Asili Chanya / Kaboni Hasi: Mahojiano na Duke Farms

The Climate Toolkit had the chance to sit down with Jon Wagar, Deputy Executive Director of Duke Farms, a center of the Doris Duke Foundation in New Jersey, and dig deep into their two-pronged approach for climate sustainability. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT:  
Give us the high-level view of what Duke Farms is doing in the climate sphere.

JON WAGAR:
One of the ways we’re framing what we’re doing here at Duke Farms from a climate sustainability standpoint is “Nature Positive, Carbon Negative.”  

I think this applies to many other gardens and cultural institutions like us – really looking at sustainability not just from a built environment perspective, but from a nature and reciprocity perspective. Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks of this philosophy in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. Because we have 2,700 acres at Duke Farms, we need to manage our land in a way that’s both nature positive and carbon negative. So, that means driving our emissions to zero while also conducting land management and ecological restoration activities that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It’s important for us to think about it that way because the climate is in crisis. We need to think about it this way. The fact is, we have too much carbon dioxide in the air as it is now, and we need to drive emissions to zero while removing carbon and taking care of nature.

CLIMATE TOOLKIT:  
How did Duke Farms begin the journey into climate sustainability? 

JON WAGAR:  
We have a clean energy plan that we’ve been following since 2016 that aligns with the New Jersey state goals for reduction in greenhouse gases and the Mkataba wa Paris. We started off with energy audits and did a big carbon footprint analysis to optimize how we’re going to achieve it. The main strategies which came out of that analysis are: 1) electrifying everything, 2) greening our electricity, and 3) making our electricity system more resilient. What that’s entailed is building a new solar array with battery storage that will meet one hundred percent of our current energy needs. 

JON WAGAR: 
At the same time, we’re electrifying our vehicles and equipment, and importantly for the northeast, our space heating. We have a lot of old houses on campus – probably around 30 buildings that require heat. A lot of that’s natural gas or just converting them to heat pumps. Fairly straightforward. The building that’s the hardest is our greenhouse, which is a really cool old Lord & Burnham facility. Our Orchid Range and Tropical Collection, which is about 28,000 square feet, feels small compared to a lot of more famous conservatories, but it is our major conservatory, and it is energy intense. We’re running into challenges there. They don’t really have electric heating (heat pumps) yet that can maintain the temperatures we need at this point. So, we’re looking into an interim solution. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Are you finding promising solutions on the horizon? 

JON WAGAR:  
We currently have what are called modulating condensing boilers here on campus. They’re 98 – 99% efficient – so if you’re going to burn natural gas, this is the way you should burn it, I think. In order to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of these natural gas boilers, we will be supplementing that with electric water heating. So, we’re designing something now where we can decrease the load on the boilers while increasing the load on our green electric grid. So again, this interim solution, we’re engineering it right now. We think we can do it, but that’s the tough nut to crack. I think with most botanical gardens that have greenhouses, that’s going to be the hardest thing to figure out from a carbon footprint perspective. Further down the line, hopefully in a few years, they will have heat pumps that can maintain the temperatures necessary for a complex indoor horticulture system.

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
We’re in the exact same situation at Phipps. Our lower campus is state-of-the-art sustainable, but our upper campus, which is an historic Lord & Burnham Conservatory, is unsustainable, and we’re looking into different options, like heat pumps and geothermal. 

JON WAGAR: 
With greenhouses and conservatories, there may always be a need for natural gas backup. Or maybe it’s a biofuel like methane from landfills. But given the collections we have; we need to be super resilient. It’s like a hospital with multiple generators. We’re going to have to think through this issue from the horticulture and plant conservation perspective. We really need to make these systems resilient, and maybe there is a role for fuels after all, but not fossil fuels.

CLIMATE TOOLKIT:  
Did you conduct your energy audit in-house or hire a company to perform the analysis?

