Food’

By Claire Morenon

The new year is an opportunity to reflect on the challenges, lessons and growth of the past year, and to prepare ourselves for and dream about what’s to come. For local farmers, that’s doubly true: most of them have put their fields to rest and they are budgeting, hiring, and making the crop plans for the growing season to come.

And at Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), it’s triply true: we’re heading into our 30th anniversary year of supporting local farms and building connections between local farmers and their communities. This landmark year is an opportunity for reflection, dreaming and action on a vast, long-term scale.

Local farms, like many small businesses, have been on a roller coaster for the last three years, and 2023 brings many of the same uncertainties. While COVID is still a serious issue, especially for high-risk folks, the urgent response demanded of businesses in the early days of the pandemic have receded. But the many social and financial harms stemming from the pandemic continue to stress businesses of all sorts.

The most visible of these harms, to many of us, is inflation. Farms – along with restaurants, grocery stores and all the other businesses that make up our local food system – are dealing with a massive surge in input costs. For farmers, this is complicated by the seasonal nature of their businesses, where many expenses accrue in the winter months and aren’t recouped until the harvest begins in the summer. Then, because most of their products are highly perishable, they need to compete on price with products from around the globe with very different economics. This makes it extremely difficult to plan, to set prices, and to enter into contracts with any sense of comfort.

The difficulties of the current inflation cycle are connected to and compounded by the supply chain issues and labor shortages that have dogged businesses for the last year or more.

Climate change, and the increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather it brings, is another huge challenge for local farms. While farmers in the northeast are accustomed to variable weather, climate scientists predict a range of interconnected changes to come to the northeast. This includes rising temperatures, including more heatwaves, which stress humans, livestock, and many crops.

We’ll see more precipitation, including more extreme rainfall events, resulting in fields that can’t be worked, more localized flooding, more pests, more weed pressure, and more plant disease and rot. The last two years have brought first record-setting rains, and then months of drought. As one farmer shared with us, after 40 years of farming, “I now have no idea what I will plant, how much, or where, with the changing weather.”

This picture looks dire, and indeed the last several years have been uniquely challenging. Many small business owners are just exhausted, and we know that the years to come will bring new and serious difficulties. And still, 30 years into working to build a stronger local food system, we at CISA can see that this is not the whole story.

The first piece of good news is that local farmers are experts at resilience. They have ridden the waves caused by COVID, figuring out how to safely provide food to our communities during the darkest days of the pandemic and continually changing circumstances ever since.

They have jumped in as partners in the fight against hunger, which has only grown more urgent throughout the pandemic. And they are making changes to their crop plans, growing practices, and business plans so they can be more resilient in the face of a changing climate.

The second piece of good news is that they are not alone. There’s a web of support for local farms, including the state, local nonprofits, and the thousands of consumers who choose local. CISA works every day to strengthen the threads of that web by helping farmers secure grants and providing them with expert advice, building relationships between local businesses, and helping shoppers connect to local farms. Our work happens alongside, and often in partnership with, efforts that are focused on land preservation, fighting hunger, environmental action, and food justice.

Local farms are at the center of a healthy local food system, and a big part of why many of us love to call this place home. CISA is committed to supporting them, and we hope you’ll join us! Learn more about local farms and where you can find them, advocacy efforts, and more, at buylocalfood.org.

Claire Morenon is communications manager at CISA.

FOR THE GAZETTE

“Agriculture is going to have to look different,” says Lincoln Fishman of Sawyer Farm in Worthington, given the climate crisis. “And I’m just not interested in farming the old way.”

Well-read and well-spoken, Fishman has a keen ability to look beyond his own farm to see the trajectory of commercial farming as a whole, and to consider his role in shifting that. He sees climate change as a grave threat and is unabashed in his willingness to adapt dramatically and to help other farmers do the same.

Lincoln Fishman and Hillary Costa of Sawyer Farm with their beloved horses, since given up as they transition how they farm (PC Scott Streble)

At Sawyer Farm, Fishman farms 25 acres of sloping Hilltown fields alongside his partner, Hillary Costa, and a handful of colleagues. “About seven acres are in vegetables and cover crops,” he says, “focusing on crops that can be stored and sold year-round – cabbage, carrots, onions, that kind of thing.”

