The Episcopal Church recently announced the awarding of 16 grants totaling $123,910 in the second round of grantmaking managed by the Advisory Council for the Stewardship of Creation and approved by the Executive 
Council.
Among the recipients is Nativity, Raleigh, awarded $10,000 toward its work, Becoming the Good Soil, of reducing the serious effects of climate change by engaging in regenerative agriculture through carbon farming, specifically by supplementing land with compost. In simple terms, one goal of carbon farming is to increase soil organic matter (SOM) to help draw carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it in the ground.
In addition to the implementation of carbon farming to local soil, Nativity will work to help educate individuals and congregations learn more about regenerative agriculture through, among other channels, the development of a white paper to be made available to all churches.
From Nativity:
“Caring for Creation has deep roots in our spiritual lives at Church of the Nativity, and for many years we have supported and been a local voice for North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light (NCIPL) in seeking hopeful solutions for climate change. To avoid severe climate change, reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels will not be enough. Carbon must also be withdrawn from the atmosphere and sequestered into the soil.”
Nativity’s four main goals are 1) educating and encouraging individuals and churches in the Episcopal Diocese of NC to make compost from organic waste, 2) building a statewide organization of the primary stakeholders within government, the private sector, and the farming and academic communities with the goal of launching large scale carbon farming in NC, 3) planning and hosting a NC Carbon Farming Summit meeting that will produce a comprehensive strategy for the project, and 4) publishing a white paper that will summarize the rationale and strategy for the project.
Join us in congratulating Church of the Nativity and all the hard working individuals seeing this through!
For more information visit http://nativityonline.org/
