Ponce, Puerto Rico — mano-Y-ola is co-leading efforts to recruit farmers in Florida and Puerto Rico to engage in a carbon sequestration initiative, adding to mYo’s robust climate-smart (CS) education and outreach offerings. In addition to a climate-smart curriculum mYo developed and teaches to its 20 bilingual interns annually, mano-Y-ola actively competes for funds to invest back into farmers using CS practices. In keeping with this mission, mYo partnered with six other companies investing in climate-smart solutions to conduct a CS summit from March 7th-8th to discuss outreach efforts and protocol, field visits, and climate-smart practices.
In this retreat, CS-supporting companies Victus Puerto Rico, Concéntrico, Praedictus, Fundación Santa Elena de la Sabana, Millpoint, and Agrology joined mano-Y-ola. mYo’s most recent hires, Ismael Reyes and Paul Pendergast, agronomists implementing climate-smart practices in Florida, were also in attendance. They joined mYo Co-President Nolo Martínez and Program Manager Adrian Parrott, who presented data insights on agricultural production, land use and management, climate change and agriculture, demographic trends in farming, sustainability and environmental impact, and data-driven decision making in agriculture.
Presently, mYo is actively recruiting farmers in Florida and Puerto Rico to follow CS practices and measure carbon sequestration. Eventually, with the required data and funding, these farmers will be incentivized for the level of carbon sequestered on their farms. Moreover, mYo advocates for silvopasture methods in Puerto Rico, integrating breadfruit orchards with livestock grazing, and plans to extend its operations to Florida soon.
This understanding of silvopasture comes from years of combined team member experience, and the mYo team is “passing it forward” to the next generation of young bilingual agricultural professionals through a climate-smart curriculum. The Climate-Smart Agriculture module joins four other modules, Natural Resources Conservation, Data and Entrepreneurship, Introduction to Leadership, and Young Future Conservation Professionals, offered to mYo virtual interns multiple times yearly through mYo’s Cultivar Learning Network. The CS module, which contains two lectures, homework, and the opportunity to implement CS practices on a farm, was successfully taught to an enthusiastic group of fall 2023 interns and will be reprised this spring.
mano-Y-ola invites farmers in Puerto Rico and Florida interested in implementing carbon sequestration or silvopasture practices to contact Program Manager Adrian Parrott at adrian.parrott@mano-y-ola.com. Young, bilingual, agricultural professionals are encouraged to apply to mYo’s spring virtual cohort by contacting Program Manager Patricia Morales at patricia.morales@mano-y-ola.com. Please visit our website for more information: latinofarmersusa.com.
-written by Jessica Roqueburg