Much of their produce is sold at an onsite farm store at the end of Sawyer Road, which also carries food from other local farms and handpicked staples sourced as ethically as they can manage. They sell wholesale to other markets, distributors, and restaurants too.

Farmers have a firsthand view of changing weather patterns in New England, and their observations often humanize the scientific data showing how climate change is fueling these trends.

An animal shelter and manure catchment building at Sawyer Farm funded by NRCS (PC Scott Streble)

“I’ve farmed here for 12 years and 15 in total, and I’d say the last five have felt dramatic,” says Fishman. “For us it’s all about the intensity and frequency of precipitation, and the variation is stunning. Last July we had 16 inches of rain, this July we had one inch. We can’t predict anything.”

How that rain falls also matters, especially since Sawyer Farm’s fields are sloped. “We’re seeing more intense rain falling in shorter periods of time, which can cause all kinds of soil erosion,” he explains. “My kids won’t be able to farm here unless I’m very careful in preventing that.”

Even when a farm identifies their vulnerabilities, as Sawyer Farm has with managing water and protecting soil, the specific impacts they face evolve as climate change progresses. This forces farmers to adapt and re-adapt to stay ahead of the curve.

“Five years ago, we thought we could count on crazy rain during the late summer hurricane season,” Fishman says. This threatened to wash away precious topsoil. One way to prevent that is to plant a cover crop whose roots hold soil in place, which they usually did in fall once cash crops were harvested.

Field corn ready for harvest, with a cover crop of clover below.

“To adapt, we started planting a cover crop of clover underneath everything in July,” says Fishman. “By hurricane season it formed a full mat, and we reduced our fall soil erosion to near zero.”

That solved one issue, but like a game of climate-fueled whack-a-mole, more appeared.

“Then we started getting intense spring rains around the time we normally tilled, when the soil was soft and washed away easily,” he explains.

They realized they needed year-round soil coverage and using a living cover crop of clover remained the most feasible method. But to keep that clover alive year-to-year meant not tilling the soil.

Tilling serves many functions in modern agriculture, from killing weeds to turning in cover crops and preparing beds for planting. You can also accomplish these goals without tilling, and farmers are increasingly turning to low- or no-till methods. This can make soil more resilient to several climate impacts, aerating it and improving its capacity to retain water, and maybe sequestering more greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, though the science is complex.

There are many ways to do low-till farming, but most at a larger scale rely on chemicals to kill weeds. Fishman’s goal was to grow organically and encourage his crops to coexist with one chosen “weed” – clover.

That might sound simple, but Fishman’s inability to find other farms using this technique signaled its difficulty. From the timing of planting to the tools they’d use, a lot would have to change. Most noticeably, they’d no longer need their beloved team of draft horses, whose main job had been tilling. Without blueprints to follow, they drew their own.

Sawyer Farm is now three years into their experiment of planting veggies into fields of clover. To begin the process, first seedlings are planted into bare soil. Once the crops are established, clover is sown underneath them in July.

“By the end of August when we harvest, I’m walking in a fully established field of clover,” explains Fishman. “That clover then overwinters, and for the next few years we keep planting into established clover.”

Each season surfaces new challenges. The main task is making sure the clover outcompetes weeds but not their crops, a balance they’re still tuning. Eventually weeds do infiltrate, requiring them to till and begin the cycle anew. But if that happens every four years as Fishman predicts, they’ve still reduced tillage four-fold.

This way of farming they’re piloting is unproven. Will the soil be healthier? Will it grow as much food? Will it be financially viable enough for other farmers to follow their lead? Fishman isn’t sure. But he’s gathering data and offering his farm as a laboratory.

“We just received a SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) Partnership Grant that will fund me to work with another farmer and a PhD student at UMass and American Farmland Trust to study all of that,” he explains. “I think farmer-driven research is the best way we can innovate in agriculture, because that’s what’s most compelling to other farmers.”

Thinking big comes naturally to Fishman, who’s focused on ideas that can be scaled up or replicated by other farmers. In his eyes, three obstacles are impeding more of that kind of innovation.

Climbing beans get their start, recently planted into an established field of clover (PC Sawyer Farm)

The first is the lack of existing research on alternative farming methods. “We really don’t know how to proceed right now if we want to feed people sustainably,” he says. “There just aren’t many examples.”

