East Side farmers, land managers, climate activists, health experts, natural resources consultants, and even a veterinary emergency planner emphasized how adaptive agriculture practices in Summit County could help offset the impacts of extreme weather and drought.
More than 60 “movers and shakers” from across the Wasatch Back attended the Summit County Health Department discussion last month at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, making it the largest turnout for the speaker series yet. The Utah State University Extension also participated.
The meeting spotlighted innovative strategies in northern Utah and Summit County to manage and combat growing threats related to climate change while also acknowledging the interconnections of agriculture, mental health and community resilience.
Half Circle Cross Ranch owner and operator Colby Pace, Bill White Farms manager Craig McKnight, U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian Dr. Leah Trapp and Open Range Consulting owner Gregg Simonds, the event’s panelists, stressed the importance of implementing conservation practices such as cover crops, no-till farming, composting and solar energy.
“Basically my whole career has been a drought. Agriculture is just plain tough as it is, and a lot of things have happened since ’94. It’s been a roller coaster. You get one good year, you get five bad ones,” Pace said during the Sept. 19 event. His ranch was the recipient of the 2020 Utah Leopold Conservation Award. “Mother Nature’s not your friend in the ranching world.”
Pace and the other speakers discussed how cultivating cover crops can enhance biodiversity, bolster soil health and enhance water retention, and also improve resiliency. They mentioned how techniques such as rotational grazing or beaver dam analogs can be used to help restore the land.
McKnight explained how the agricultural industry has moved to a monoculture, and he wants to see more diversity back in nature. He said solar energy is free and each plant feeds the biology of the earth — making for healthier soil, healthier animals and a healthier community.
Trapp agreed. The president-elect of the National Association of Federal Veterinarians spoke about the transition from regenerative agriculture to extractive agriculture, which prioritizes short-term yields over long-term stability.
She highlighted the ties between emergency preparedness, crop diversification and food security as critical components in fostering a strong agricultural sector.
“I think about our food supply in terms of national security, and it greatly concerns me that we have all these monocultures, that our soil is dying, that we have foreign partners owning the majority of our slaughterhouses, majority shareholders in our swine operations. It’s not cool. We need to do better. We need to do local,” Trapp said.
Simonds shared how he helped transform the 350,000-acre Humboldt Ranch in Nevada from a landscape into a thriving ecosystem with a specific focus on water management, drought insurance and reducing the percentage of bare ground to enhance water retention and soil health.
“When you grow plants, you grow nature, you grow life, and you turn these whole landscapes into water banks instead of watersheds and that’s a big deal. That’s the whole basis of my ranching career,” he said. “The byproduct of civilization has been to make bare ground.”
Local support for farmers and ranchers was also a key point of the discussion.
Speakers called on community members to buy through “Utah’s Own” or the “Farm to Fork” program through the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food and at the Park City Farmers Market or the annual Junior Livestock Sale at the Summit County Fair.
Visit health.summitcounty.org for information about enviornmental health or upcoming events.