Good Stuff: Regenerative Agriculture
Last summer our very own Braxton Tanner received a grant through the Future Farmers Program provided by Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) to study and work at Backbone Food Farm in Oakland, Maryland and was able to take a month-long summer sabbatical from his work at KMDG to pursue some of his interests.
Braxton sees that one of the most critical interventions on the front lines of battling climate change and the degradation of planetary biodiversity is through restorative agriculture and ecological land management practices. However, these fields are not prevalent in the practice of landscape architecture and there is an opportunity to marry the critical thinking and design innovation of landscape architecture with the science and ancient wisdom of holistic land management practices.
Through this month-long opportunity, Braxton gained experience in practical methods of organic and restorative farming while conducting his own studies of the surrounding ecological niches, species diversity of managed fields and meadows, and the comparison of soil biomes created by various methods of land management. Alongside this invaluable and enriching experience, he also achieved a certificate of Training in Applied Agroecology from the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA).
Although we do not specialize in agriculture, Braxton was able to bring rich knowledge of soils, meadows, and land management operations to direct applications within our work. One project where he is applying what he learned is with Connecticut College. Braxton has been able to bring nuanced knowledge of the relationship of soils to different plant communities, looking to provide greater long term success to meadows, naturalized plantings, and stormwater management throughout the campus.