Then there’s the lack of connectivity among farmers for sharing what information does exist.

“I don’t know how it is in other fields,” Fishman says, “but it must not be this difficult. When I try to research a new idea or piece of equipment, that knowledge is scattered in a hundred people’s brains, and they’re not talking to each other.”

Farmers are busy and hard-pressed to maintain knowledge-sharing networks on their own, though some do. Farm support organizations like Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA), the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Massachusetts Chapter (NOFA/Mass), and UMass Extension all facilitate this to some degree.

Yet by and large, Fishman contends, the best-funded institutions that aid farmers, like land grant universities and state and federal departments of agriculture, seem not to prioritize farmer-to-farmer information exchange. UMass Extension’s budget and staffing in particular have been reduced dramatically over many decades, diminishing their ability to support this.

This points directly to the third impediment Fishman sees: a lack of public funding for farming innovation and climate adaptation, which he and many others argue is a public good.

“With the exception of the SARE grant, I don’t get compensated for the experimenting I’m doing,” he says, “and I could have gotten much more profit out of these fields if I wasn’t experimenting.”

Grant programs do exist to compensate farmers for conserving resources and shoring up the local food supply, and Sawyer Farm has taken advantage of several. From the state, they used a Massachusetts Department of Agriculture Farm Viability Grant to help build their farm store, and Food Security Infrastructure Grants to build more cold storage and purchase tractor equipment. Federally, they’ve received funding from the Natural Resource Conservation Service for things like invasive plant removal and manure management.

But while those programs do help farmers protect the environment while keeping their business in the black, they represent a fraction of total public spending on agriculture, most of which supports the continued farming of commodity crops. Very little is spent on innovation.

Massachusetts’ Food Security Infrastructure Grant program was a step towards funding farmers to find solutions. Prompted by supply shortages at the onset of COVID-19, it put resources in farmers’ and small business owners’ hands to fix the supply chain gaps they experienced daily while trying to connect local eaters to their food. This funding was short lived, however, and despite its success state interest in this investment has ebbed.

Whether for food security or sustainability, “to pay out of my own pocket to innovate doesn’t account for the broader social benefit it has,” Fishman says. “What I’m doing is absolutely the wrong way to do business. I just think it’s the right way to farm.”

“There needs to be more financial incentive for expanding knowledge around what farming should look like,” he continues. “That would be using public funds to benefit the public.”

Regarding his own experiment, it’s not much of a stretch to say that Fishman has bet the farm on it.

“If this fails, I don’t know what I’ll do,” he says. “Nothing would convince me to go back to tilling every year. That would feel like going backwards. I’d rather help other farmers move forwards from wherever they are.”

Jacob Nelson is Communications Coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). As a frontline supporter of local food and farms in western Massachusetts, CISA helps farmers get the help and funding they need to thrive, even amid challenges like climate change. Learn more at buylocalfood.org

By Jacob Nelson

FOR THE GAZETTE

“Being a farmer and a pharmacist, I understand the symbiotic relationship of both,” says Hameed Bello, owner of Agric Organics, a new urban farm in Wilbraham. There, he and his wife Ayo are intent on building a farm that can be a multi-faceted resource for their community, supplying farm fresh food, health, and education while withstanding the challenges of climate change.

Agric Organics sits on about 10 acres of land just south of Rt 20 on the outskirts of Springfield. Now raising crops on three of those acres, “We pride ourselves in growing with organic and sustainable methods,” Bello says. “We do have a small orchard on the property, but most of our focus is on fresh produce.”

The couple broke ground just last year and have since withstood two wildly different growing seasons, 2021 one of the wettest in recent memory and 2022 one of the hottest and driest.

It’s been a learning experience that we are in some ways grateful for,” says Bello, thinking positively. “Now we know how to adapt going forward.”

Hameed and Ayo Bello both immigrated to the US from Nigeria separately during their childhoods. Both grew up with a hands-on familiarity around agriculture. Neither set out to be a farmer, and each works another job besides, Hameed as a pharmacist and Ayo as a consultant. Yet still, farming found them.

