Local farm pursues environmental justice with world-class practices

By MICHAEL RUSSO The Breeze

A humble shed sits next to the hillside, smoke spewing out of its chimney as rain showers just began to ease on a sodden November morning. Inside, the land’s keepers stay warm next to a fireplace before heading back out to prepare for winter’s looming arrival. While some grassy crops, paths in the hills and small trees might not look like much, the makings of a worldclass farming system have taken root in the Shenandoah Valley.

The Jubilee Climate Farm (JCF) — a program of the New Community Project (NCP), a nonprofit specializing in environmental sustainability and social justice — launched in March 2021 and is located in Mt. Clinton, Virginia, 15 minutes from JMU’s campus.

Its name takes inspiration from celebrating a shift in power and resources. This connects to the farm’s mission of combining modern Western science with Indigenous wisdom and agricultural practices to redistribute carbon emitted into the air by returning it to the ground, said Tom Benevento, the NCP project coordinator who oversees the farm.

“It’s this neat way of being a part of the solution by way of the knowledge of other people around the world, particularly indigenous communities and what they’ve been trying to do,” Benevento said. “Typically, we think about agriculture as an industry, which is a perspective that’s extractive. We’re thinking about agriculture as a relationship, as a culture, which turns it around as a way of … give and take.”

Case Watkins

JMU environmental justice professor

Even though the farm is just in its second year of operation with “a lot going on that you don’t see” at first glance, Benevento said, its future is promising.

By establishing hyper-focused ecosystems in JCF’s 30 acres that mimic larger ones around the world, Benevento said he and his team will be able to create wildlife habitats that increase biodiversity and foster small-scale farming that benefits the farmer and the planet.

As opposed to a heavily industrial system of agriculture in which chemicals are used in abundance, Benevento said, JCF’s approach of agroforestry and carbon sequestration creates a “much more stable” environment: one that’s more resilient to natural disasters, will produce more nutritious food and become a “key solution to food security globally.”

Part of achieving that solution is a large network of volunteers who help on the farm. Those include Case Watkins, an associate professor of justice studies at JMU, and his students.

Requirements in JMU’s environmental justice course, JUST 357, include 10 hours of volunteer work with Vine & Fig, a sister organization of the NCP, and its affiliated projects, like JCF. This component of the class is all about “fostering healthy relationships between and among people and the planet,” Watkins said. Since JCF opened last year, it’s been an option where students can volunteer, and some have conducted independent studies there, he added.

“For some of the students, they have reported that this has been a life-changing experience,” Watkins said. “It has opened up new directions and new interests and new possibilities for their life when you can connect with the work that’s going on here in the community that … tightly integrates social and environmental justice.”

Part of JCF’s mission is outreach and community engagement, Watkins said, which is why he values the relationship he and his students have built with those at the farm. Just how Benevento said the farm balances a give-and-take model, Watkins said he does the same with his course’s volunteer component. Rather than overwhelming or burdening the organization, he said, his priority is for his students to support it through the community service, which creates a “humbling” and “generative relationship.”

Watkins also spoke to the farm’s pursuit of environmental justice, which intertwines with its other goals and missions, and said he’s fortunate he and his students have the opportunity to work with the people there.

“When we live in healthy relationships with the Earth, this allows us to live in healthy relationships with each other,” Watkins said in an email to The Breeze. “We can understand justice then as a set of ideals that really, hopefully, lead to health and well-being for human communities, and also for the Earth ... All these components—people, places, food, climate, etc.—are all interconnected through relationships. The question then becomes, ‘how can we make these relationships healthier?’ So, the approach at Jubilee, working to heal climates and communities through empowerment and education, is one that fits seamlessly with what we’re doing and teaching and enacting in our environmental justice class.”

Benevento said he has high aspirations for the farm’s transformation, which includes a pasture on the hillside that will support both sheep and fruit trees. The Shenandoah Valley also serves as an optimal, savanna-like landscape for the farm, with factors like the climate, rainfall and variety of trees, plants and animals all combining to maximize the project’s potential impact.

Winter’s a favorable time to plant trees, Benevento said, and the JCF team will be hard at work tending to a vegetable garden in the spring and summer, as well as a perennial forest of trees that will replenish itself each year.

A member of that team is Samuel Lasiti, an intern who came to Harrisonburg through the International Volunteer Exchange Program and the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) from his home in Kajiado County, Kenya. He said all the skills he’s learning will be valuable, as he ran a farm with a similar model to agroforestry in Kenya.

While discussing his plans for the winter while the farm’s closed, Lasiti said he still has some research and learning so he can expand his knowledge. Additionally, through his placement with the MCC, Lasiti volunteers with tutoring, translating services and work with refugees. Lasiti said he’ll return to Kenya in July and share what he’s learned.

Aside from Lasiti’s involvement on the farm, Benevento said he’s forming alliances with farmers around the world, exchanging ideas that build toward making a larger impact on climate change mitigation. Benevento has worked in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, so his background collaborating with Indigenous populations on sustainability has helped him forge new connections with farmers and authorities in those countries, as well as in Jamaica and Malawi.

The goal, Benevento said, is not just to start farming systems with agroforestry but also to transform existing ones to be better for the environment and produce healthier, cleaner harvests that cut down on chemical use.

If a system like Jubilee Climate Farm’s was implemented around the world, such a change could draw down global climate emissions annually by 25%, Benevento said.

Researchers at Penn State University affirm this. In the meantime, the personal bonds the farm fosters have been impactful, too.

“We can measure [success] in the people who are coming … and leave with a sense of, they have some power to do something and feel like they have hope,” Benevento said.

“That’s probably the most important thing — the relationships that we’re building, and the sense that people have some agency … There’s a lot you can do, so I just recommend people not to be afraid.”

CONTACT Michael Russo at thebreezeculture@gmail.com. For more on the culture, arts and lifestyle of the JMU and Harrisonburg communities, follow the culture desk on Twitter and Instagram @Breeze_Culture.

from TYLER TALK, page 1

“Once in a while, I do want to run away,” Kym said. “It’s crushing.” But she said she finds strength in the student-athletes she speaks to.

Of the Hilinskis’ estimated 150 Tyler Talks over the last four years, they’ve spoken all over the country, from a 20-person summer league baseball locker room in North Carolina 90 minutes before they played a game, to auditoriums filled with 550 student-athletes at the University of Hawai’i.

During the talks, the Hilinskis paint Tyler as someone not much different than anyone in the audience. Tyler was the average kid, Mark said: a 21-year-old who loved the sport he played, the school he attended and his friends.

“If it can happen to Tyler, it can happen to everyone,” Mark said.

Kym and Mark call the talks their “therapy.” They speak of Tyler in present tense, listen to Tyler talk in videos and say his name aplenty. They know Tyler’s gone, but they say he’s missing instead. The hour goes by fast, Mark said. He can’t describe his son in 60 minutes.

After the Tyler Talks, Kym and Mark make time afterward for athletes who want to confide in them or share their mental health stories.

Mark said he doesn’t tell student-athletes to not grind as hard or to take it easy in their sport. He said he wants student-athletes to treat their mental health as they would a torn ACL or cancer diagnosis: If treatment requires a step back in competition, then do so. It’s more important than the sport, he