Caney Fork Farms Restores Soil and Sinks Carbon. Here's How.

“I haven’t eaten red meat for about the last eight years,” says the former Vice President of the United States whose family farm in Carthage, Tennessee raises cattle, hogs, and sheep for market. “But I’m told it’s good.” The man speaking is Al Gore, a walking avalanche of accolades -- a Grammy, an Oscar, a Nobel Peace Prize -- and the meat in question comes from his livestock on Caney Fork Farms. And it’s the best of the best, too: 100% grass-fed beef and lamb, 100% pastured pork, all certified ethically raised and finished. At first blush, it may seem counterintuitive. Wait, you mean the world’s most famous advocate for lowering the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises livestock? The answer is yes, and proudly for profit as well. This is America, after all. But before you go judging, you need to understand both an ancient story and some contemporary science because, at Caney Fork Farms, the two intersect to help point the way toward a more hopeful future. Let’s start with the story.

A Brief History of Our CO2 Conundrum
Ever since the first flint was flaked and some megafauna got its bacon baked, we humans have altered the Earth; making tools and burning fuels, that’s just how we Homo sapiens roll. However, it wasn’t until some 12,000 years ago that our impact really got cooking. That was the dawn of the Neolithic Revolution, when plowing became common practice, releasing large amounts of carbon from the soil. Fast-forward to the 18th century and the advent of the Industrial Revolution when our use of fossil fuels began to seriously pick up steam, releasing, in the process, huge amounts of carbon trapped underground. Still, it wasn’t until a couple centuries later that industry finally surpassed agriculture as the biggest emitter of carbon. 

“It wasn’t until the 1950s when the big boom in the use of fossil fuel began in the post WWII global economy,” Al says, “that agriculture was no longer the primary source of CO2 in the atmosphere. And it wasn’t until the 1970s that the cumulative amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was not derived from agriculture as the single largest source. The boom in fossil fuel burning over the last 75 years has completely eclipsed it.”  

We now live with the results of all those agricultural and industrial decisions from the past 12 millennia, but particularly with the decisions from the last three-quarters century. Along with the happy ones like widely available food, convenient travel, and easy access to perks like hot showers are the deeply worrisome ones like the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. From air bubbles trapped in ice sheets, we know that 12,000 years ago when those first farmers were developing food crops such as corn and potatoes and wheat, staples we still depend on, every million molecules of air in the atmosphere contained 260 that were carbon dioxide. As of April 2021, that number is 417 parts per million or 157 ppm higher than when agriculture began -- a level not seen on Earth since the Pliocene Epoch some 3.2 million years ago, a time when the world’s sea levels were fifty feet higher … for now. 

Um, Houston (and the rest of humanity), we have a problem.

Sinking Carbon by Raising Food
But we also have a growing solution - a literally growing solution. And that brings us back to Al Gore’s livestock, to his cattle, hogs, and sheep. You see, those animals are not just at Caney Fork Farms to provide Nashville’s chefs and consumers with the highest quality meats, although they certainly do; those animals are there as critical components of a type of organic agriculture that markedly increases the capacity of the soil to contain carbon, thus raising the soil’s fertility, increasing the plants’ resilience, boosting their crops’ nutritional value, enhancing the taste of the produce, and -- critically -- reabsorbing carbon from the atmosphere, a win-win-win-win-win, if you will. It’s called ‘regenerative farming’ and Al’s farm is part of a collaborative effort of farmers and scientists to determine its most effective practices. So far, the results at Caney Fork have been very encouraging.

“We’ve been sequestering carbon over the past five years at the rate of about 808 tons of CO2 annually,” Al says. “That’s the equivalent of consuming 100,000 gallons of gasoline each year.” 

In other words, due to Caney Fork’s regenerative farming practices, the farm’s soil acts as a kind of sponge, soaking in the same amount of carbon that the burning of that amount of fuel would emit into the air. Further, the young farm’s soil -- only in its sixth year of regenerative farming -- has yet to reach its full potential.  