“Growing up in Africa, natural medicine sparked my curiosity,” Bello says. “And I wanted to be of service.” He eventually focused his studies on phytochemistry, the science of chemicals derived from plants, and attended Western New England University in Springfield, earning his pharmacological degree last year. There, he became more aware of Springfield residents’ lack of access to fresh healthy food.

“Wanting to be part of the solution, we took our farming backgrounds from growing up in Africa and decided to start Agric Organics,” he explains.

The farm sells its produce through a CSA program, and weekly at the Forest Park Farmers Market and Downtown Springfield Farmers Market. They also provide produce weekly to food pantry locations in Springfield and Chicopee for distribution to elders in the community, and recently started doing pop-up “food as medicine” markets at Baystate Medical clinics in downtown Springfield, a program they hope to grow.

“The health and nutritional benefits you get from eating fresh produce is something we talk about a lot,” says Bello. “We got connected with staff from Baystate Medical at a farmers market, started talking to them, and now once a week we bring our produce to sell directly to two of their locations.”

Agric Organics just became eligible to accept Healthy Incentives Program, or HIP, benefits. HIP gives all Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in Massachusetts an automatic rebate when they buy locally grown produce from a HIP vendor, up to $80/month depending on family size.

“All of this brings more access to vegetables, and it’s a way to engage customers in these ideas of fresh food and nutrition beyond just a transaction,” Bello says.

Before crops can get to market, however, they have to survive the growing season, which recently has been no small feat. This year, heat has been one of the biggest challenges Bello mentions.

“High heat changes the taste of some crops,” he says, “and a lot are going to seed much sooner.”

Some plants don’t mind heat, like tomatoes and peppers. Others, like many leafy greens, hate it. In either case, the extreme heat has caused many plants to ripen at different times than Bello expected.

“It also takes a toll on our health as farmers, being out there in the heat,” he says. When temperatures spike, they scramble to harvest in short windows when the sun is low.

This year’s drought is causing harsh effects as well, leaves wilting, root vegetables splitting, and moisture retreating far down into the soil.

The challenges of increasingly extreme weather brought on by climate change were something the Bellos considered from the beginning.

“As we design our farm, we always take into account Mother Nature and how unpredictable she can be,” Bello says. “Getting better control of our growing environment is the most important thing, and so we would love to cover everything with high tunnel greenhouses.” They’ve received funding for a few and are looking to install more.

Laying down woodchip mulch between rows has also become a Swiss-army-knife adaptation strategy for them. The mulch’s capacity to absorb and hold water is a boon in both dry years, when it prevents precious moisture from escaping, and in wet ones, when it soaks up excess rain.

“We’ve also gone back to something we learned growing up in Nigeria, which is not weeding as much,” says Bello. “The weeds serve as a shade to the soil and retain moisture around main crops.”

In some ways, small-scale urban farming is a climate adaptation strategy in itself. Agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation and thus greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and urban farmers make efficient use of already disturbed land, rather than clearing land to plant. In some areas, urban farms also provide oases of greenery, helping to cool neighborhoods during hot summers.

“We are directly embedded in the community where people who eat our food live,” says Bello, “and we can grow a lot in small spaces.”

Getting Agric Organics off the ground has come with plenty of challenges, chief among them the chicken-and-egg conundrum of access to land and financing that many beginning farmers face.

“When you start applying for grants, the first thing they ask for is your farm address,” says Bello. “If you don’t have one yet, that’s it.”

“Looking at farmland in Massachusetts, the price point is … interesting,” he adds diplomatically. “If you already struggle with access to capital, how do you find access to good farming land to start?”

They have received grants for some farm infrastructure that have been very helpful. Several high tunnel greenhouses have been funded by American Farmland Trust, the Massachusetts Food Trust Program, and the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS). They also purchased a walk-behind tractor and other equipment using a Food Security Infrastructure Grant funding from the state of Massachusetts. That program was created to help farmers build resilience in the state’s local food supply following the initial supply shortages of the pandemic.

“We’re always on the lookout for grant opportunities that would allow us to farm better and more efficiently, but we don’t have a very large team,” says Bello. Networking with organizations that support local farmers has helped alert them to such opportunities.

“CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) in particular has been great helping to find grants and support the farm in general,” he says. “If they don’t have an answer to my question, they can always forward me to someone who can.”

