Yolo Carbon Farm Partnership to host free two-part series about carbon farm planning

The Yolo Carbon Farm Partnership is hosting a two-part Carbon Farming workshop series to showcase on-farm strategies to improve soil health and increase the amount of carbon stored in plants and soil.

The Yolo Carbon Farm Partnership is a collaboration between the Carbon Cycle Institute, the Center for Land-Based Learning, the Yolo Land Trust and the Yolo County Resource Conservation District.

The two-part series kicks off with an online webinar on Feb. 22, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The introductory webinar will feature an overview of carbon farm planning including introducing the typical components and associated tools. Funding sources for implementing carbon-beneficial practices will be highlighted, and partners will be able to discuss the logistics of working on these plans and implementation.

The webinar is followed by an in-person field day on March 7 at the Center for Land-Based Learning's Maples Farm in Woodland, located at 40162 Best Ranch Road. The in-person field day will dig deeper into the planning and practice of carbon farming featuring practices implemented at the Maples Farm. Many carbon farm practices are practices that farmers are already doing like cover cropping, adding compost and planting hedgerows.

For decades, Yolo County has been a leader in agricultural land conservation. Carbon farming is the use of specific on-farm practices that take carbon emissions from the air and store it in soils and plant material. Adding carbon to soils helps improve soil health and a soil's capacity to hold water while reducing carbon emissions in agriculture.

Continuing Education Credits are available for the online introductory webinar: 1.5 hours of CCA Sustainability CEUs and 0.5 hours of CDFA INMP CEUs. CEUs are pending for the in-person field day. This series is funded by a grant from the Yolo County Office of Sustainability.

To register for the webinar, visit bit.ly/carbonfarmwebinar. For questions, contact Conor Higgins, Yolo County RCD Project Manager, at higgins@yolorcd.org or call (530) 661-1688 x 4.

ALLI PERMANN — COURTESY Hedgerows along farm field edges are one of the carbon farm practices highlighted in the two-part Carbon Farm Planning series. Hedgerows of California native plants are living fences and conservation buffers that sequester carbon while improving soil health, providing erosion control, and providing habitat for beneficial insects and pollinators.