JON WAGAR:
It was actually both. We hired a company, because our public utility commission had an incentive where they would pay for local governments and non-profits to hire firms to conduct energy audits. And many states have this. An engineering firm conducted the audit, but we needed help translating it and optimizing it. So, we worked with our energy consultant and one of the interesting things we found is that it’s better for us to invest in electrifying the heating rather than replacing windows. You would think efficiency and conservation would be where you should pour your money all the time. But not in this case. Rather than spending $15,000 on new windows for these old houses, or even more, we put a new $15,000 heat pump system in instead. Looking from a cost perspective, it’s less expensive. And also, from a carbon perspective as well: we have old windows from the 1890s that are beautiful, but that leak like sieves. To replace them, we need to think about the scope of emissions from manufacturing, gas, transporting – it just makes more sense to invest in sustainable energy and electrification rather than efficiency or conservation right now.

Then we had our energy consultant come in and look at our utility bills and create a model where most of the energy usage is happening and we translated this into a carbon footprint for scope 1 and scope 2 emissions. Right now, we’re taking that model and putting it into Microsoft Power BI. Microsoft BI will be able to create a real-time dashboard for facilities folks to look at what’s happening on a month-by-month basis. And then we’ll have an educational dashboard for the public showing what our real time carbon footprint is. And then an executive dashboard that’ll look at metrics. So, what the BI is doing is taking this model and making it live. 

JON WAGAR:
The system is taking information from our utility bills, our finance system, and all the areas where we’re getting information about the energy we’re using, and then being able to display and create reports in one centralized place. That’s kind of a real innovation in our sustainable energy operations. We’ll have this one pane of glass where we can look and ask: How much natural gas did our orchid range and conservatory use? How much energy did our electric vehicle use this month? How much solar production was there? Because there are so many data streams coming in, the BI will take all the information from the smart meters across campus and be able to bring it all together in one spot. And that’s happening now as we speak. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT:  
That sounds truly next level. 

JON WAGAR:  
We’re excited about it. Because every single institution has these streams of data, right? We’re finding that working with our finance department or with the local utility, we can start to string it together to create this really clear picture of what’s going on – not just on an annual basis, but on a continuing basis.  

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Do you include Upeo 3 in your emissions analysis, or solely focus on Scope 1 and 2? 

JON WAGAR: 
We’ve done a lot of thought about particularly Scope 3, because those are the sort of things that are difficult for us to get a handle on. When we did our carbon footprint analysis, we decided to look at our visitors, where they came from and their emissions. If we just looked at our emissions and the carbon absorbed through natural climate solutions on our land base, we would be carbon negative. But then calculating the emissions from our visitors – it blew it out of the water as far as our carbon emissions. That’s why we went ahead and got a grant to develop these DC fast chargers – which will be operating by the end of the month – and a bunch of new level two chargers.  

JON WAGAR:
Scope 3 is the most challenging for us. I really believe that we need to explicitly address it, because otherwise we can sort of trick ourselves into saying we’re carbon neutral or net-zero without accounting for Scope 3. When you start to address Scope 3, however, it widens your perspective and the actions that you should be taking – like building a DC fast-charger or looking at our environmental education programs and promoting carbon negative actions. So, again, I think with this wider sort of carbon footprint analysis, we all need to look at our carbon and energy systems while addressing Scope 3 and being explicit that it’s an issue. Scope 1 and Scope 2 – it’s fairly easy to put an impact number on what you’re emitting, and over time looking at reducing it. With Scope 1, it’s just what you’re burning on site, fossil-fuel wise. And then with Scope 2, it’s looking at your energy grid and the electricity you’re pulling from the grid. That stuff is very quantifiable. But Scope 3 is much more qualitative, because there are errors; you don’t know if you’re counting something twice. The whole life cycle analysis is just so complex.

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
How have you begun to tackle your Scope 3 analysis? 

JON WAGAR: 
We have a researcher at Rutgers University we’re collaborating with – she’s working to complete a life cycle carbon footprint analysis, and her specialty is Scope 3. We should have that by the end of the year. And then we’ll have to figure out how we address it, how we communicate it. There are certainly things we won’t be able to do or address – unless we stop getting packages from Amazon operationally, for instance. But then there are things we will be able to do. At any rate, our thoughts have evolved a lot in doing this and thinking more broadly about emissions. Even though unfortunately what that means is Duke Farms won’t show as carbon negative anytime soon. As far as the gross carbon emissions, we could be net negative eventually. But the gross carbon emissions related to this site, and the gross greenhouse gas emissions related to all of our sites, need to be addressed. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Do you have full institutional support for your strategies? 

