COP27’s Soil Reckoning: How Agriculture Is Returning To Its Roots

COP27’s Soil Reckoning: How Agriculture Is Returning To Its Roots

Share to Linkedin Lee Jones is a farmer in Huron, Ohio. He's also a devotee of John Steinbeck, whose depression-era masterpiece "Grapes of Wrath" sang to him of soils robbed of value and people robbed of homes and livelihoods. 1938: A farm in the dustbowl of Colorado. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images) Today, Jones and his 400-acre "Chef's Garden" farm and state of the art culinary school on the banks of Lake Erie are the toast of Michelin star chefs. But around 40 years ago, when he was just shy of age 20, the Jones family experienced how climate and the economy can destroy a business. In 1983, hundreds of acres of Jones Farm fresh market vegetables were crushed in an unprecedented rain of hail. The avalanche of debt that followed at 22 percent interest rates smothered the business almost to death. The bank took their home and land and they moved into a 150-year-old house with a leaky ceiling and curtains for doors. They rebuilt their growing acreage in small rented parcels, selling goods from the back of farm trucks and station wagons. Farm life is tough, but this was next-level. Farmer Lee Jones has set a high standard for