Healthy Soil Grows a Resilient Food System
Beneath our feet lies one of the planet's most significant carbon sinks: soil. Yet soil's importance doesn't end with carbon storage. Thriving soils, rich in organic matter, foster a bustling ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, insects, and other microorganisms. These tiny communities form the backbone of a healthy soil ecosystem, crucial for sustaining plants and a more climate-resilient environment.
Here at Wolfe’s Neck Center, we practice regenerative agriculture because farming practices like tilling or applying chemical fertilizers can damage soil health and release carbon back into the atmosphere.
We keep the soil covered all year, maximize crop diversity, and minimize tillage in our vegetable operations. These holistic farming principles and practices stem from ancestral land management practices stewarded by indigenous groups and many decades of agricultural research and labor.
These soil health-building practices, especially when implemented across many farms in a landscape, not only help individual farms improve their own productivity and stability to weather variability, but can also improve regional watersheds, increase biodiversity, and strengthen our food system’s resilience to climate change.
Our work at Wolfe’s Neck Center
At Wolfe’s Neck Center we train the next generation of farmers to cultivate land through sustainable regenerative agricultural practices. Our mission aims to produce nutritious food for the community while keeping the soil and environment healthy. When in season, you can taste the fruits of our labor at our Farm Store.
Through collaborative national partnerships, we are supporting greater adoption of regenerative and soil health-building practices on farms throughout the country. Our Climate-Smart Agriculture project includes providing direct support to farmers implementing new practices, monitoring the ecosystem benefits of these changes on farms, and developing market access to help sustain farmers and small businesses across the food system.
In keeping with our focus on promoting soil health and environmental protection, Wolfe’s Neck Center’s farmer production systems are certified organic by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association Certification Services (MCS).
Tracking the Impact of our Management with PASA
WNC is a participant in a farmer-led study conducted by collaborators in Pennsylvania (Pasa Sustainable Ag), and we track our management conduct through yearly soil health testing.
Over time, we can see the impact of our management on soil structure, water infiltration, the biological activity of the soil, and soil organic carbon storage.
