These small Black-owned farms are growing crops with the climate in mind

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A number of small Black-owned farms in the Gulf South are growing crops with the climate in mind. Hilery Gobert is among them. He owns a 65-acre farm in Iowa, La., that he started farming in 2020. He has been trying to improve the soil since then. To do that, he rotates crops and uses cover crops to keep nutrients in the ground. The land now supports a variety of crops, including okra, figs, Asian eggplants and watermelons.

Gobert also grows rice at Driftwood Farm. Rice is usually grown by flooding the fields with water, producing methane, a potent planet-warming gas. So Gobert grows his rice using drip irrigation to get water directly to the roots.

"In our attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we're looking at ways of growing rice as an alternative to the continuous flooding of the fields, as we've done for hundreds of years here in Louisiana," Gobert says.

Using less water to grow rice is an example of what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls climate-smart agriculture. Cover crops (like red clover and cereal rye), no-till farming and crop rotation are all considered good practices for the climate and for farming. The idea is that farmers can reduce pollution that contributes to human-caused climate change while producing enough food to make a living.

The science isn't clear on what impacts climate-smart agriculture has on the climate. Still, it does have benefits for farmers and communities, says Paul West, a senior scientist who researches ecosystems and agriculture at Project Drawdown.

"I think a lot of climate-smart farming practices are very good in terms of the health of the soil and long-term productivity for a farmer," West says.

Gobert comes from generations of farmers who believed the land could provide everything the family needed to survive. He says his father left him with valuable advice, which Gobert carries with him to this day.

"One of his statements to me that I'll never forget as a child is that all of these inputs that we're bringing into our farm is great, and we're able to make money off of it, but one day we're going to pay for not taking care of the land," Gobert says.

For now, he wants to leave the farm better off than he found it for the next generation of farmers in his family.

Working with small-farm owners

In 2023, the Biden administration announced that $20 billion would go toward climate-smart agriculture over the next five years. Some farmers are tapping into the federal money to help implement these ideas. Other farmers are learning how to do climate-smart agriculture through Black land-grant universities and colleges.

John Coleman manages the Alcorn State University demonstration farm in Mound Bayou, in the Mississippi Delta. In mid-June, he showed a group of small-farm owners and others around, pointing out crops such as the purple hull peas the farm grows. He also showed the practices used on the farm, like limited irrigation and growing cover crops.

"That's to help protect our soil that we're losing. You can see global warming and things like that, so we are trying to protect the earth," Coleman says.

The Agriculture Department is partnering with historically Black colleges and universities, like Alcorn, and other entities through Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. The goal is to work with small-scale and underserved farmers on projects that help farmers, ranchers and private forest landowners address climate change.

Daniel Collins, a professor of plant pathology at Alcorn, says it's not a new idea to work with Black land-grant universities, which are also known as 1890s.

"The 1890s system has a long history of working with small farmers, beginning from George Washington Carver, Booker Whatley, just to name a few," Collins says.

Carver and Whatley were big proponents of environmental farming practices. Carver practiced crop rotation by using peanuts and other crops to reintroduce nutrients and nitrogen into the soil. Whatley helped develop a community-supported agriculture model to help small Black-owned farms struggling with limited resources.

Now, Alcorn State University and other groups are adding to that long history. Through Agriculture Department funding, they are enrolling farmers in a project to measure how much carbon dioxide soil stores when they use climate-smart practices. That study will take five years to complete, but researchers hope that with the help of Black farmers, they'll learn whether climate-smart agriculture does indeed reduce emissions.

The role of farming cooperatively

Through funding and research, climate-smart agriculture is catching on in the Gulf South. Farmers like Chris Muse are helping others learn how to do this. He started Muse 3 Farm with his brothers in Greensburg, La., in 2015. Now, they help other Black farmers with the land on their small farms.

"One of the things we've been working with the other local farmers to do is soil health," Muse says. "How do you improve upon your soil health without having a lot of additives like synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides."

On past farm tours, Muse and his brothers would ask these same farmers whether they had Agriculture Department contracts for conservation or environmental practices. No one would raise their hand. Muse says that this response was understandable given that, historically, Black farmers have been wary of the government. The federal class action lawsuit called the Pigford v. Glickman case showed years of loan discrimination against Black farmers.

Farming cooperatives have historically acted as mediators for Black farmers who felt they were treated unfairly, Muse explains. Now that funding for climate-smart agriculture is available, those same groups are working to ensure the money to help do climate-smart agriculture makes it into the hands of small-scale, underserved farmers. It's a step toward making sure those historical injustices that Black owners of small farms faced aren't repeated.

"What I tell my small Black farmers is that the funding is there now," Muse says. "What are you going to do? You going to get your share of the funding, or are you going to let the next farmer get your share?"

It's not only about justice. Climate-smart agriculture is also about the impact that climate change is already having on farmers, Muse says. Last year, Louisiana experienced a drought. Muse worries about how to protect the land.

"We have to do some sustainability practices. If not, you know, we're doomed," Muse says.

He thinks climate-smart agriculture can help shift that tide and make it so that farmers can protect their land for future generations.