Currently — April 4th, 2023

April 03, 2023

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Currently’s Editor-in-Chief Abbie Veitch chatted with Tonni Oberly, a recipient of the “Black Woman, Green Futures” award from New Voices for Reproductive Justice, Birth Equity Research Scholar at the National Birth Equity Collaborative, and co-owner and farmer at the Ohio-based farm, Oaks & Sprouts.

Here’s a snippet of their conversation:

Abbie: Can you tell me about the regenerative and natural techniques you use at Oaks & Sprouts?

Tonni: We started our farm two years ago, so we’re going into our third growing season. The whole impetus of starting the farm was to do our part for improving the environment.

We started off with the principles of regenerative agriculture. We use minimal tilling, which means we use a lot of hand tools and do as much as we can to not disturb the soil.

With regenerative agriculture, there’s a really big focus on the soil and its health of the soil.  Healthy soil can sequester a lot more carbon than other methods, so if we properly steward the land, we can sequester carbon into the soil from the environment to help with climate change mitigation.

We use products that are organically certified (although we’re not organically certified), and we use rotational grazing. We also have goats and are definitely going to expand our herd this year. We use our goats and other animals to improve the soil quality as well.

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