Bello is grateful for these grants. He also notes how the NRCS programs in particular, which reimburse farmers for work already completed, aren’t built for farms like Agric Organics.

“Farmers like myself don’t always have the resources to invest upfront in big projects, and depending on how busy NRCS is, my reimbursement can take more than a year to come through,” he says. “That can be a big hindrance.”

Despite these financial challenges, climate challenges, and the general chaos of farming, Hameed and Ayo Bello have Agric Organics poised to become what they envision as a pillar of the community.

“We want it to be not just a place to buy vegetables, but a place where friends and neighbors can spend their days learning,” Bello says. “We want to educate people not just about agriculture, but the importance of local food, and food as medicine.”

Thinking even bigger about their role at the nexus of food and medicine, “We want to integrate the idea of food as medicine into our local healthcare system,” he continues. “There’s no reason why your physician shouldn’t be able to write you a prescription for weekly vegetables that you come and pick up at Agric Organics, maybe at our own store. We hope to get to that point.”

Jacob Nelson is Communications Coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). As a frontline supporter of local food and farms in western Massachusetts, CISA helps farmers get the help and funding they need to thrive, even amid challenges like climate change. Learn more at buylocalfood.org.

By Jacob Nelson

FOR THE GAZETTE

“What would happen if farmers adapted to climate change without relying so much on plastic and petroleum?” asks Abby Ferla. “One of our answers is, we’d probably grow different plants.”

Ferla is the force behind Foxtrot Farm in Shelburne Falls, which grows what she terms “organic herbs and climate-resilient, high-nutrient foods,” now on almost 8 acres of Hilltown land. She founded Foxtrot in 2017 after farming elsewhere in western Massachusetts and across the country. Herbalism, culinary arts, teaching, and climate activism are also folded into her background.

Calendula flowering at Foxtrot Farm

“We sell locally through our CSA and to the Hilltown Mobile Farmers’ Market and have a good following of herbalists and apothecaries nationwide who buy our dried herbs in bulk,” she says. Two seasonal farmhands and her partner also contribute to the work.

Foxtrot Farm was designed for a changing climate from the beginning. “When I started the farm, I knew already what the climate projections were for this region,” Ferla explains. “Managing water was already heavy on my mind.”

As our atmosphere has warmed, the Northeast has gotten more yearly precipitation on average, but the bigger story is when and how it falls. More severe storms are dumping rain and snow faster over shorter periods of time and with much less consistency, as documented by the UDSA’s Climate Hubs. That phenomenon is projected to intensify.

Farmers are facing longer and more intense droughts and flooding, and a greater risk of soil erosion and crop damage. The result? Stressed out plants, animals, and farmers alike. Recent weather patterns in our region bear out these models: last year, we saw prolonged rains through much of the growing season, while this year was marked by drought.

At Foxtrot Farm, Ferla is using several adaptation techniques. Their planting beds follow the contours of their sloping fields, slowing and collecting water while preventing erosion. They also don’t till or disturb the soil structure, which increases aeration and its capacity to absorb water.

Meanwhile, a high tunnel greenhouse funded by the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program has also helped them navigate volatile growing conditions.

“It’s great to have some space where we can control how much water reaches the crops,” Ferla says. “It’s also helped extend our season and let us grow some crops that otherwise wouldn’t survive here, like lavender, passionflower, turmeric, and ginger.”

Initially Foxtrot Farm grew mostly certified organic herbs, meeting a market need for quality US products over imports. That’s still a pillar of their business, but about four years ago Ferla decided to grow more produce as well. She was met with a dilemma.

Many hands at work planting Foxtrot Farm’s 3.5 acre elderberry orchard last year

“I started thinking about how many adaptation strategies organic farmers use that rely on petroleum,” she says. “Our dripline irrigation, the tarps we use to block weeds for no-till, the skin of high tunnel greenhouses – it’s all petroleum-based plastic. I think plastic is a great tool, but I started thinking, ‘is that our only tool?’”

In the end, they settled on growing what they consider climate resilient plants that thrive in variable conditions without so much plastic protection. These run the gamut from herbs to annual fruits and veggies to perennial crops like their young elderberry bushes.

Some of these plants would be familiar to home cooks across the US, including many culinary herbs like parsley, oregano, and thyme. Others are less common but becoming more recognizable as more farmers, chefs, and eaters grow and enjoy them.

