WINCHESTER, Ky. (LEX 18) — For the last eight years, Mt. Folly Farm has set out to build a foundation of natural farming practices from the animals they raise to the products that make it to stores.
"Mt. Folly Farm and Mt. Folly Enterprises is made up of basically a supply chain where were raising things better on the farm and then we're making them into products on our business sides," Mt. Folly Enterprises CEO Ben Pasley said.
Their efforts are getting invested in in a big way.
Mt. Folly has been awarded a grant from the USDA worth $5 million.
"There's basically two parts to this grant. Half of it is going to be working with farmers, where we got $1.15 million that's going to go directly to farmers. The other half of it is dedicated to marketing these products," Pasley said.
Mt. Folly is one of 141 different project facilities for the USDA's Climate Smart Commodities program.
The initiative is an experiment to see how farmers can innovate their practices to be more climate-conscious, making for a cleaner product from cattle to crops.
"The idea of climate smart overall is that when grazing is done properly and when row crop farming is done properly, you can actually bring more organic matter into the soil," Climate Smart program lead Alice Melendez said.
"You're actually drawing carbon out of the sky and turning it into soil by taking plant matter and decomposing it on top of the ground.”
Over $3 billion has been dedicated to getting the Climate Smart project off the ground.
In the case of Mt. Folly, who have been instilling similar practices since the start, they are getting some help from Eastern Kentucky University to record the results from this project.
"As of right now, plants are actually the best way to remove carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere," EKU Professor of Agricultural John Settimi said.
"Even though there are some technological innovations taking place in other areas, plants do a great job of absorbing carbon dioxide.”
The USDA anticipates this project to remove 60 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air, equivalent to taking 12 million gas-powered cars off the road annually.
"The farmers are benefiting, the land where we live is benefiting and the overall environment is benefiting too. We feel like it solves everything at once if we can bring our agriculture closer to our home base," Melendez said.
As one of two Kentucky facilities involved in this project, Mt. Folly is excited to be a part of innovating the agricultural process.
"Consumers need to have products that they can trust. Not just like a basic protein product but what are the actual intrinsic values that people are actually getting from when they shop at local retailers," Pasley said.
