Our Environmental footprint

What sustainable and environmentally conscious farming looks like to us.

Introduction

When we founded The Grey Barn in 2009, we wanted to produce delicious, traditional foods that didn’t weigh on our conscience and wouldn’t have to weigh on yours. For years, we’d been inspired by books like The Omnivores’ Dilemma and The Family Cow, by farmers like Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin, all of which knew the power of local, organic eating as a force against climate change. Part of our mission since day one has been a continued dedication to organic, regenerative agriculture and sustainable farming practices. We’re committed to being open about our environmental impact not just with words and statements, but with numbers, graphs and research.

After twelve years, we decided it was time to take a survey of ourselves. Are we making true the promises we set for ourselves, our soil, and our community? For the past year, we’ve been working with a third party firm to examine our carbon footprint and management practices. Our continued emphasis on regenerative multi-species pasture rotation (MSPR) has allowed us to convert our nearly 240 acres of local farmland here on Martha’s Vineyard into a carbon reservoir whose annual growth in metric tonnes of sequestered CO2-equivalent, or CO2e, offsets or nearly offsets all of the farm’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, our farm is carbon-neutral. 

But our commitment to environmental stewardship doesn’t end with carbon neutrality. Every farm department, from livestock to the bakery, continues to work hand-in-hand to reduce the farm’s overall environmental impact. We continue to be committed to solar energy, cover-cropping, composting, and reducing food miles. This page details five core practices that we use to manage our carbon footprint and promote the health of the farm ecosystem. Our environmental impact is an evolving story, and one we hope you’ll join us for. 

Organic certification

198 acres converted to Certified Organic pasture since 2009, with 55 more acres pending certification.

The Grey Barn is a USDA Certified Organic producer. That means we don’t use any synthetic fertilizers, GMOs, growth hormones, herbicides, or pesticides. In other words, being certified organic ensures that we don’t take any shortcuts with our food and our animals. 

Conventional herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers carry countless environmental hazards: They seriously harm native grassland ecosystems and promote nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, which can lead to eutrophication in local waterways. On a larger scale, the creation of agricultural chemicals is both dangerous and environmentally noxious: Fertilizer is made from natural gas. Our use of manure, rotational grazing, hand-weeding, and only certified organic pest deterrents provides our land with a sustainable and environmentally conscious model.

Regenerative agriculture

667.21 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) sequestered, or pulled from the atmosphere, between the summer of 2018 and the summer of 2020. That’s about 330 tonnes per year – the equivalent of 44 households. 

When we bought the farm in 2009, we began the three-year transition towards organic certification. Years of conventional fertilizer use and continuous cropping had prevented the farm’s original 101 acres from building up the soil organic matter – or stored carbon – that’s present in most grassland ecosystems. In our transition to organic practice, we began an ongoing commitment to enriching our soils and using the farm’s pastures as a major carbon sink to offset livestock emissions. 

Animals are at the core of how we’ve nearly tripled our soil organic matter (SOM). When our dairy animals are on pasture in the spring and summer, their manure and food scraps naturally decompose into the soil, and our bedded pack barn lets us turn the cows’ winter leavings into summertime compost. Not a drop of manure goes to waste. 

We avoid tilling the majority of our pastures and hayfields, building SOM and key soil microbe structures with every season. We also use an integrated system of multi-species pasture rotation (MSPR) that keeps the chickens and sheep in lock-step rotation with the cows. Not only does this maximize our land use, but it’s been shown to increase soil microbial activity and drop greenhouse gas emissions by nearly two thirds, compared to traditional commodity production systems.

Garden systems: Compost & single till

Around 130 cubic yards of our own compost used annually. 

One-sixth the standard amount of machine use for a commercial garden – saving 500 hours of machine time, and hundreds of gallons of fuel, every year. 

Our five-acre commercial garden is designed to minimize machine use and engage directly with our livestock program. Each year we incorporate nearly 130 cubic yards of our own organic compost into our garden beds, about a third of the total volume produced annually by our dairy animals. 

By tilling only once per season, we reduce our reliance on machines to allow natural mycorrhizal networks to thrive in the soil: These fungal colonies make our job easier by supplying young crops with much-needed nutrients as soon as they germinate. We also emphasize hand-weeding and sizing up our summer staff, we save hundreds of hours of machine time while offering full-time living wages. 

Energy footprint and net-zero carbon emissions

120 kWH renewable energy produced by our own solar panels each year. 

Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions stemming from our use of regenerative agriculture to sequester soil carbon. 

Over the past year, we’ve looked at how energy, transportation, land use, and livestock contribute to our greenhouse gas emissions. About 55% of our emissions come from livestock, (a number that’s shrinking), and 30% comes from energy use (a number that’s growing). Our early investment in solar power means that livestock and garden program draws exclusively from renewable energy, while the bakery, creamery, and farmstand all depend on conventional energy sources. 

That said, the farm remains carbon neutral: The rising soil organic matter levels in our pastures and forages, coupled with our use of pioneering silvopasture (woodland pasture), continues to offset all or nearly all of the farm’s net emissions in CO2 equivalent every year. 

Holistic management

In 2020, $5,279 raised for the New England Farmers of Color Land Trust.

Approximately 2,000 loaves of bread donated to the Island Food Pantry.

The Grey Barn is committed to holistic management – a theory of agricultural practice that defines responsible farming as balancing social, financial, and environmental obligations. To that end, we’re dedicated to providing our year-round employees with a living wage and benefits; to providing our Island community with help in the face of food insecurity; and to fighting social injustices within our industry. Environmental responsibility is only one arm of the farm as a force for change. You can see more here.

In closing

All of us here strive to try the new and ditch the old, to continually make our farm a more responsible and sustainable operation. We wish you the best, and look forward to seeing you soon!

Selected References

Berg, M., & Meehan, M. (2017, October). Environmental implications of excess fertilizer and manure on water quality [Fact sheet]. North Dakota State University. Retrieved July 28, 2021, from https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/publications/environment-natural-resources/environmental-implications-of-excess-fertilizer-and-manure-on-water-quality

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2020, February 11). Haber-Bosch process. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Haber-Bosch-process

Champaign County Forest Preserve District. (n.d.). CO2 equivalent household output [Fact sheet]. Champaign County Forest Preserve District. Retrieved September 1, 2021, from https://www.ccfpd.org/Portals/0/Assets/PDF/Facts_Chart.pdf

Gewin, V. (2021, January 6). A new study on regenerative grazing complicates climate optimism. Civil Eats. Retrieved July 18, 2021, from https://civileats.com/2021/01/06/a-new-study-on-regenerative-grazing-complicates-climate-optimism/

Gosling, P., Hodge, A., Goodlass, G., & Bending, G. D. (2006). Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and organic farming. Agricultural Ecosystems & Environment, 113, 17-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2005.09.009

Harvard Forest. (2016, September 8). Grazing and conservation: A working landscape seminar [Lecture notes]. Harvard Forest. Retrieved July 18, 2021, from https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Harvard%20Forest_FallSymposium2016--talk%20summaries.pdf

OECD. (2016, April). Agriculture and climate change: Towards sustainable, productive and climate-friendly agricultural systems. OECD. Retrieved July 26, 2021, from https://www.oecd.org/agriculture/ministerial/background/notes/4_background_note.pdf

Rowntree, J. E., Stanley, P. L., Maciel, I. C. F., Thorbecke, M., Rosenzweig, S. T., Hancock, D. W., Guzman, A., & Raven, M. R. (2020). Ecosystem impacts and productive capacity of a multi-species pastured livestock system. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 4, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.544984