Mark Mills of Chocolates and Tomatoes Farm is many things: a chef, an instructor a chocolatier and one of Soil & Climate Initiative’s founding farmers.
“In 2012, I got the opportunity to become a farmer,” he says. The opportunity came through a new-farmer pilot program in partnership with the University of Maryland that included extension classes. There, Mills learned about the practices and implementation of regenerative agriculture.
Then, in 2018, he and his wife, Teresa, got the opportunity to buy an 11-acre farm in Middletown. Today, three acres of the farm are taken up with highly diversified fresh produce and herbs. Other sections of the farm include flowers and a mixed orchard of over 400 trees including apples, pears, plums, peaches, cherries and apricots.
“We’ve always been regenerative — we use a lot of cover cropping, conservation tillage, we’re way into diversity — so SCI was a perfect fit for us,” Mills says.
From founding farmer to model farm
Soil & Climate Initiative is a non-profit program that helps farmers transition their operations to regenerative practices and offers third-party verification options according to its Soil & Climate Health Commitment & Verification standards. It launched its program three years ago, and Mills was one of the initiative’s founding farmers, according to Taylor Herren, farm program manager at SCI.
The founding cohort comprised many different operations, including commodity crop farmers, livestock operations and produce growers.
“In part, [the founding cohort] were participants in the program, but equally it was an opportunity for us to build a program and build a standard that can address all of those different systems,” Herren says. “That is complicated stuff.”
Today, the initiative has 165 affiliated farms across 30 plus crops in 27 states plus Canada, according to Kristen Efurd, SCI’s verification director.
Though Mills was among the founding farmers cohort, his operation looks a lot different compared to most other SCI-affiliated operations. Not only is his operation small and extremely diversified, but his regenerative practice is quite advanced, making him an important teacher within the program, Herren says.
“Someone like Mark is as much a model farm as a resource for us to understand as we bring new farms into the program,” Herren says. “We are a huge believer in peer learning networks and identifying farms, just like Mark’s, that are advanced.”
Keeping soil health in focus
Mills says SCI “sounded like it was something that was right up our alley” from the beginning.
“I think, to my detriment, I always want to be on the cutting edge. I always want to try something new,” he says, adding that he has been taking as much advantage of SCI’s offerings as he can. Key among these have been SCI’s persistence and keeping him on track with soil testing, nutrient management plans and getting him actionable information.
“I’m kind of all over the place and trying to do a million things at once,” Mills says, pointing to his two off-farm jobs. He says SCI helps to codify some of the regenerative practices that they were already doing on the farm, but with a focus on actionable soil health information.
“I’ve had a nutrient management plan since we started farming in 2012,” he says. “You would always do soil testing. They would give you some big numbers and you might use that information, but then you’d file it away and never look at it again. So, the depth that SCI goes into, the metrics they look at, is to the nth degree.”
Herren says that anyone working with farmers has to appreciate how busy and “head down” the work is. She adds that a big part of what SCI does is connect soil testing and the information from that to what farmers are doing and need to do.
“For example, it was time for Mark to do his three-year sampling. That’s really important so we could see if he’s making progress,” she told The Packer shortly after she’d made a farm visit to Chocolate and Tomatoes. “It’s our job to keep track of that and remind him and help make sure that it gets done. It can be hard for it to float to the top in the midst of Mark doing his farm and his life.”
Mills says the information and support he receives from SCI has been excellent, and he urges growers to get involved.
“Just to have somebody else who’s focused on your soil health — and that’s the currency of the regenerative farmer, soil health — who takes interest in that and gives you valuable feedback and metrics that you can leverage to increase your efficiency; that’s really important to me,” he says. “They really have skilled people who care about what you do. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’m glad I did it.”
