Why do you plan to buy the land and not use existing land?
A typical ecological farm works in isolation and struggles to process and distribute their products. The sheer volume of one product is not enough to justify the cost of processing and distribution is costly and time consuming.
The Nangu model is solving the common challenges of small ecological farms by concentrating hundreds of small farms into one network. This allows for the creation of processing facilities and distribution channels that resemble the efficiency of large scale industrial farming. Having hundreds of farms in the same place represents a processing and distribution advantage over a disperse network.
Following the same logic, certification of the products also becomes much easier and more affordable since all farms follow the same agricultural plan, there is an internal cross examination system between farmers and the certification agency can check farmers in the same location.
Another element to consider is long term stability of the network. Our team has over a decade of experience working with farmers and there tendency of short term planing, were a farmer can change his mind over a week and decide to clear cut a forest to introduce cattle, or terminate a long term agreement with their coop to sell for a few extra pennies per kilo. Nangu is providing a lot to the farmers and in return it needs to ensure long term stable relations and ethical behaviour from the farmers who collectively own the land. By Nangu owning the land, the steward family has a guarantee that they can stay in the land for generations as long as the agro-ecological practices are followed but if there is a serious violation of the agreements the stewards can be expelled and lose access to the land. This is a consequence that we hope never happens, but it also works as a strong "negative incentive" to prevent stewards behaving against the nangu core values.
From a social perspective, Costa Rica alone has lost more than half of the small farmers in the past two decades. Farmers in general are having great difficulties to prosper, but landless farmers are in the most vulnerable position and Nangu would like to focus on them first.
We do not discard the possibility that after some years of a Nangu Village being established, some programs can be initiated with existing local farmers who wish to grow and sell through the Nangu Network.
Which legal entity will own the land?
Each village will have a Village Coop that owns and manages the land. It provides many of the services and requirements of a municipality. All villagers are members of the Village Coop.
How do we ensure that landownership can be enforced?
Why do you only have two hectares per farm?
It is estimated by our agro-ecology team that two hectares is the amount of land that a family can manage on their own after establishing a food forest. Two hectares can provide enough space to build a house, work area, a food security garden, an analog forest for materials and a commercially focused food forest that covers 80% of the land.
Why is Nangu not a non-profit?
Nangu is a network of purpose-driven organizations. Some are for-profit and others are non profit. Nangu Soul is a non-profit and works as the "umbrella" organization that provides the values, franchise agreements and essential support services. Many of the productive organizations in the network are for profit.
What problem are you solving?
We are making regenerative farming viable and scalable. Otherwise, we are left with industrial farming emitting a third of CO2 emissions, depleting arable land at an alarming rate, cutting forests to provide new arable land, and being a major driver of the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity.