The Colorado State Conservation Board announced the award of a $20,000 matching grant to Mosca- Hooper Conservation District to support the Aquifer Recovery/Future of Ag in the San Luis Valley Field and Soil Observations: Fungal Rich Compost in 2020. We were able to leverage matching funds recently received from the New Belgium Family Foundation, Community Foundation for San Benito County, Calhoun/Christiano Fund as part of the match for this particular grant. The focus of of this next phase grant in 2020, will be to collect and correlate data where fungal rich compost has been applied and in some cases combined with cover cropping on 500 acres; conduct field days for learning; begin sharing citizen-accessible data, allowing for a greater understanding of soil health and regenerative agriculture in the region.
Previously, through our Fiscal Sponsor, Soil Carbon Coalition, grant funding from the Records-Johnson Family Foundation and the Calhoun/Christiano Family Fund, advised fund of the Community Foundation for San Benito County was received to support overall coordination of the project and to purchase a compost extractor to evaluate the utility of static-pile compost as starter material for extraction and evaluation. The compost extractor will be in operation late fall 2019.
The Aquifer Recovery/Future of Agriculture in the San Luis Valley is a multi-faceted, multi-year project launched in 2018. For more information on the Static Pile Compost Project, Click here.