JON WAGAR: 
We have what we’re calling a Catalyst Initiative. There are three of us within Doris Duke Foundation that are talking a lot about this and elevating it within the organization. It’s our Executive Director Margaret Waldock, and our Facilities & Technology Manager Jim Hanson; we’ve been the ones doing the most thinking about it. However, unlike some botanic gardens and other institutions, our mission is sustainability. So, there’s not a lot of pushback. We’re also forming partnerships with similar sized institutions to figure out the barriers to quick implementation and acceleration of clean energy. What can we do differently with the permitting to make sure that solar happens more quickly? Or battery storage and resilience. Partners and educational institutions can extend our reach and help to influence the speed at which the energy transition is happening. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Is the goal at Duke Farms to become a demonstration campus for other larger institutions – folks with huge amounts of acreage – and be a guidepost for how to adopt best practices in the climate sustainability space?

JON WAGAR: 
We have a platform for influencing the acceleration of clean energy. Of course, we’re not doing everything here. We don’t have offshore wind, for example. But I think what we’re doing on the ground gives us a real seat at the table to help influence the conversation. I see us as being leaders in pushing this forward and using our facility as a platform – not just because we have the technology here and we’re putting it together in a neat way, but also that we have a great spot for convening and bringing people together to talk about these issues. Using our collective experience as a base to be able to create leverage and eventually bring folks together at the national level. We really see ourselves as trying to have a leadership position, at least here in New Jersey locally. Because a lot of these issues are very local, right?  

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Can you tell me about the land regeneration techniques that you’re doing at Duke Farms?  

JON WAGAR: 
So, we have a little over 2,700 acres, and we’ve done a lot of restoration. Much of it was agricultural land in sort of inappropriate areas – so flood plains that would get flooded once every two years or so. What we’ve done is, we work with the federal government, with NRCS, and put easements on about 500 acres along the flood plain — the Raritan River — and then have been restoring it back to native riparian habitat with some innovative funding sources called makazi ya uharibifu wa maliasili. Pia tumeleta pesa za nje kubadilisha yaliyokuwa mahindi na soya kuwa yale yaliyokuwa - kabla hata wakulima wa Uholanzi hawajafika hapa mwanzoni mwa miaka ya 1700 - ardhi ya misitu ya mwambao. Na hiyo ni muhimu sana kwa sababu Mto Raritan ndio ugavi wa maji wa umma. Inakabiliwa na mafuriko mengi. Kwa hivyo urejesho huo utasaidia kupunguza kasi ya mto.

JON WAGAR:
Pia tuna mashamba ya kilimo ambayo tunasimamia - tuna kundi la ng'ombe katika programu ya kilimo cha ikolojia ambayo tunasimamia kwa ajili ya ndege wa nyasi na kazi ya kurejesha malisho ya nyasi. Tuna misitu ya miinuko ambapo tunafanya udhibiti wa spishi vamizi. Tuna mpango amilifu wa kudhibiti kulungu, unaolenga kudhibiti wavamizi, kukuza wenyeji na michakato ya asili ya mfumo ikolojia. Kwa hivyo, tunayo miradi hii yote ya urejeshaji ambayo imekuwa ikiendelea kwa miaka. Miaka mitatu iliyopita, tulianza mradi wa utafiti na Chuo Kikuu cha Rutgers, na tukawalipa ili kutusaidia kujua msingi wa kaboni ulikuwa wa miradi yote ya urejeshaji tuliyokuwa tukifanya. Walichofanya ni kwamba wamepima kaboni ya udongo kwenye udongo wote, kaboni kwenye miti, na wanaangalia mtiririko wa kaboni na hizi. Eddy-Covariance Flux Towers. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Tuambie zaidi kuhusu hilo.

