Summer farm crew posing for outdoor photo

Stockbridge School of Agriculture

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Professor Lisa Depiano Awarded $30,000 Grant to Host Climate Adaptation Learning Lab On Campus

Stockbridge professor Lisa Depiano founded the UMass Carbon Farming Initiative, which for five years has trained students at our Agricultural Learning Center (ALC) in the use of agroecology, regenerative food production and climate mitigation techniques.

Carbon farming, in which carbon is sequestered into soil stocks and above-ground biomass, reduces the harmful release of carbon into the atmosphere that comes from commercial farming. 

Instructors Lisa Depiano and Nicole Burton, along with our Sustainable Food & Farming students, also manage the university's first Chestnut/Sheep Silvopasture, in which trees and livestock are used to enrich soil productivity without the use of powered tractors.

The new grant, awarded to Depiano by the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Partnership, will fund a new site at the ALC to teach "alley cropping," the integration of trees among farm crops, giving students additional hands-on learning opportunities to practice climate mitigation and sustainable farming techniques proven by science.

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Lisa Depiano

Stockbridge News

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  • Om Parkash Dhankher and Image of His Book Cover

    Parkash Dhankher Co-Edits Book on Using Plants to Clean Soils and Create Bio Energy

    A new scientific anthology highlights the future of phytoremediation – using plants and soil microbes to clean contaminated environments – and the future of the bioenergy production industries.  Stockbridge professor and agriculture biotechnologist Om Parkash Dhankher is both an author and a co-editor of the book Bioenergy Crops: A Sustainable Means of Phytoremediation (CRC 2022). The comprehensive book provides researchers with the latest updates in the field, detailing the most promising plant and alga species for producing bioenergy, harnessing microbial fuel cells, constructing wetlands, and repairing damaged soils.
  • Fly on a Turkey Sandwich

    How Common Flies Are an Understudied Disease Vector

    New research from Stockbridge entomology professor John Stoffolano concerning “synanthropic” flies—or the non-biting flies that live with us—argues that we need to pay far more attention to them as disease carriers. While epidemiologists have focused their attention on the biting flies that can spread diseases by transferring infected blood from host to host, it turns out that what the non-biting flies regurgitate is a far greater risk to human health. “I’ve been working on synanthropic flies since I was a graduate student in the 1960s,” says Stoffolano, “And synanthropic flies have largely been ignored... We should pay attention to the ones that live among us because they get their nutrients from people and animals that shed pathogens in their tears, feces and wounds.”
  • Sheep graze on campus grass as students look on

    The Sheep Are Coming!: Public Invited to UMass for Demonstration and Re-Imagining of Land Management

    Long before there were riding lawnmowers, sheep kept the grass short in parks and public spaces. Why not, in the era of global climate change, bring sheep back to help mow the lawns at the University of Massachusetts Amherst?  On September 23 and 24 from 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM, a small flock of sheep from the Hadley Farm will be coming to the UMass Amherst campus as part of a student-led, participatory reimagining of our campus land, how it’s used and valued, and toward what ends. We invite you to join us!
  • Rachel Hestrin, Plant-Microbe Interactions

    Rachel Hestrin Named Advance Faculty Fellow to Promote Social Equity

    Our newest faculty member, Dr. Rachel Hestrin, has been named a 2022-23 Advance Faculty Fellow by UMass ADVANCE, a research and programming organization seeking to promote gender and racial equity for faculty at UMass.  Hestrin will represent Stockbridge as she works on this year's theme, “Recognizing Research and Crediting Collaboration Equitably.”  Stockbridge benefits from having several prominent women in science serving in our faculty, as well as an international cohort of top researchers from around the globe.
  • TV news image of fire at Smith Tech High School

    Stockbridge Donates $1000 to Smith Vocational-Agricultural High School Horticulture and Forestry Program

    On May 23, 2022, Smith Vocational-Agricultural High School in Northampton suffered a fire in the main shop for their Horticulture/Forestry program, displacing some 25-30 students and and causing extensive damage. Stockbridge School of Agriculture has responded by making a cash donation of $1000 to the Horticulture/Forestry program at Smith Voc to help replace some of the equipment their students use daily.  The donation is also intended to encourage the efforts of Smith Tech students, and to demonstrate the power of community ties in our region.
  • Book Cover

    Keiluweit and Xing Co-Edit Anthology of Soil Science and Environmental Research

    Stockbridge professors Marco Keiluweit and Baoshan Xing are co-editors of a new book providing a state-of-the-art overview of research in soil biogeochemical processes, and strategies for greenhouse gas mitigation under climate change. Multi-Scale Biogeochemical Processes in Soil Ecosystems: Critical Reactions and Resilience to Climate Changes (Wiley 2022) offers a systematic and interdisciplinary approach to sustainable agricultural development and management of soil ecosystems in a changing climate.  This authoritative text is essential reading for scientists, engineers, agronomists, chemists, biologists, academic researchers, consultants, and other professionals whose work involves the nutrient cycle, ecosystem management, and climate change.

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