S8 Ep8: How Soil Stewardship Provides Solid Solutions for Climate Change and Food Security with Sarah Wentzel Fisher
“Soil health can be complicated but it's also super simple and something that everybody can participate in.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
Soil health is the foundation of our food systems and ecosystems. Yet many are disconnected from the living soil that sustains us. The soil is a complex web of microbial and ecological activity below our feet, working constantly to cycle nutrients, sequester carbon, and support plant life above and below ground. When soil health declines, it impacts water quality, biodiversity, our ability to grow nutritious food, and ultimately all living beings.
In this episode, Justine interviews Sarah Wentzel Fisher about the transformative potential of getting more people involved in agriculture and stewarding soil health.
Sarah is the Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition and a regenerative farmer. Through her work with the Carbon Ranch Initiative, she aims to improve soil health on rangelands and educate farmers and ranchers on the importance of soil stewardship.
Listen in as Justine and Sarah discuss the importance of soil health for functioning ecosystems and its central role in mitigating climate change, the impact of research in providing practical solutions, ways to inspire conversation around soil health, and more.
Connect with Sarah:
Sarah has worked in food and agriculture planning for over a decade with a focus on supporting young and beginning farmers and ranchers. She was the editor of Edible Santa Fe from 2011 to 2017. From 2013 to 2015 she worked for the National Young Farmers Coalition as an organizer and is currently on the board of the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance and the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. She is a committed champion of the local food movement and of resilient and regenerative agriculture. In her free time, you can find her feeding pigs, turkeys, and cows, checking the compost pile, or possibly weeding a patch of beans at Polk’s Folly Farm where she lives.
Episode Highlights:
02:21 Creative Conveing and Food Systems
06:27 Soil Health and Its Impact on Ecosystems
10:40 The Importance of Understanding Soil Health
15:03 How Soil Health Impacts Climate
Tweets:
The secret to building healthier soil and communities is in the soil. Join @jreichman and Sarah Wentzel Fisher, the Executive Director of @quiviraagranch as they fill us in on the lively world beneath our feet. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season8 #regenerativeagriculture #carbonfarming #climatechange #foodsystems #soilconservation #soilstewardship #landmanagement
Inspirational Quotes:
06:14 “I am hopeful for changes that we can't anticipate. I feel like we're at a sea change moment in our food systems and our agriculture systems. It feels like collapse sometimes, but I also feel like those are the moments when you get big moments of redefinition.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
08:18 “Information about soil health on range systems is much more minuscule if you look at the body of literature and studies. But rangelands also represent this enormous opportunity for carbon capture, for healthy water systems.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
10:22 “Soil health is really at the center and the root of functioning ecosystems. It's at the center of everything.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
14:45 “If you apply compost or biochar in a small area, you can increase the seed bank there, you can reduce erosion there. And those are the impacts and while it may be small and very targeted that can be trying to create a ripple effect out on the landscape.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
16:38 “Soil health can be complicated but it's also super simple and something that everybody can participate in.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
16:44 “[Soil health principles] gives people an opportunity to create change for themselves in a simple, approachable way.” —Justine Reichman
17:40 “We have an opportunity to invite everybody into the conversation and the work of soil health. Soil health is our single best tool for mitigating climate change.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
18:01 “Soil health can be a change maker for the planet.” —Justine Reichman
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm Justine Reichman, your host. Today with me is Sarah Wentzel Fisher. I'm excited to talk to you, Sarah. Thanks so much for joining me.
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Thanks for having me, Justine.
Justine Reichman: So Sarah, normally when we come on, I like to give the person an opportunity to introduce themselves, talk a little bit about what they do, who they are. I'd love for you to just start with your name, your title and what you do.
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Thanks. I'm Sarah Wentzel Fisher, and I am the Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition, which is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Santa Fe. But that does work throughout the primarily Rocky Mountain states and the West. Other things about me, I am on video calling in today from a place called Polk's Folly Farm, which is in Santa Antonito, New Mexico. And another hat I wear is helping here at the farm. I have a very small flock of sheep that's sort of my own enterprise at the farm. But the primary work of the farm is as a regenerative hog farm, we have about 120 pigs, 25 goats and 100 chickens. We're actively producing compost feeding all those animals, primarily food waste, and really trying to tighten up our carbon cycle. So that's another thing that I do. And then I think another thing I like to do in terms of my introduction is that I am very involved in the Farmers Union, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union is the farmers union that I'm involved with. I'm on their board of directors. I represent the state of New Mexico with them.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much for sharing that. So given that vast amount of things that you do, given the vast amount of things that you do and the array of roles you play, what is your speciality and background?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: I feel like my superpower is connecting people to one another, and really recognising where one person or organization has a need, and connecting them with the people that meet that need. I'm definitely a connector. That's my superpower. And my background is extremely eclectic. I have lived in New Mexico since the mid 90's, and I came here to do undergraduate work. And at the time, a lot of folks, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to college, and I decided to study creative writing, which I really enjoyed. I dove into publishing a little bit, and got pretty passionate about that. Immediately after school, I got hired by the Gates, Family Foundation, Bill Gates, and it was a brand new foundation. I had a really interesting experience being able to work in rural America and public libraries to connect those libraries to the Internet. From there, I moved back to New Mexico because I just missed the community and missed this place. I came back and I thought, how can I really get people activated and feel like I'm making an impact in the world? I then dove into learning about studio art, production and filmmaking.
Justine Reichman: It's to connect your interest in making an impact in the world.
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: But what was really my interest. I saw creative practice as a way to convene people in conversations about places. And so all of my art projects were about doing that. And there was a moment where the light went on and I realized that I was less interested in a studio art practice, and was more interested in how a practice of art could be a vehicle to have some really important conversations that we need to be having as a collective. So I decided to go to graduate school, and I went to graduate school at UNM, University of New Mexico, to study Community and Regional Planning. And at the time, there was not a big focus, or conversation, or body of literature about our food systems. But that was intriguing to me. I was like, why isn't there this conversation? We talk about all these other critical infrastructures. We talk about transportation and housing, and water infrastructure. But there wasn't a lot of discussion at that time about our food systems. And so I decided to do some research into what was the economic viability of direct market farms in the Middle Rio Grande, which is where we are, and that led me to a whole array of different jobs including working for the National Young Farmers Coalition, working for regional rent land trust, working for a fairly large natural foods co-op in the area. But the theme in all of those activities was really how to connect people, and how to bring this idea of creative convening to these processes that really require people to be in relationship and dialogue with one another to come up with decisions that enable us to, how do we stewart land in a way that is thoughtful about both the ecology and the economy in terms of how it supports people, land and water?
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much. Let's continue this, and I appreciate you sharing all your background and your journey to get there. I know it was a little bit of a windy path. Nobody understands that better than me. I've done six different careers before I got here. Everything from finance to gaming, to now food the last few years. But underneath it all, food has always been my passion, so I get it. So my question for you is that your background led you to explore all these different things. And then you came, and you're doing this now. So I'm wondering, what are you hopeful for now that you've found your place where you want to be and create an impact? What are you hopeful for?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: I am really hopeful for changes that we can't anticipate. I feel like we're at a sea change moment in our food systems and agriculture systems, because they are at the precipice. It feels like collapse sometimes. But I also feel like those are the moments when you get bigger creative ideas, or people who are willing to lean and risk something, or big moments of redefinition.
Justine Reichman: So why are you doing this in particular?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: I think it's because I love food. I love being connected to land, and I love seeing other people connected to land. And I really enjoy creating opportunities for folks to create connections to land and to each other, and to have light bulbs go on when those connections happen about how bigger systems work.
Justine Reichman: So I know you mentioned within this organization that you spearheaded and co founded a program there. Can you talk a little bit about that program and the change you have to make by instituting that program?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Sure, absolutely. I did not found the Quivira Coalition, but I did help to found something called the Carbon Ranch Initiative, which is a program that's focused on soil health on range land.
Justine Reichman: What's rangeland?
“Information about soil health on range systems is much more minuscule if you look at the body of literature and studies. But rangelands also represent this enormous opportunity for carbon capture, for healthy water systems.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Rangeland are lands that are grasslands, that are grazed that are not really suitable for producing crops on them, and they're not forests. So maybe it was my second or third year with the organization, was approached by some folks doing work in California, there's a woman named Calla Rose Ostrander who was working with the Marin Carbon Project and some other carbon initiatives in California to really start to understand, how do we improve soil health on rangeland? What is soil health on rangeland? So a thing that maybe folks don't know is that by comparison to say cropping systems, information about soil health on Range Systems is much more miniscule. If you look at the body of literature and the studies, rangelands also represent this enormous opportunity for carbon capture for healthy water systems, those types of things. And so when Calla Rose showed up and said, hey, do you want to bring this work we're doing in California to New Mexico? I said, that seems pretty intriguing. Let's try it out.
Justine Reichman: And so when you brought it there, what were the initial impacts that you saw by instituting that?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: One of those moments where there's a lot going on, and I think that there's a very small piece that I can claim with this particular program. We started with a white paper that had a handful of concepts about things we could do in the state to get people thinking differently about their carbon cycle. At the same time, it was a moment when the UN had declared the International Year of Soils. So I think that that meant that there was a lot more attention being given to soil health, and there also was a lot of political will around creating healthy soils programs. So parallel to creation of this program in the state of New Mexico, there were folks who were working to pass a Healthy Soils Initiative where the 12 states in the union didn't have that. And those particular initiatives have now become pretty mainstream and normalized at the state level to create a pathway to get technical assistance and money essentially to farmers to help them think about soil health. So that's not necessarily the impact of the carbon ranch initiative. But I think that it was all at this moment when we were forming the program that has helped move some of these things forward.
Justine Reichman: So when you think about the farmers and you think about the individuals, what's the one thing you wish that they knew that was so important about soil health?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: That feels like a hard question to answer because it feels so simple, but it's like, soil health is really at the center and the root of functioning ecosystems. It is the pathway to having healthy water, having healthy plants, producing healthy food, and capturing carbon out of the atmosphere. It's kind of at the center of everything. I think that that's one thing that I wish, like a general population would really grab on to. I think that the second thing for farmers and ranchers is just that soil is totally alive, it is alive as the animals you're attending, or the plants you're attending. And I think that most farmers and ranchers are increasingly getting that. But the depth of the understanding around that I think it's always fantastic when we work with farmers and ranchers, and to see them just light up when they get more information about what that actually means.
“Soil health is really at the center and the root of functioning ecosystems. It's at the center of everything.” —Sarah Wentzel Fisher
Justine Reichman: Yeah, of course. Now, I'm imagining that you do a lot of research. You do a lot of research. In what ways does the research you're conducting impact our daily life?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Interestingly, we do a small amount of research. We try to think of this program, in particular, the connections between applications. So how are we doing research that is informed by the questions that farmers and ranchers are asking, that then is providing more information to farmers and ranchers are folks providing technical assistance. So there's a cycle there where it's like, what are the questions that farmers and ranchers have? How do we do research there? But I think that the research that we're doing is really informing us, one in particular, what are the things that are different or unique about how soil functions and really dry systems that have livestock on them? And then what are ways in which we can begin to think about really creating resilience in those soils through looking at places where we have carbon waste, and creating those or shifting that to be an asset? So a couple of things we do in the program is we teach about compost production, and we teach about biochar production?
Justine Reichman: Within this production, can you just break it down for us so that we better understand what it would look like for the person that is engaging in this program?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: So how does it work? Farmers and ranchers will come to us and we do something called soil health planning. So we work with them to really understand, what do you have to work with? What's your baseline? What do your soils look like? What does your production look like? Are you raising animals? Are you raising vegetables? Are you raising hay? Maybe a mix. And then from there, what are other things that you could learn that will help you hit what your soil goals are. And so we have workshops on large aerated static pile compost production, for example. Or we have an on ranch biochar kiln, which is a giant metal circle that you can bring out, and you can haul brush out of your forests and put it in there and produce something that is a useful organic soil amendment to help prepare an area of your range that maybe is lacking in carbon, or needs a little bit of a boost.
