We chose the name Nangu because it means “home” in Chorotega, a disappeared indigenous language from Central America. It is a reminder that when you don’t take care of what you love, you risk losing it, just as the nearly 200 species that go extinct every day. It is a calling to take care of mother Earth and all living beings. Now, let’s explore how!
Picture of Selva Lacandona, Chiapas by Carlos Herrera
Imagine the predicament of a farming family who had lost their farm. What if instead of underpaid labor or city slums there was a third option? Let’s imagine an alternative where the family is offered access to land, the resources to turn it into a productive food forest, the education necessary and a marketplace to sell their products.
It would all start with a “Learning Journey to become a Steward” using a hands on farmer-to-farmer methodology to transform old degraded farmland into a vibrant food forest. Using well tested regenerative agroforestry recipes the soil would first be enlivened using microorganisms, compost and biochar, hand in hand with pioneering plants to break the compacted soil and build precious organic matter. Next, the trees that will provide food, habitat and materials in the future are strategically planted next to fast growing beneficial plants that provide protection and nutrients to the trees as well as food and cash crops to the forest stewards in the early years.
Now imagine the family farm turning into an established food forest. A diversity of healthy foods, medicinal plants, bioconstruction materials and enough to share with the wildlife that will also claim it as their home. The neighbors in all directions will also be forest stewards, growing food under the same ecological principles and a common production plan. Zoom out and see hundreds of small food forest farms, collectively creating a large scale forest where it used to be only degraded land and dead soil.
The land would be owned collectively as a commons, and each family would have exclusive use of the land assigned to them so they can care for it and plan for the long term. To work in a commons entails agreements on the way the land is used, putting in place incentives to keep the members aligned to the core values and the noble cause of the community. It is a self balancing distributed system, in tune with the ecological and social boundaries of the place. It gives a great deal of autonomy and self determination to the different stakeholder groups within their area of influence while simultaneously ensuring that the collective’s core values are respected.
Having a network of stewards producing according to a common production plan opens the opportunity to economies of scale. It becomes possible to create a series of multi purpose processing facilities that can process the diverse harvest from the forest into high quality products. For example, if the stewards have cacao trees, it is easy to bring the harvest to the local micro factory where a world renowned chocolatier has trained the community to produce a spectacular chocolate. The value of fine chocolate is far greater than selling the dried beans as a commodity. The potential of local microfactories extend to all kinds of food, medicinal plants and eco building materials. A distributed green industry can sprout from the creativity of the steward network in cooperation with world class chefs, scientists and eco builders. A microfactory network can solve the common challenges of isolated agro-ecological farms by combining the output of the farms and transforming it into a diverse range of high quality products, guaranteeing regenerative standards. The combined volume also facilitates the logistics and access to eco ethical markets at local, national and international level. It is an organized steward network that farms, transforms and sells the products of a regenerative food forest to multiple markets.
Now picture the other family in this story. The one that will enjoy amazing, healthy and regenerative forest products. Knowing that their purchase is helping restore the Earth’s balance and supporting the families of the forest stewards. The “enjoyers” will be able to scan a code in each product that will reveal its origin, the people that produced it and the transformational story of the place that grew it. With the same spirit of radical transparency, the selling price will be disclosed to all the stakeholders that contributed in the creation of the product and the income will be shared transparently amongst all of them. No matter how far away both families are, they will be connected.
Nangu envisions the use of technology in the service of the core values and as an enhancer to traditional practices and wisdom. The elder’s knowledge on how to grow food and overcome agricultural challenges can be systematized in an AI knowledge base to be shared amongst stewards across nationalities. Traditional practices of governance and decision making inspired in the commons, will be supported by a voting app. The trust built between farmers and enjoyers at a local market can be extended through distances by the use of a blockchain based tracking mechanism linking the product to the farmer as well as their story and production ethics. The meticulous measurement of trees to calculate the growth and carbon capture of a forest can be enhanced by drones scanning and rendering a forest 3D model in a fraction of the time. It is worth emphasizing that technology is a tool to serve people and values and not the other way around.
Nangu’s special interest is to use the regeneration of vast food forests as a protection barrier to old growth forest that are currently under threat of being swallowed by the industrial farmland expansion. We embrace the commitment to protect the remaining reservoirs of biodiversity held in tropical forests by reverting the damage around them and making sure that the forest stewards in charge thrive doing so. Let’s turn the dire concerns brought by the climatic crisis into inspired action that addresses the global challenges in a responsible and humanized way. This is an invitation to change the course of history with a down to earth approach.
Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. – Victor Hugo
In summary, Nangu is developing a replicable model that enables local community to become stewards of food forests that they will grow on degraded land creating a buffer zone around forest conservation areas. The Nangu community will enable access to land and education to selected landless farmers for the opportunity to become forest stewards. Nangu’s distributed governance system will enable the network of small farms to work together, to manage an array of local micro-factories and to gain access to eco-ethical markets. The value chain will be made radically transparent using blockchain technology to track forest products from farm to fork and fairly distribute income based on the value that each stakeholder provides, from investors to farmers.
<aside> ☝🏽 Todo: review coverage of Regenerative, Agroforestry, Small biodiverse farms
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