North Coast Brewing Company’s partner farm, Fortunate Farm, has been recognized by American Farmland Trust as a Featured Farm Steward for 2017. American Farmland Trust created Profiles in Stewardship to showcase farmers who have made outstanding strides toward sustainability on their farms.
Fortunate Farm is the first vegetable farm in Mendocino County to make a formal carbon farming plan, and is committed to collaborating with leaders of the regenerative agriculture community and helping to create a model for the farms that will follow. What began as a small-scale idea for using the waste stream of North Coast Brewing Company to build soil, conserve water, and sequester carbon, is rapidly becoming the promise of a truly scalable and adaptable set of principles that can be modified to fit the particulars of small farms and businesses everywhere.
According to the American Farmland Trust website, “This portfolio of profiles compiled by American Farmland Trust showcases outstanding real-world examples of environmental stewardship by California specialty crop farmers. These are stories of farmers and families that have undertaken significant efforts to increase on-farm conservation practices. In a world where consumers increasingly care about how and where their food is produced, better stewardship practices are key to enhancing the California agricultural brand. California farmers must be ready to rise to the challenge. We believe these stories will inform and inspire other specialty crop growers to pursue environmental quality as an integral and prominent feature of their operations.”
Gowan Batist, pictured above, is Fortunate Farm’s Farm Manager and North Coast Brewing Company’s Sustainability Manager. She is a board member of CAFF (Community Alliance with Family Farmers) and sits on their Climate Smart Farming Advisory Committee. For more information about American Farmland Trust and the Featured Farm Steward recognition, visit their website. For more information about Fortunate Farm, visit www.fortunatefarm.com.
