Mission
Soma’s mission is to advance farming practices that are prosperous and ecologically restorative.
Imagine if…
The world’s massive agricultural fields are also diverse ecosystems…
Whose organic soil becomes richer with each passing year…
And produce higher-quality, more nutritious, and delicious food…
And require little-to-no pest management…
Because these farmlands…
Are permanent homes for various bugs, birds, plants, and other wildlife 💞
Soma seeks to advocate for, and contribute to, the advancement of farming practices which increase harmony with wildlife. Not only is this mission beautiful, and deeply meaningful to me, I believe it can be an effective heuristic for high-yield, high-nutrition agriculture. I intend to share what I learn along my journey, and hope you’ll share with me too!
Small-Scale & Large-Scale
Locally sourced food is often fresher, healthier, and tastier. It’s also usually better for the environment too! Many small-scale farmers already use highly organic, wildlife-friendly farming methods. However there’s still plenty of room for improvement. External amendments are often continuously imported, “flipped” or “turned” beds are often bare for significant fractions of the year, and wildlife is not usually integrated, diverse, nor balanced…so pests degrade our yields.
Locally-sourced food is marvelous, for us and the environment. However producing massive amounts of… pretty much anything… is often more cost-efficient than producing small quantities of the same thing. Since people like lower prices (myself included), I believe large-scale farms will continue to produce most of humanity’s sustenance for the foreseeable future.
Even though Soma may never be a large-scale farm, Soma is researching regenerative agriculture across scales. Why?… Because many scientists predict that the world will run out of usable top soil in about 60 years.
A Lingering Issue
Current state-of-the-art regenerative practices are life-saving for many species and ecosystems due to carbon sequestration and minimized soil-disturbance. However for me, there’s still a lingering issue… Wildlife is far from flourishing in many regenerative farms.
A handful of farmers around the world (examples: Masanobu Fukuoka, “Wild Farming”) have shown that regenerative can mean more than living soils. They’ve shown regenerative can also mean flourishing ecosystems. More and more farmers are figuring out how to have a balanced diversity of above-ground wildlife that actually protects them from crop-loss.
If you are interested in regenerative agriculture, please check out the current best practices! They are successful and outstanding wins compared to “conventional” tillage & fertilizer farming. However for Soma, the conversation doesn’t stop there. Soma aims to help advance regenerative practices which result in more harmony with nature, and perhaps more human prosperity as well.
A Proposed Solution
When growing food in permanent and diverse ecosystems, we provide above-ground organisms with homes and food. If we include perennial plants on our farms, they build deeper roots, sequester more carbon, access more moisture and nutrients, and improve soil fertility year after year. The result: a healthier ecosystem and healthier soil. Win-win! Almost…
Competition between plants has resulted in the vast majority of farmers growing food in homogenous fields that are hardly homes for wildlife. Growing food in an ecosystem introduces challenges. However, there are solutions which work well on small farms. Chop and drop is a technique promoted by Syntropic Agroforestry as a way for (a) managing competition and (b) accelerating fertility by accelerating succession.
My hope is for Soma Gardens to not only feed some people in my community with vitally organic produce, but to be a succinct demonstration of the power and profitability of agroforestry for growing a wide variety of veggies, fruits, nuts, and herbs.
Interested? Please feel free to contact me with your feedback, ideas, questions, or whatever else!