Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** climate-related fires, drought,…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** climate-related fires, drought, flooding, and extreme heat increasingly threaten food security in the culturally diverse and economically challenged community of grant county, NM. As the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) makes clear in the 2023 summary report, we now stand on the brink of irreversible, catastrophic planetary-scale climate change, with drawdown of atmospheric carbon, particularly through soil regeneration, a critical part of any solution that will foster a livable future for young persons and future generations.to meet this challenge, the town of silver city, NM, in partnership with the upper gila watershed alliance, will amplify the new earth project, a successful proof-of-concept climate mitigation pilot project. The centerpiece of new earth project is an innovative technology: johnson-SU composting. Johnson-SU is a static, aerobic composting system that specializes in the production of a microbially diverse, fungal dominant compost used most beneficially as a microbial soil inoculant, serving both as a fertilizer/pesticide replacement and a biological catalyst for increased soil health and carbon sequestration. We will combine two waste streams that can be found in most any community: food from school cafeterias and shredded woody biomass acquired from urban silviculture and local forest thinning projects. The resulting product has the global potential carbon drawdown of up to 75 billion metric tons per year.as a partner in the global soil restoration network, we will establish our own biologically enhanced agricultural management (beam) site and share our findings on a distributed peer learning network.new earth project is implemented in tandem with a grade school healthy soils curriculum and youth employment. This community-scale project helps mitigate climate change, ties our community's economic development to ecological restoration, and empowers our youth with knowledge, skills, jobs, and hope.