This story was produced as part of Climate Solutions, a collaboration focused on community engagement and solutions-based reporting to help Central Pennsylvania move toward climate literacy, resilience and adaptation. StateImpact Pennsylvania convened the collaboration; WITF is a Climate Solutions partner. Other Climate Solutions partners are Franklin & Marshall Center for Public Opinion, La Voz Latina, Sankofa African American Theatre Company, Shippensburg University, Q’Hubo News, and the York Daily Record.
Will Brownback stood in field C10, surrounded by tomato plants. As far as the eye could see, the leafy green plants rippled lightly in the wind as the summer sun beat down on them. The leaves shielded the growing, green fruit underneath.
Thousands of customers are awaiting those tomatoes. It’s a list that includes Wegmans, two farmers’ markets in Washington, D.C. and 1,700 Central PA households — members of Spiral Path Farm’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.
But the success of this crop — and about 50 other vegetables grown on the 300-acre organic vegetable farm — largely depend on two things: the weather, and climate-smart resiliency tactics.
“We just experienced the driest May and beginning of June that I’ve ever known — that my father has ever known — it was scary dry,” said Brownback, second-generation farmer/owner of Spiral Path Farm, in Loysville, Perry County.
Tomatoes may be the literal fruit of his labor, which is focused on climate-friendly sustainability happening under the surface, directly in the soil. Brownback believes his soil-centric focus is the reason his tomatoes are thriving — despite that dry spell — and will ultimately be tasty.
“I attribute the flavor to all of our soil practices,” Brownback said. “I’m going to get science-y on you — but when we have healthy soil, we’re allowing the plants to make these plant secondary metabolites — some people call them phytonutrients. Your tongue is able to pick those out.”
Brownback is one of about 200 “citizen scientist” farmers participating in the Soil Health Benchmark study organized by Harrisburg-based Pasa Sustainable Agriculture. The study, launched in 2016 with Brownback as one of the first participants, is helping farmers learn how sustainable agricultural practices can impact and improve their farms’ soil — not only to make tomatoes tastier, but to help them adapt to and even mitigate climate change.
As Pennsylvania experiences weather extremes, including warmer and wetter weather attributed to climate change, perhaps no one is more attuned to those trends than farmers, who called for resiliency tactics and sparked Pasa’s initial launch of the Soil Health Benchmark Study nearly a decade ago.
Farmers who test soil and keep records have data as the climate changes, said Hannah Smith-Brubaker, Pasa’s executive director.
Source: npr.org
Photo Credit: pexels-lukas
Categories: Pennsylvania, Crops