Bioconcentric Farms
Bioconcentric Farms is a Farm Incubator located in Leelanau County, Michigan.
Bioconcentric Farms is using various models of Agroecology to restore the soils and land use of a historic farm abandoned soon after World War II. The certified organic farm includes a native plant nursery where seed production is being incorporated into the field layout of edible crops. Biodiversity is being increased inclusive of creating populations of various milkweed species to increase a monarch population that returns yearly.
Bioconcentric Farms is plural since the broader mission of this first farmland restoration is to provide training for novice farmers to enable them to purchase their own land and start their own farms. Graduates of this program will have the option of growing collaboratively with Biconcentric Farms gaining assistance in organic certification and aggregating crops to reach larger purchasers.
The owner of Bioconcetnic Farms has over 30 years of experience in Restoration Ecology and will share this knowledge with Interns and Resident Farmers and Designers and Researchers.
Restoration Ecology
Restoration Ecology is an applied science. As incorporated on this farm, it is the undertaking of activities to work with natural succession to guide the creation of native vegetation to a desired end. This discipline has its roots in Madison Wisconsin following the dust bowl when professors at the university set out to see if recreating natural vegetation was feasible, conducting their experiments at University’s arboretum.
These activities were informed by the groundbreaking work of John Curtis’ Vegetation of Wisconsin in the 1950s, and the inception of the science of Ecology by Henry Cowles based on his observations of southern Lake Michigan sand dunes in the 1890s.