Press
The Sonoma RCD and partners are invested in supporting land managers and our community to build landscape scale resiliency. The projects accepted by this round of funding will build on countless hours of dedicated efforts such as prescribed grazing through our LandSmart program, establishment of shaded fuel breaks, forest thinning and the removal of ladder fuels, among other community-led vegetation management work happening on the ground. These projects are important for forest resiliency, habitat improvement, watershed health, and community protection.
Led by Sonoma County’s two Resource Conservation Districts, the School Garden Network, Conservation Works, and school district partners, this project is the culmination of years of research, experience, and conversation with dozens of schools, businesses, farmers, parents, students, teachers, non-profits, and local governments to define the most needed actions to support Farm to School programs in Sonoma County. We believe that the combination of implementation and planning to support Farm to School programs will make farm to lunch programs the norm instead of the exception and will have long lasting effects by building capacity for school districts to continue programming without grant support. This project will advance child well-being, economic growth, environmental resilience, and racial equity through farm to school systems that connect children to locally sourced whole foods and produce in cafeterias, classrooms, and gardens.
“Carbon farming is one of our best opportunities to achieve our climate goals in this county. Farmers and ranchers are already being part of the solution, and that’s only going to increase,” said local ag expert Valerie Quinto. Leaders in this Sonoma County effort are two 80-year-old organizations that grew out of a national movement to help farmers during the desperate years of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.
