Welcome to Soil to Soil, a podcast connecting the dots in the lifecycle of clothing and material culture, brought to you by Fibershed. Each episode offers a look at how, and why, our community is working to cultivate fiber and dye systems that build soil & protect the health of our biosphere.
Today’s conversation focuses on how our material culture — what we wear, the products we use — connect to the carbon cycle itself.
Jim Jensen joins us to explore the question: how can fiber systems sequester carbon? A 6th generation rancher at Jensen Ranch & Tomales Sheep Company in Marin County, California, Jim shares how agricultural production actually follows the carbon cycle, if you look closely enough, and discusses some of the practices and tools he is using to enhance the flow of carbon into the soil. As you’ll hear, Jensen Ranch wool is now available in several home goods, combined with wool from Stemple Creek Ranch, and that product relationship is directly supporting the ranches in sequestering over 470 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year.
And it’s not just about carbon: Jim describes the co-benefits he experiences, like capturing and storing more water, creating resilience and adaptation to drought, and challenges faced by land managers. Jim is also the Stewardship Manager at the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, or MALT, where he works at the local and regional level on land stewardship and conservation planning efforts, and we talk about how MALT and other partner organizations are supporting farmers and ranchers to adopt practices that build soil carbon — and so much more.
Show notes:
- Jensen Ranch & Tomales Sheep Company in the Fibershed Producer Directory
- Stemple Creek Ranch in the Fibershed Producer Directory
- Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT)
- Coyuchi’s Climate Beneficial™ Wool goods
- Full Circle Wool in the Fibershed Producer Directory, and their Climate Beneficial wool sponges
- Learn more about carbon farming on Fibershed’s education page, and scroll down on that page to find a free webinar recording to hear from producers including Jim about tools, models, and examples of carbon farming in the Northern California Fibershed
- Learn more about Climate Beneficial Wool on Fibershed’s program page
- Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency within the US Department of Agriculture
- COMET-Planner, an online tool to “evaluate potential carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas reductions from
adopting NRCS conservation practices” - More about Aldo Leopold’s land ethic
- California Conservation Corps (CCC)
- Find your California Resource Conservation District (RCD)
- Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) program by Point Blue Conservation Science
This episode is hosted by Jess Daniels, with production support from Whetstone Media and music by Arann Harris.
Photo credits: photos of Jim by Paige Green, catalog image by Jess Daniels. Find this show in the iTunes library by searching for “Soil to Soil,” where we invite you to subscribe and leave a review to encourage more listeners to join us. We welcome your questions and feedback directly to podcast@fibershed.com.