“I’m really into tomatillos and husk cherries after these past two years,” says Ferla. “Last year our summer rainfall was twice the average, this year it’s been so dry, and they’ve done well each year.”

A handful of husk cherries

Both plants, characterized by a papery husk around their fruit, belong to the nightshade family alongside tomatoes. Tomatillos are larger, more tart, and often roasted or used in salsas. Husk (or “ground”) cherries are smaller, sweeter, and often enjoyed raw.

Many dark leafy greens also fit the bill, like nettle, burdock, and dandelion greens. These tend to be new foods for most eaters, but pack a nutritional punch much stronger than their traditionally farmed cousins. They can also be quite bitter, a signal to consume them in moderation or as part of a dish.

“Don’t try to make a salad with just dandelion greens,” Ferla advises. “I recommend a pesto with garlic and parmesan cheese. Or do what the Italians do and cook it with a lot of fat. That makes sense because dandelions’ nutrients need fat to be absorbed, while their bitter compounds help you digest fat.”

“There’s a pretty cool overlap between which plants are really resilient to grow and what’s really nourishing,” she adds.

Talking about these plants’ culinary uses comes easily to Ferla. That’s a helpful skill, because the real bottleneck to farming more of these crops isn’t farming them, it’s how comfortable people are eating them. Foxtrot Farm’s CSA introduces members very intentionally to these foods, providing cultural context for their use and teaching skills for cooking with them.

“I provide a lot of historical background to how these plants were eaten and how that might work in a modern cuisine,” Ferla explains. “It’s been cool to watch people really take to new foods.”

Ingredients and instructions for CSA members to make their own elderberry syrup

Each distribution also includes a kit with all the ingredients and instructions to make one dish or apothecary item, which members can attempt on their own and compare notes.

In a couple of years, Foxtrot will be introducing customers to elderberries, thanks to a newly planted 3.5-acre elderberry orchard, which they hope will produce food for decades in a field too damp for herbs and veggies.

“The challenge of growing perennials is that they require more time and labor to establish, and they take longer to start producing,” Ferla says. Yet these elderberries represent a valuable investment in the future of their farm, and public benefits like increased land and soil health and local food supply.

To help finance that investment, they applied for a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture’s Climate Smart Agriculture Program with the support of CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) and other consultants. “It was so helpful to sit with people who could run the numbers with us and create an enterprise plan that was compelling to the state,” she says.

Ferla isn’t sure how they’ll market the elderberries once they start producing. Perhaps they’ll freeze the berries, or juice them to make a syrup or mead. They could also harvest the elderflowers instead, which are often used medicinally or to flavor cordials and liqueurs, like Saint Germain.

Processing and marketing represent another bottleneck for farmers selling a new product. Here, Ferla sees sharing of equipment and branding as one path forward.

Elderberry saplings waiting to be planted

“Then if one farm has a down year, the others can pick up the slack,” she explains. “Elderberry has the potential to be a cash crop. I know three other local growers and more who say they’d grow some if we figure out a market.”

“Big picture,” she continues, “for farmers to adapt together as a community we need more collaboration than we have currently. It takes time to build relationships and trust before that emerges, and farmers are busy, but organizations like CISA are in a good position to foster dialogue.”

Ultimately, Ferla’s vision is both radical and shockingly simple.

“It’s not about ‘eat these 5 plants to solve the climate crisis,’” she offers. “It’s about reorienting towards eating what makes sense here, in this place, in this time. I think if we ate a little more amaranth and dandelion and a little less lettuce, we’d be healthier, and it would be a lot easier on farmers and our land and water supply.”

It might seem daunting. But as Ferla reminds us, “this experiment – growing and eating plants that are new to us – can also be playful. It’s fun. It’s certainly delicious.”

Jacob Nelson is Communications Coordinator for CISA. As a frontline supporter of local food and farms in western Massachusetts, CISA helps farmers get the help and funding they need to thrive. Learn more at buylocalfood.org.

By Jacob Nelson

FOR THE GAZETTE

Scientists can give us a 30,000-foot view of how climate change is now impacting our planet. Bob Vollinger can tell you how that translates to daily life at Vollinger Farm in Florence. Some of the repercussions are unexpected.

