Summer farm crew posing for outdoor photo

Stockbridge School of Agriculture

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Professor Lisa Depiano Awarded $30,000 Grant to Host Climate Adaptation Learning Lab On Campus

Stockbridge professor Lisa Depiano founded the UMass Carbon Farming Initiative, which for five years has trained students at our Agricultural Learning Center (ALC) in the use of agroecology, regenerative food production and climate mitigation techniques.

Carbon farming, in which carbon is sequestered into soil stocks and above-ground biomass, reduces the harmful release of carbon into the atmosphere that comes from commercial farming. 

Instructors Lisa Depiano and Nicole Burton, along with our Sustainable Food & Farming students, also manage the university's first Chestnut/Sheep Silvopasture, in which trees and livestock are used to enrich soil productivity without the use of powered tractors.

The new grant, awarded to Depiano by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Partnership, will fund a new site at the ALC to teach "alley cropping," the integration of trees among farm crops, giving students additional hands-on learning opportunities to practice climate mitigation and sustainable farming techniques proven by science.

Lisa Depiano