⛓️ Value Chain Development
Activities
Terra Umida Agroforestry Corridor
Another 30 kilometers along the trail, hikers pass wide degraded farmlands called Terra Umida. This is a government-supported area where the landless farmer movement of Brazil is working under very tough conditions to regenerate degraded land through agroforestry. Sinal do Vale has started building new supply chains for the farmer and food sector, seeing the potential to build a true bioeconomy with these farmers to benefit their livelihoods. This is about rebuilding food systems, forming regenerative supply chains with local producers, and creating economic pathways that align with ecological restoration.
Madre Frutas Social Enterprise
Madre Frutas is a women-led enterprise that turns abundant local jackfruit into marketable products. It models agro-processing tied to regenerative practice, women’s leadership, and economic resilience—creating livelihoods where options are scarce while respecting what the land already provides.
Nature-Based Enterprise
Nature-based enterprise ties livelihoods to healthy ecosystems inside each Tapere. Deprivation—scarce jobs, housing stress, thin services—slows circular economies even where biodiversity is high. Reconnecting Northland co-designs ventures that convert cultural and ecological capital into revenue, then helps align investment and fair flows so income supports regeneration rather than extracting from it.
ReVillage Co-Op Enterprises
They are breaking ground on a community-owned enterprise—a public house, marketplace, café, food hub, and small-business incubator—in a long-vacant historic firehouse (once a train station) facing the new town square. The Community Food Hub & Marketplace is underway; a Community Farm Project is funded and launching soon. Each effort is co-created with communities already in place, toward a future in right relationship with land and history. Smaller cooperatives are forming in the ReVillage ecosystem: an intergenerational childcare collective, a local food and land-care initiative, and service ventures emerging through relationships. They are testing income-sharing, cooperative ownership, and regenerative service models that can sustain livelihoods where centralized systems often overlook rural communities. Technical help on legal structure and seed funding for place-rooted enterprises remain needs—the building blocks of a local economy that can support people while regenerating land.
Food Sovereignty and Seed Saving Networks
After Manos Cambiadas, a gap stood out: many farmers could not sell what they grew. They started “Caja Verde,” a community-supported agriculture box; a year later that evolved into Mercado Verde. For over four years they have run a farmers market—200-plus markets—strengthening food sovereignty and security. ReGenerOsa works with farmers, elders, and schools on seed-saving networks, agroecological gardens, and cooperative distribution grounded in local knowledge and biodiversity. Pilot gardens are underway; the collective supports women reclaiming ancestral seed practices and native varieties. Scaling will take resources—more communities, training, and a regional network to link growers, seeds, and markets in a closed loop.
Value Chain Collaboration Canvas
VC3 stitches stakeholders so each chain link reinforces the next. In Tabanan, agroforestry cacao growers work with Agridesa on data-backed farming, digital tools, and finance; Cau Chocolates off-takes organic, agroforestry-grown beans. When actors align, projects become investable and finance can follow. Farmers report stronger soils and bean quality plus roughly IDR 10 million extra per harvest cycle—income that helps keep forest on the land, catchments intact, and businesses viable.
Native Crop Regeneration and Supply Chain Development
Wild cacao and wild pepper anchor the model—food and medicine—restoring degraded forest while standing up processing and trade. Early revenue is meant to keep operations on the ground. Economic integration targets agroforestry on an initial ~2,200 ha, processing infrastructure, and a demonstrator that forest-based communities can earn livelihoods while protecting and restoring land. Pepper and cacao are the live cases; a later phase may extend toward ethnobotanical products.
New Revenue Development
Farmers now earn from work the landscape needs: restoring drystone walls (sometimes through local enterprises built around that craft), hosting visitors who want the story from the people who farm the land, and—in Wild Atlantic Nature—paid crews (for example) controlling invasive rhododendron several days a week. Payment is tied to ecosystem services, not only to commodity output—linking income to stewardship and creating rural jobs around that labour.