“I’ve never seen it so dry,” he said last week, before the recent rain. “Right now, I’m having a hard time even keeping my cows inside the electric fence. There’s not enough moisture in the soil for the grounding rod to work properly, so they push right through.”

Vollinger Farm is built around grass and cows. Vollinger cuts and sells hay, mostly to other local animal farms, and raise their own beef cattle. He also grows winter squash and fall flowers for sale at a farm stand at 460 North Farms Road.

Any farm, unless it’s indoors, is beholden to seasonal weather patterns, which are in turn controlled by long-term climate trends. This is especially true for places like Vollinger Farm, where everything relies on grass growing well, and little can be corrected when the weather doesn’t cooperate. The cost of irrigating or draining that much pasture is a nonstarter.

So, with too much rain last year and too little now, Vollinger’s hay harvest has struggled. In New England, most farmers get two or three harvests, or “cuttings,’ out of a healthy field. This year Vollinger’s first cutting went well, then production plummeted.

“Normally for second cut, you should get at least 50 bales per acre,” he says. “This year on one of my fields we got 11 bales an acre. One farmer I know is washing his equipment and putting it away for the winter now, because there’s nothing worth cutting in his fields.”

Rising costs of fuel and labor are also eating into his earnings, and so are his cows – literally. Grazing pastures are so parched he’s already feeding them hay intended for sale.

“Meanwhile, I’m noticing the calves aren’t growing as quickly as they should,” he says. “I think it’s because the quality of grass isn’t there, along with there not being enough.”

For Vollinger, this year’s drought is one chapter in a larger story of change.

“We’ve always had variability,” he says, “but over the last 8-10 years it’s been getting more extreme between drought or too much water. You never know what to expect. That’s what we’re experiencing with climate change.”

Vollinger Farm is just one of thousands pasture-based farms across the country affected by climate change cranking up the dial on weather variability. When these farms can’t rely on consistent conditions, their income and viability are threatened, as is the fate of the land they steward.

In New England, pastureland used for grazing or haying covers about 450,000 acres, according to Food Solutions New England. That’s 8 times the footprint of the city of Boston, or 26,000 Gillette Stadiums if you prefer.

Says Vollinger, “if farms weren’t here, we would grow less food, development would move in, and we wouldn’t have this quiet space and natural habitat to enjoy. I don’t know if people get that.”

When stewarded well by thriving farms, this land feeds millions of New Englanders. It accounts for much of the region’s open space, which benefits everyone through increased habitat diversity, water quality, and other ecosystem services. For many, pastureland is also central to the region’s aesthetic and rural character – the reason living here feels the way it does.

How are farms adapting to the added pressures of climate change to keep their pastureland open and productive? In his case, Vollinger is diversifying his business while investing in the health of his land to build resilience.

“All this variability is partly why I started into beef eight years ago,” he says. “The market for hay wasn’t good, I had the pastureland already, and I thought maybe that was a way to branch out.”

Initially he raised cows to sell to other farms. Now he’s starting to sell his own beef directly to customers, with hopes of expanding his farm stand to carry that and products from other nearby farms.

Before the beef cattle arrived, some pastures had been grazed years ago when the farm kept a dairy herd, but many were choked with invasive species that cows don’t eat, like oriental bittersweet and multiflora rose.

“I reached out to NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service) and got funding and guidance through EQIP (their Environmental Quality Incentives Program) to clear that and open up a lot more grazing space,” he continues.

After reclaiming those pastures, Vollinger has decided to graze his cows rotationally through smaller areas rather than letting them browse freely. Depending on how it’s managed, this type of grazing can promote better soil health, healthier and more diverse forage, and could even help sequester more carbon in the soil.

“Eventually we’ll have 12-15 paddocks, and we’ll move the cows every 2 weeks,” he says. “I’ve noticed a real difference since we started doing it. The cows eat the pastures down more evenly and the grass grows back better.”

Vollinger has also tapped back into an old water source – not enough to water a hayfield, but enough for his cows to drink.

“There used to be an old uphill spring house that brought water down to the cows and house, but over time most of the pipes broke and we abandoned it,” he says. “Then during another drought a few years ago, I re-dug a catch basin up at the spring and ran some new pipe.”

