Regenerative organic farming practices are a powerful way to improve our soil, our air, our water, and our health. While creating healthier foods, decreasing pollution, and drawing carbon out of the atmosphere back into the soil; these practices can also have many practical and economic benefits for farmers. Despite the benefits, there is still a lack of education programs or resources dedicated towards helping farmers in Kern County transition to regenerative farming and thus a low rate of adoption.

In order to change this situation, the RNP Foundation, the White Buffalo Foundation, TomKat Ranch, and Bakersfield College worked in partnership to create The Regenerative Agriculture Education Center. The Regenerative Agriculture Education Center will be a living laboratory that exhibits current practices in regenerative agriculture, offers non-credit workshops and courses, and acts as a networking hub for connecting experts, farmers, students, consumers, and landholders. The advisory board consists of thought leaders in the field from industry experts, to educators, to innovative non-profits.

The center will be farmed and maintained by BC student interns as well as the associated education infrastructure. The center will provide specialized workshops/courses, act as a knowledge hub for regenerative farming in Kern County, create an online certificate course, and maintain an “equipment library” of many tools necessary to transition to regenerative farming that local farmers could rent free of charge. All the course work in the center will be available not only to BC students, but anyone who’s interested. Additionally, in collaboration with the California Renewable Energy Laboratory, it will introduce a new system of farming called Agrovoltaics. Agrovoltaics is a system of farming that involves placing solar panels above the crops to provide solar energy for the machines that are used in farming

Farming in general is a difficult business to start oneself and keep viable.  Starting with or transitioning in to regenerative organic farming can make this even more difficult.  The vast majority of small start-up farms end up shutting down within 5 years. This is why the RNP Foundation is proud to have donated 100,000 dollars to Kitchen Table Advisors: an organization that helps small regenerative organic farms become economically viable.

Fifty percent of the farmers helped are women, fifty percent are immigrants, and fifty percent speak little English and typically worked on a larger farm and then decided to start their own.   Despite the difficulty of starting new regenerative organic farms and the barriers their particular clientele face, Kitchen Table Advisors are able to increase the average take home pay of the farmers by 64 percent from 21,000 dollars to 35,000 dollars per year; thus helping them make enough money to make a living solely from their own farms.

December 12, 2020

Environmental healing is one of the five main pillars of the RNP Foundation. The key to a healthy environment is healthy soil, and one of the main tools for healing soil is regenerative agriculture. The Foundation donated to the Rodale Institute, the first organization that pioneered scientific research on organic food and regenerative farming in the world, to help their efforts in establishing a second base in California, apart from their primary location in Pennsylvania. Additionally, the RNP Foundation donated to the Soil Health Institute (SHI). A group that does research on soil health and helps showcase and track the economic and nutritional benefits and spreads this information to farmers.

January 31, 2020

With the help of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP), the foundation has put forth $250,000 to help relief efforts of the destructive fires across the globe. The donation was split to share $150,000 for the Australian Bush Fires and $100,000 towards the Brazilian Amazon Fires. The CDP allocates the money to various sources on the ground where it will be most useful in addressing the damage.