JON WAGAR: 
Hii ni minara ambayo itakuonyesha mabadiliko ya kaboni mwaka mzima katika mifumo ikolojia. Tunayo mita kadhaa, na vile vile mita za mtiririko wa maji ambazo zinapima ukuaji wa miti. Kwa hivyo, tunafanya vipimo vingi sahihi vya kisayansi vya ni kiasi gani cha kaboni ardhi hii inachotwa. Na kisha pia kuangalia mazoea ya usimamizi na jinsi hiyo inavyoathiri. Kwa mfano, tunaangalia jinsi uongezaji wa biochar kwenye udongo huongeza kaboni ya udongo na uchukuaji ardhi, au jinsi mabadiliko katika mazoea ya usimamizi wa ardhi kama vile upandaji miti upya au upandaji wa mimea asilia na vichaka vitabadilisha unywaji wa kaboni. Ni zaidi ya msingi - tunafanya majaribio ambapo tunafanya mbinu halisi za usimamizi wa ardhi ili kuona jinsi hiyo inaweza kuongeza maudhui ya kaboni kwenye udongo huu.  

JON WAGAR: 
Hata hivyo, unachokimbilia kila mahali ni wazo hili kwamba 'asili chanya' sio tu kuhusu kaboni. Tuna baadhi ya maeneo bora ya nyasi yaliyo hatarini kutoweka katika jimbo hapa katika mashamba yetu ya kilimo - nyasi asilia za msimu wa joto kwa sehemu kubwa. Na, wazo letu ni, ng'ombe wanaweza kusaidia kudumisha hilo. Kwa kweli, tunaporudisha wanyama ardhini, tunagundua kuwa viwango vya kaboni kwenye udongo vinapanda. Ingawa ng'ombe ni wazi hutoa methane nyingi, kwa kweli ina athari chanya kwa afya na ubora wa udongo. Itapendeza kuona nambari. Tunafikiri kwamba methane nyingi inakabiliwa na ukweli kwamba ardhi hizi zinashughulikiwa vyema zaidi kuliko ilivyokuwa hapo awali, kuhusu mzunguko wa virutubisho.

Sasa, ikiwa tungeongeza kwa uchukuaji kaboni, tungepanda yote kwenye miti. Kweli? Lakini miti inayokua ingeharibu makao ya nyasi. Hii inaturudisha kwenye wazo la asili chanya. Haya ni mabadilishano ambayo sote tunapaswa kufanya katika kusimamia ardhi au mali. Katika Duke Farms, tunasema hatutaongeza matumizi ya kaboni kwa sababu tuna makazi ya nyasi, tuna ng'ombe, tuna ndege; na ndege walio hatarini kutoweka ndio lengo letu la uhifadhi. Kwa hivyo, tunajaribu kutumia ng'ombe kudhibiti makazi haya badala ya kukata, ambayo ina faida zaidi ya kuongeza kaboni kwenye udongo. Ni poa sana mfumo wa agroecology ambayo inaweza kuwa na uwezo wa kuigwa maeneo mengine kwa ajili ya nyasi na ndege. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Ninapenda kufikiria kuhusu fursa hii katika Duke Farms kwa maonyesho ya mbinu bora - hasa kwa malisho ya mzunguko. Je, kumekuwa na mazungumzo yoyote kuhusu kuunganishwa na wakulima wa viwandani, au watu wanaotumia njia zisizo za kiikolojia za kilimo, na kuwaonyesha kwamba malisho ya mzunguko ni mazoezi ya manufaa sana kwa kusimamia ng'ombe na ardhi?  

