2023-07-20:
Regenerating New Mexico at Chelenzo Farms
Check out "Regenerating New Mexico," an amazing project being implemented by Ecotone Landscape Planning, LLC , High Watermark LLC and the NM Healthy Soil Working Group.
Click on the "Study Area 3: Northern Rio Grande" tab to find more about how Hacienda Dominguez & Chelenzo Farms fared as one of the six areas evaluated for this project.
Introduction: Rural communities in New Mexico experience a multitude of interconnected challenges, including climate change, drought, extreme wildfires and flooding, diminishing natural resources, economic depression, and conflicts over water. The COVID pandemic has shown the vulnerability of our current food system, exposing food insecurity, supply chain gaps, a lack of basic infrastructure as well as systemic racial and social inequities.
Given the magnitude of the problem, project partners Ecotone Landscape Planning LLC, High Watermark LLC and NM Healthy Soil propose to work regionally to restore ecosystems, economies and environments to an extent not possible on an individual farm scale. The Dutch NGO, Commonland , has developed a consensus-based, community-centered process for landscape-scale regeneration. This methodology is being employed successfully internationally in semi-arid regions such as Spain, South Africa and Australia. We are bringing this framework to the US for the first time, using regenerative agriculture to achieve ecological, financial, social and cultural benefits – the so-called 4 Returns framework.
This StoryMap documents the first project phase, completed in summer 2023. It involves assessments of three different regions in New Mexico to determine the areas' potential for developing production systems that are mutually beneficial across agricultural and environmental sectors and function as catalysts for economic revitalization and ecological restoration. In all three study areas, water (re)source regeneration is key.
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