PITINO 2023 - Plant trees, sink carbon & get gifts

***AS SEEN ON CHANNEL 4's 'Help! We Bought a Village', The Times, MailOnline, and The Independent***

You might have seen airlines say 'click this button to offset your carbon emissions' but this often means planting rows of fir trees to the detriment of local plant varieties, habitats and food production. In some cases, especially in semi-arid regions, less than 10% of the trees survive. Help us do things differently.

THE GOAL

Combining the existing culture of small-holder farming in Italy's Le Marche region with modern science on water harvesting and carbon sequestration, we want to see the region become a global leader in regenerative agriculture. We are looking for investment in trees - the crucial part of helping us build a profitable climate-positive farm on our 110-acre abandoned Italian farmstead.

WHAT THE FUNDS HELP US DO

Plant 10,000 trees in a climate-positive farming system

WHY IT MATTERS

Water, soil, food - that's what matters most for us. Trees are great, but soil stores more carbon than anything except the ocean. Without water, soil dies, there are no trees, and no food. The most important thing for food security and land-based carbon capture is keeping water tables high.

HOW WE'LL DO IT

1. Improve on our current > 99.7 per cent tree and vine survival rate

2. Use only rain-fed and gravity-powered irrigation systems

3. Harvest water and raise the water table in our valley by using swales, ponds, and dams, while helping aquatic life like the freshwater crabs (potamon fluviatile) that haven't been sighted in our valley for years

4. Not use chemical treatments or fertilizers

5. Buy trees from local suppliers who support species diversity

6. Build healthy soil to sequester carbon on all land around the trees and vines by growing and mulching wild plants and flowers, as well as perennial crops like artichokes and strawberries

7. Not use plastic tree protectors

8. Propagate hundreds of our own cuttings to use for future expansion

KEY FACTS

- Around 2.2 tonnes of carbon are sequestered by well-managed olive groves per hectare per year (Lopez-Bellido et al. 2016)

- Olive groves with crop cover can reliably sequester more carbon in the soil than typical forest ecosystems in comparable areas (Bateni et al. 2021)

WHAT WE WON'T DO WITH THE FUNDS

- we won't pay ourselves a salary

- we won't massage the figures

- we won't pretend this form of farming alone can solve food insecurity or do enough to limit climate change

- we won't make claims or propose solutions that put the environment over people. Agriculture must first and foremost prevent hunger; fortunately it looks like a 'healthy' environment helps. We hope that our practices will show that profitable and productive farming can maximise carbon capture, not use harmful chemicals, and put more water in the soil than the farm uses, and that this will have practical implications for large-scale agriculture.

PROGRESS SO FAR

Since May 2022, we have: 

- planted over 2,000 olive trees of local ancient varieties 

- planted 500 vines of local ancient varieties

- planted over 100 fruit, nut and truffle trees 

- built two gravity powered natural water pumps to pump rainwater to our trees and the trees of a neighbouring small-scale farmer

- built a gravity powered irrigation system that directs water from our spring to our truffle trees

MORE DETAILS

In July 2022, like many other countries, Italy declared a state of climate emergency due to drought. Three years of historically low levels of rainfall, and inadequate water capture has meant that in our Le Marche region in June the water table was at levels typically seen in September. This has been crucial in our decision to try to test, propose and enhance solutions.

Crucially, we're carbon harvesting while improving biodiversity and protecting historic landscapes. You might have seen airlines say 'click this button to offset your carbon emissions' but this often means planting rows of fir trees to the detriment of local plant varieties, habitats, and food production. In some cases, especially in semi-arid regions, less than 10% of the trees survive.

We want to promote soil carbon sequestration by increasing the quantity and diversity of microbial life in the soil. This plays a vital role in carbon storage by breaking down plant matter into dissolvable carbon compounds that bind to soil particles. That's why, through companion planting techniques, we can create more naturally fertile and pollinator-friendly carbon sinks. 

SELECTED SOURCES

- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10457-019-00367-7  (Bateni, C., Ventura, M., Tonon, G. et al. Soil carbon stock in olive groves agroforestry systems under different management and soil characteristics. Agroforest Syst 95, 951–961 (2021).)

- https://pubag.nal.usda.gov/catalog/6931483 (Pedro J. Lopez-Bellido, et al. "Assessment of Carbon Sequestration and the Carbon Footprint In Olive Groves In Southern Spain." Carbon management, v. 7 ,.3-4 pp. 161-170)

- https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/life/publicWebsite/index.cfm?fuseaction=search.dspPage&n_proj_id=4194&docType=pdf

- https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbon-storage-84223790/#:~:text=The%20amount%20of%20C%20in,in%20soil%20(Lal%202008).

- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200521-planting-trees-doesnt-always-help-with-climate-change 

- https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planting-trees-climate-change-carbon-capture-deforestation