JON WAGAR: 
Tunafanya kazi sasa na wakulima wachache wenye nia moja katika eneo hili - kuna wakulima wengi vijana wanaokuja ambao wanarithi mashamba ya familia na hawataki kufanya mazao ya kawaida ya mistari. Kuna fursa ya kweli, lakini pia kuna vikwazo. Kwa mfano, hatuna miundombinu katika Duke Farms kwa kichinjio na wachinjaji hapa. Tunapaswa kupeleka kila kitu Pennsylvania, ambayo ni ya gharama kubwa. Kwa hivyo, ng'ombe wetu wote huchakatwa huko, na kisha kurudishwa kwa shamba letu ili kufanya shughuli za mikahawa. Tumekuwa tukichanga nyingi pia kwa benki za chakula, ambayo imekuwa nzuri kwa sababu tunaweza kutoa nyama ya ng'ombe ya ubora wa juu, iliyolishwa kwa nyasi, ambayo imekamilika kwa nafaka. Itamalizwa na mtu ambaye ni mkamilishaji maalum wa nyama ya ng'ombe iliyolishwa kwa nyasi - na kisha Duke Farms hufanya kazi ya kuuza bidhaa pamoja nao. Wazo ni kusaidia tasnia pia, ukiangalia ndani ya muktadha huu mkubwa. Kisha tunaweza kusaidia kwa matumaini kuanzisha harakati hii na kutetea mbinu bora zaidi. Na nadhani tunatambua kuwa kuna soko kubwa, haswa huko New Jersey, la nyama ya ng'ombe wa kienyeji ambayo inalishwa kwa nyasi na ndege - na kwamba inaweza kudai malipo halisi.  

Na hilo ndilo jambo la nyasi na makazi ya ndege. Unataka kudumisha hali fulani za malisho, urefu fulani wa nyasi, na unataka kuwahamisha ng'ombe mara kwa mara, ambayo ni tofauti na shughuli nyingi za ng'ombe wa nyama. Na nadhani tunachoonyesha kwenye Duke Farms ni kwamba unaweza kufanya yote mawili na kupata malisho yenye tija zaidi, ambayo ni kile ndege wanataka na kile ng'ombe wanataka. Kwa hivyo, tunafanya mfumo huu wa malisho unaosimamiwa kwa umakini. Tumekuwa tukifanya hivyo kwa muda, na tunaboresha mtindo wa biashara sasa hivi. Lakini tena, ni moja ya biashara hizi. Haungekuwa na ng'ombe ikiwa ungejaribu kuongeza uchukuaji kaboni. 

CLIMATE TOOLKIT: 
Nashangaa kama kuna hoja ya kufanywa kuhusu hili. Uwezekano, ndiyo, hauongezei uchukuaji kaboni ndani ya nchi katika mashamba yako - lakini kwa kufanya mawasiliano na kutoa maonyesho ya jinsi ya kusimamia vyema ng'ombe na malisho pamoja, labda unaleta athari kubwa. Iwapo ungekuwa na nia ya kuunganishwa na wafugaji 100 wa ng'ombe, na mashamba haya 100 yaliamua kupitisha malisho ya mzunguko kwenye mali zao, basi ghafla utakuwa na athari kubwa zaidi ya uondoaji wa kaboni kuliko ungekuwa kwenye eneo lako moja tu.  

JON WAGAR: 
Kabisa. Tunapaswa kutambua ukweli kwamba watu hawataacha kula nyama. Kweli? Walakini, ikiwa kuna njia endelevu zaidi za kukuza nyama hiyo, njia zenye afya zaidi na za kibinadamu ambazo tunaweza kuonyesha, labda hilo ni jambo zuri. Unaweza kweli kutumia ng'ombe kuboresha makazi ya nyasi na udongo ikiwa utafanya vizuri. Kwa hivyo hiyo ndiyo kipengele cha asili-chanya. Tunafanya marejesho mengi, agroecology nyingi, lakini si kila kitu kitakuwa kwa ajili ya kuongeza uchukuaji kaboni. Nadhani hiyo ni hatua nzuri sana ambayo wakati mwingine watu hukosa. Tunaweza kuhusishwa sana na mawazo: hali ya hewa, kaboni, utwaaji… Lakini basi tunakosa sehemu ya asili. Wafadhili wetu katika Mashamba ya Duke kimsingi walisema kwamba mali hii lazima itumike kwa manufaa ya wanyamapori na kilimo. Kwa hivyo, tunachukua kile Doris Duke alisema na kujaribu kukifasiri katika muktadha wa kisasa. Na hapa ndipo tulipofikia: kuwa asili chanya na hasi kaboni.