The Opportunity

The IRL’s Cooperative Farms & Foods Model, the Stone-Spirit System, integrates the insights of ReGenerative Science and Design (that helped end the African famines of the 80’s), bio-dynamic agriculture, soil re-mineralization, intensive European row techniques, keyline design, a generation of experimentation with low impact organic farming and other regenerative approaches all under the Permaculture Umbrella. 

The opportunity to participate in a renewed (food based) economy in the Lake Champlain and Hudson River Valley, Vermont, and the greater Berkshire region is inviting (the Greater Hudson/Champlain Valley, GHCV).  Such a re-vitalized economy can:
  • supply healthy food to local and regional markets (over 50 million people live
    within a one day drive),
  • create jobs with livable wages for our
    emerging adults,
  • naturally fix nitrogen to build healthy soil
  • sequester carbon reducing green house gasses, and
  • help ReGenerate the land for long term sustainability
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Of the 10 million acres of farmland in the region
  • 70% of the tillable land is planted with commodity crops that are dependent on chemical herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers that create toxic runoff and biological dead zones
  • This system is oil dependent, ecologically suspect, and lacking in terms of both taste and nutrition
  • These biological “dead zones” are the largest cause of soil runoff into streams and rivers, creating hazards for both human and animal populations