Institutional and Commercial Purchasing
Schools, universities, and hospitals could anchor steady demand for regional farms, but procurement rules, food-safety expectations, and thin coordination often block uptake. The Trust is bundling responses: procurement subsidies that reimburse institutional and commercial buyers for verified local purchases; investment in aggregation and food-safety capacity so farms can meet buyers where compliance is non-negotiable; and digital links between hubs and institutions to cut administrative friction.
WNC Food Hub Collaborative
The WNC Food Hub Collaborative is a newly formed group of 10 participating food hubs across the region that collectively purchase from hundreds of local farms. This existing network of aggregation, storage, and distribution capacity provides the foundation upon which a truly integrated regional food system can be built. The Trust works to strengthen and integrate this local food supply chain, reducing inefficiencies, building infrastructure, and expanding capacity.
Farm Food Access Program
The Farm Food Access Program is the Trust’s lead intervention: it pays farmers for food that is then prepared or boxed for community resource centers across six counties—getting dollars onto farms while feeding neighbors through trusted front-line organizations. The design grew from an eight-week pilot backed by a $1 million American Red Cross grant. The theory of change is straightforward—pay producers first, widen the program, and over time reduce dependence on one-off disaster and charity dollars by knitting in schools, institutions, and households as reliable buyers, supported by storytelling that builds demand for local food. Operations lean on Fastroots, a platform for spotting needs, coordinating resources, tracking impact, and sharing transparent, community-held data.
Dunhill Ecopark Development Initiative
Dunhill Ecopark is a community-scale hub meant to combine living, working, learning, and enterprise: roughly 38 businesses already operate on-site, with education spaces anchoring how people encounter regenerative agriculture and reflect on environmental, social, and economic impacts together. A planned on-site milk-processing facility would keep more value from regenerative dairy in the territory—linking premium products to fair returns for farmers. The hub mixes earned income, grants, and investment so the site can stay viable while the model is tested at scale.
Resource Transformation and Material Development
A central focus involves identifying and transforming undervalued resources into valuable products and materials. They work with Mérinos d'Arles sheep wool, exploring natural dyeing techniques and new applications that can reactivate industries and reconnect value chains while avoiding plastics. The organization examines how seeds can be made with rice—common in the Camargue—and explores the leftovers of olive pressing, extruding and mixing them with minerals to create chairs. They investigate salt—one of the most abundant materials in the world—exploring crystallization processes that only use wind and sun to produce wall applications in buildings, valuable for energy-efficient construction. Beyond material development, they create software and documentation for these age-old materials, showing how they can be used in different ways and shared with design communities.
Regenerative Value Chain Development
The work has developed three regenerative businesses now in operation: an almond-focused company (Almendrehesa), an olive oil cooperative (Habitat), and a food platform (AlVelAl Foods) to sell regenerative products from across the territory. These businesses provide farmers with premium prices for regenerative products while supporting the transition to regenerative practices. 43 locally run businesses have benefited from increased access to new markets and value chain infrastructure, creating economic opportunities that align with ecological restoration goals.
Regenerative Products & Services Portfolio
A developing line of bioregionally-rooted products including herbal tea blends from native species, guided eco-tourism experiences to restoration sites, and local food products. The products are developed through participatory design processes that integrate community knowledge, ecological criteria, and market opportunities. By creating value chains that circulate benefits within the bioregion, Acción Serrana reduces dependence on external funding while strengthening connections between local communities, ecosystems, and economic opportunities.
Urban-Rural Connection Initiative
The Urban-Rural Connection Initiative creates bridges between urban and rural areas by establishing agroecological stores in urban neighborhoods, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas. Products from ABIF units are marketed directly to urban consumers with prices kept accessible, ensuring that quality organic food reaches communities that might otherwise lack access. Consumers participate in educational programs on traditional food preparation, reinforcing culinary heritage, nutritional awareness, and sustainable consumption habits. This helps maintain traditional food knowledge while building urban-rural connections.