Justine Reichman: Is there one story from one individual that participated that you could share that might shed some light around the impact it's had for them.
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: This is very close to home, but I might just talk about the farm where I live and the impact that it has had here. So as I said, I live here, but I'm not a farmer here. And this farm actually produces compost from the hogs that we raise. We've put compost out probably at, I want to say several dozen ranches at this point. And the net results are actually very small. But I think what it's inspiring more than anything is a conversation and a network around, what is soil health? How are we improving it? How are we thinking about it, almost like acupuncture? So rather than thinking about improvement of hundreds of thousands of acres, because when you're talking about rangeland, most people in the southwest are managing in the tens to hundreds of thousands of acres. If you apply compost or biochar in a small area, you can increase the seed bank there, you can reduce erosion there. And I think that those are the impacts while it may be small and very targeted that can be trying to create a ripple effect out on the landscape.
Justine Reichman: So within everything that your organization is doing, what would you share as being the most revolutionary concept and program that you guys have put together?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: I think our work as a whole is a little bit revolutionary because I think that we are an organization that is really trying to think about whole systems and approach how we produce food, and how we live as a community on the land in a way that acknowledges that we can't just do a single thing and make those systems work more effectively. And that probably sounds a little funny. But yeah, I really think that our approach to thinking about things as holes rather than their parts is pretty revolutionary.
Justine Reichman: What would you say is the single most important thing for someone to do to take control of the health of their soil?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: I'll just say the soil health principles. So keeping your soils covered is one. And whether you've got a ten foot square in your urban backyard, or you have 10,000 acres of rangeland, keeping your soil covered is super important. Biodiversity is huge. And so different types of plants or different types of animals. Integration of animals is another soil principle. And whether that's pollinators or having grazing animals, and again, thinking about scale and a living route is the last one. So soil health can be really complicated, and it's also super simple. And something that everybody can participate in.
Justine Reichman: That gives people an opportunity to create change for themselves in a simple, approachable way.
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Absolutely.
Justine Reichman: So as we wrap up, are there any hard hitting statistics that you could share?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Give some statistics about agriculture, because I think that these are really important when we think about soil health stewardship. Today, the average age of a farmer or rancher is 60 years old or older. 100 years ago, more than 30% of our population, their primary profession was farming. And today, less than 1% of our population is engaged in agriculture as their primary profession, which means that 1 in 100 people feed us. And 1 in 100 people, their main focus is that idea of soil health. And that's the piece that I really think is that opportunity for really revolutionary change to happen. To me, it says that we have an opportunity to invite everybody into the conversation and the work of soil health. And I think the last thing I'll say is soil health is our single best tool for mitigating climate change.
Justine Reichman: If we learned anything from this is that soil health can be a changemaker for the planet.
“[Soil health principles] gives people an opportunity to create change for themselves in a simple, approachable way.” —Justine Reichman
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Exactly. Absolutely. It's like the best vehicle for getting carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground is plants.
Justine Reichman: Okay, so people are to and go back to those ideas that you gave them to create soil health, because if we asked, we've got a greater chance at keeping the health of our planet and maintaining that we don't have somewhere so it's not such. It's not all that negative of climate change, and we can try to work towards creating a healthier planet for ourselves, our families and our children. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. If people want to learn more about how to create soil health or what your organization does, what's the best way for them to learn about that?
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: You can find us online at quiviracoalition.org, and I'm assuming that that will be in the show notes if you need to know how it's spelt. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook with that handle as well. So look us up, and be in touch.
Justine Reichman: Thanks so much, Sarah, for joining me. I really appreciate your time.
Sarah Wentzel Fisher: Thanks for having me, Justine. It's nice chatting with you.
