Diversified Farming

Challenges

Agriculture occupies a large percent of earth’s landscape and those lands are under ever-increasing pressure to be more resilient. In creating a diversified farm, our goal is to build a resilient landscape that has multiple benefits for people, animals and society. For example, we use cover crops to increase soil microbial diversity which promotes increased carbon storage and nitrogen fixation. Cover crops also increase organic matter and improve soil water retention thereby increasing the resiliency of the land to climate change and drought.

Solutions

This land has told many tales and has many more tales to tell. Out on the farm we have been blessed to observe the multiple forms and natural rhythms of this land as the seasons come and go. We believe the farm is a living organism, thus we are adapting our management practices to participate in this eternal dance.

More than 20 years ago families originally from Oaxaca Mexico were invited to start the Mixtec community garden. For the past ten years the Mixtec garden has been the basis of QOF’s crop production. In the past two years, together we have expanded our agricultural production, diversified our practices and developed new educational programs. QOF is happy to announce that the farm is now USDA Certified Organic. We are looking forward to providing organic produce to the community.

QOF is currently working toward becoming a center for developing and teaching diversified farming practices in California’s Central Valley. Working together with collaborators such as Community Alliance for Agroecology we have hosted Agroecology Crash Courses and an Agroecology Encuentro with Bay Area  partners. We are continuing to expand our collaboration with CAFA by developing additional Agroecology Crash Courses and Encuentros.