On a sunny Saturday in February, under a blue sky and fruit trees dotted with ripe oranges, the Southern California Fibershed community gathered at a grassroots farm called Eden Forest Collective in Fillmore California. Our small group of regenerative agriculture practitioners, sustainability professionals, designers, and artisans were there to see Eden Forest’s syntropic agriculture experiment and talk about cotton farming in California.
Regenerative Cotton Farming
Lesley Roberts of Southern California Fibershed opened the conversation and guest speaker Nathanael Gonzales Siemens, an organic and regenerative agriculture consultant and a fifth generation farmer, shared his stories. From the 1920's until his family was forced into bankruptcy in 1992, their farm grew cotton. Today, he said, there's little to no infrastructure for growing cotton in California and "you can't pay a mortgage" farming it.
Siemens grows almonds these days and he works as a consultant helping farms transition to organic practices. A few years ago, he was part of a Climate Beneficial Cotton project which attempted to apply regenerative agriculture practices to cotton systems. The test was small; a ten acre farm in the San Joaquin Valley. He had some successes; the idea that sheep would defoliate the cotton plants and fertilize the land, and he had failures; insufficient tillage and high soil salinity.
His story illustrated the importance of experimentation and it reminded us to ask "what if" questions as a community. As we sat and talked that day beside the flowing water in Sespe Creek, we listened and learned from one another in refreshingly human-scaled way.
Some of us intuitively twirled cotton fiber between our finger tips as we sat; pulling it, twisting it, making nothing at all. Others used spindles to make yarn while sitting right next to growing cotton plants, bringing it all full circle from farm to yarn.
Eden Forest Collective and Nathanael Gonzales Siemens. Photos by Lauren Lancy
After the talk, we took a walk around Eden Forest Collective's small regenerative farm and Nathanael Gonzales Siemens explained the lifecycle of the cotton plant (short video clip here) pointing out the fruit's anatomy. "You guys ever had cotton honey?" he asked us as taught us more about the cotton plant than any of us knew.
Now We Live in Paradise
Here's an inspiring short film to watch as we ask "what if" questions of ourselves and our communities to better support healthy ecosystems and a brighter future.
“Now We Live in Paradise” is a new film by Textile Exchange about clothing materials that are part of agricultural systems that support biodiversity and nourishing landscapes. Set in Brazil, the film profiles five artisan producers and how they've transformed their once fruitless land into rich, productive landscapes that now feed and clothe them.