California Small Farm Conference

Our Community Grazing Cooperatives for Healthy, Fire-Safe, and Climate Smart Land Stewardship is an equity-based, grassroots, community-oriented solution that addresses the risk of fire, engages and empowers the leadership of local indigenous fire ecologists, and builds resilience for high-risk communities in the fire-prone areas of the West.
Participate in this workshop to learn how we can empower communities with education, knowledge and support for the ongoing stewardship of their land and their communities within a healthy fire ecosystem. You can develop collaborative relationships in rural residential neighborhoods to ensure the entire community is investing in creating a fire safe ecosystem using a shared flerd (a combination of sheep and goats) of grazing ruminants. This creates long term, generational sustainability for safety from wildfires as well as local, micro food systems.
Community Grazing Cooperatives can be implemented on public and private lands. Grazing ruminants, owned cooperatively by the community, reduce vegetation in hard to reach places while providing multiple benefits to these communities. Rather than adding to their carbon output and spending hours of human labor; animals do the work. Grazing, if done well, can build topsoil and enhance the microbial carbon pump - a way of supporting soil biology to move atmospheric carbon into the pedosphere. In addition to all of these benefits, the critical piece to the long term success of our communities is the social and material prosperity gained through the sharing of the ruminants. The relationship developed through this shared practice ties people together, provides increased food sovereignty to rural residents and brings joy and humor into the lives of people in these communities. Research shows that the greatest way to manage the effects of climate change is with bonded, supportive communities. This project develops this organically and with long term, ongoing support for sustainability.