This October, we are celebrating our second year anniversary! As we celebrate, we would like to celebrate all we have accomplished while welcoming newcomers and introducing them to the work that we do!
Based at Wolfe’s Neck Center in Freeport, Maine, OpenTEAM was founded in 2019 by Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, Stonyfield, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, and the United States Department of Agriculture’s LandPKS.
OpenTEAM is a farmer-driven, collaborative community of farmers, ranchers, scientists, researchers, technologists, farm service providers, and food companies who are co-creating an interoperable suite of tools that provide farmers around the world with the best possible knowledge to improve soil health.
Why OpenTEAM?
Agriculture is responsible for almost 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The way we manage our land has to change dramatically in order to combat climate change. Improving soil health through regenerative agriculture practices can help our soils to capture more carbon, benefiting the farmer, the plants and animals they cultivate, and the food we eat. Wolfe’s Neck Center believes farming has to be a part of the solution to climate change. By creating an interoperable technology ecosystem and supporting a global network of farmers, the OpenTEAM initiative is working towards improving soil health measures and sequestering more carbon into the soil across the globe.
By building an interoperable, equitable and re-usable digital infrastructure, OpenTEAM will reduce costs and friction, thereby accelerating regenerative agriculture and associated global and local development benefits.
What does "interoperable" mean?
How does OpenTEAM work?
OpenTEAM is forging ahead to transform agriculture as we know it. By using a pre-competitive approach, we are co-developing a collaborative technology ecosystem with the support of a growing group of stakeholders. Through the creation of open feedback loops with Hubs and Network farms and ranches, we emphasize human centered design throughout every aspect of this ecosystem. OpenTEAM and its suite of tools is constantly evolving to accommodate different needs and systems.
OpenTEAM’s Hub farms, members, and network farmers primarily collaborate through working groups, which meet on a regular basis to tackle top priorities in technology, equity, field methods, and human centered design. This work is grounded through our Hub and Network working group, where farmers and ranchers test OpenTEAM’s suite of tools on the ground and provide feedback for growth and improvement.
Another way OpenTEAM works together is through Collabathons. These are sustained collaboration efforts with short sprints in service of long range shared goals. Each series of Collabathons have a defined goal, outcome, and proposed output shaped by a community co-hosts. Members come together over structured 8 week sessions that bridge across our diverse membership and enable us to bring in key folks around particular questions and long-term goals such as the creation of overarching field methods for testing soil carbon to the development of an agricultural data wallet where farmers can manage how they share and protect their own data.
OpenTEAM, in conjunction with Wolfe’s Neck Center, is also equipping food system leaders of the future with the knowledge and capabilities necessary to combat climate change and improve soil health through a budding fellowship program which strengthens the support for our Hub and Network farms and ranches.
What kind of tools does OpenTEAM share with farmers and ranchers?
OpenTEAM collaborates with a wide variety of tech partners who design, develop, and co-create tools for the benefit of farmers and ranchers. Some help land stewards to measure the amount of carbon in their soil, others help them to better manage their farms and ranches. OpenTEAM is constantly working with its Hubs and network farms to test these tools and make them better through open avenues of feedback and communication.
What is soil health?
Healthy soil is critical to cooling the planet. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a key part of the solution to this global problem. Soil is a living ecosystem that contains bacteria, fungi, insects, and organic matter that thrive when the other soil elements are in balance. If these elements are thriving, the plants and animals that we eat will as well. By minimizing erosion, maximizing water infiltration, and improving nutrient cycling through regenerative farming practices, farmers and ranchers can enhance the resiliency of their land. By building better soil health, our soils can absorb more carbon and support our growing food system.
What is regenerative agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services through practices such as managed grazing by livestock, cover crops, no-till, and crop diversity. Finding solutions to the growing climate crisis relies on both limiting greenhouse gas emissions AND capturing carbon in the soil. The world’s soils store several times the amount of carbon as does the atmosphere, acting as a natural “carbon sink.” Healthy soil captures more carbon. By building soil health through regenerative practices, we can farm in a way that solves the problems we face now and makes our farmland more resilient for the future of food and our planet.
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