Together with NRCS he’s designed a system that will collect and distribute water to each grazing paddock, but nothing is built yet.

Farmland preservation programs are another tool many farmers use to keep their business afloat and land in farming. Often administered by state or federal government, these programs compensate farmers financially for restricting development and committing their land to agricultural use, either momentarily or in perpetuity. Each has their pros and cons.

Currently, Vollinger has enrolled 80 of his 240 acres in the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture’s Farm Viability Enhancement Program. “I agreed to a development lock-out for five years, and in return got money I could use to buy a new haybale wrapper and mower,” he explains.

He’s also working with Kestrel Land Trust, the City of Northampton, and NRCS’s Agricultural Conservation Easement Program to permanently preserve another 150 acres for agricultural use.

“Farmers get a bigger chunk of money for that,” says Vollinger, “but once you enroll your land, that’s it.” There’s no going back, and no more preservation revenue available.

The driving force behind all these changes is Vollinger’s hard work and ingenuity. He’s farmed his whole life, and for several years also worked fulltime at Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School.

Alongside family and community support, governmental programs that advise and compensate farmers for stewarding resources have also been crucial.

The NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program, designed to guide and pay farmers to maximize the public environmental benefits their farms provide, has funded many of Vollinger’s projects from the initial design through installation, including the cost of labor. He does have to invest his own money up front, but NRCS reimburses.

Funding for NRCS conservation programs is usually controlled by the Farm Bill, federal legislation that’s updated every five years. However, the recent Inflation Reduction Act also funded a $20 billion investment in these programs between 2023-2026, amounting to a significant yearly increase.

While that investment is good for local farmers, it’s worth noting that most NRCS funding is directed towards states where agriculture has more economic and political sway. For example, between 1998 and 2015, Massachusetts farmers earned $36 million in EQIP support, while farmers in Iowa received $235 million. California farmers got $602 million.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts farmers contend with rising labor costs and the 5^th highest cost of farm real estate per acre in the country, per the US Department of Agriculture. Extreme weather and inflation only erode their slim profit margins further.

“I can’t emphasize this enough,” says Vollinger. “If it wasn’t for some of the funding programs we have, I’d never have been able to clear out all these invasive species, put fences back up, and start raising grass-fed beef along with the hay, squash, and flowers we’re doing here today. We’d never be able to afford invest in our land for the future like this.”

Jacob Nelson is Communications Coordinator for CISA. As a frontline supporter of local food and farms in western Massachusetts, CISA helps farmers get the help and funding they need to thrive.

By Stephen Taranto, Climate Program Coordinator

What, more email? Another blog? Wait! This blog is a specially-curated collection of practical technical service information that features events, news, opportunities, and research for western Massachusetts farms and farmers. We plan to pack each quarterly blog with what you–the farmer–needs to know about climate change in Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties. Together, we can learn and share about climate and farming in our community. 

As the climate crisis intensifies, CISA stands beside  farmers who are adapting all parts of their businesses, from production to post-harvest processing and distribution in response. This bulletin is one way for CISA to help farmers face the unique challenges a warming planet brings to our local food system.

The Climate Change & Farming Bulletin will feature a monthly blog, written by guest farmers, CISA staff and other members of the food system resilience community. We’ll also include details on upcoming events, case studies of adaptation practices in action, relevant new research, and information on sources of funding for adaptation on farms and in other links of the food supply chain. We want to help you grow high quality food using best practices that are not only adapted to the changing climate of today but the uncertain climate of tomorrow.

CISA is here and ready to help you adapt to the changes. Whether you need help writing a grant or finding a consultant, mentor or other source of guidance to help you with your projects, you can count on us for support. If we can’t provide you with what you need, we’ll do everything we can to point you in the right direction. 

This month’s bulletin features the launch of CISA’s year-round Emergency Farm Fund, making small, interest-free loans available to farms experiencing financial and equipment losses due to extreme weather; information and events on this year’s Climate & Farming Week, September 19-23; links to on-line adaptation resources and several grants and even a quick poll at the end. We hope you will have a look and find something useful. 

Suggestions and contributions are welcome, please email them to our Climate Program Coordinator, Stephen Taranto, at stephen@buylocalfood.org. And remember, we are in this together and CISA is here to help you and your farm business thrive.