“The capacity is greater still,” Al observes. 

And remember, this is not philanthropy; this is being done on a for-profit farm. The model is scalable, particularly if it makes farmers money.     

“Our whole mission is to prove the business case that this is a profitable way of farming,” Al adds, “as well as an environmentally responsible way and a climate-positive, healing way.” 

The potential is huge. According to topsoil scientists’ calculations, the world’s soils have the capacity to absorb 3 times as much carbon as all the world’s vegetation combined. And, while the exact amount of atmospheric carbon that could be drawn down into soil remains in dispute, what is not in dispute is the fact that increased soil carbon benefits farmers.  

“The regenerative farmers who have been using these techniques have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly the soil carbon can build up,” Al points out. “This is mainly a farmer-led movement, and we’re seeing a lot of farmers express interest in it now.” 

Regenerative Farming and Caney Fork’s CSAs
So just what are the techniques the farmers are employing? Zach Wolf, Caney Fork’s farm manager -- and a Columbia University graduate with a degree in biology -- explains: “The animals are key in this system. The pigs are like the reset button, the rototillers, so we rotate them through pastures that we’re specifically trying to renovate. The sheep have a smaller footprint and play a key role because they’ll eat certain forages that the cattle won’t. And all the animals have this amazing ability to accumulate nutrients. You feed a cow however many tons of hay through the winter and it’s basically condensing that hay, digesting it, and turning it into something much more vital. And that brings vitality back to the soil.”

Unlike conventional agriculture, regenerative farming uses rotational grazing to integrate the animals with the fields.  

“Basically, what we’re trying to do,” Zach says, “is something that farmers undid decades ago which was to take animals out of the system.” 

Here Zach refers to conventional farming practices in which some fields are set aside only for pasture and others only for crops, a system that requires the heavy use of chemical fertilizers to keep it all going.   

“We’ve worked really hard to diversify the pastures,” Zach says. “There are no synthetics. All the fertility is coming through animal manures or nitrogen-fixing cover crops.”  

Little wonder that Caney Fork Farms is certified organic by both the Real Organic Project and the CCOF Foundation. Also, little wonder that the food raised at Caney Fork is so wholesome and flavorful that the meat and the produce typically sell out to the farm’s CSA members. As of this writing, there is actually a waiting list for the vegetable CSA shares. Caney Fork also makes an effort to reach out to rural communities where, paradoxically, it can often be harder to access healthy, organically grown food than in urban Nashville. “Our team feels very strongly about serving our local community here in Smith County,” says Natalie Ashker Seevers, Caney Fork’s Marketing Manager​. “We offer CSA pick up locations in Carthage, Granville, and Lebanon where access to clean food is not as easy to find.”

And heads up for this fall; Caney Fork Farms’ chestnuts go quickly, too. “This season we will be bringing our chestnuts to the East Nashville Farmers Market,” Natalie says. “We sold out by December 1st last year, so I encourage customers to buy them as soon as they are available!”

Pay Dirt? Regenerative Farming’s Carbon Market Potential
While regenerative farming is already showing great promise as a method to sustainably grow healthy and wholesome food, it would be even more attractive if regenerative farmers were able to sell carbon credits along with their carrots and cows. Such carbon markets already exist for trees because, thanks to the fact that they’re above ground and that satellites and computers exist, trees are very easy to count. If the same level of exactness could be developed for counting carbon buildup in soils, then it would be a huge boon not just for regenerative farmers in particular, but for humanity as a whole.    

“That [setting up carbon offset markets for regenerative farmers] is our aspirational goal,” Al acknowledges.

Therefore, to help reach that goal, Caney Fork is also a hardworking living laboratory, a farm collaborating with top research scientists from diverse disciplines and multiple institutions to perfect techniques for measuring carbon buildup in soil.