Carbon Farming Course, The Farm, Tennessee, USA, August and September 2009

Leaders in the Carbon Farming Movement came together to deliver an amazing 23 day curriculum to a diverse group of students.  The course was held at the historic Eco-village called The Farm in Tennessee, U.S.A., which made a perfect backdrop for these regenerative agriculture and cultural practices.  The course had the following components:

Holistic Management with Kirk Gadzia

Keyline Design with Darren Daugherty

Rainwater Harvesting & Earthworks with Brad Lancaster

Food Forestry with Eric Toesenmeir

Soil Food Web with Dr. Elaine Ingham

Relocalization with Joel Salatin

The course itself highlighted the many powerful processes and technology out there to accomplish soil restoration, water infiltration, and microbiology proliferation.  These all of course leads to healthier ecosystems which capture and store carbon.  As Darren put it “I haven’t found one bad thing about building topsoil” which Abe Collins calculated having 19 ecosystem functions.

This materials and methods will be further reviewed and studied and consequently will be incorporated in TreeYo’s future classes and workshops.  Overall it was a life changing and paradigm shifting experience that I will promote passionately with others.  Whether or not Co2 is causing Global Warming, we can always build top soil, harvest more water and build soil life complexity and diversity.  Finally the network definitely built at the course and will lead to more courses and projects.  The following blogs will be a more detailed review of each section of the Carbon Farming Course.