Planting More Food Forests
Agroforestry Regeneration Communities (ARC) is a nonprofit organization planting food forests. Our projects are in Guatemala and East Africa. ARC works in partnership with smallholder farmers (mostly under 1 hectare), including many women, to build environmental and community resilience through agroforestry, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and syntropic forestry.
ARC is Making an Impact
We welcome regenerative agriculture practitioners to join our public Facebook group. It’s an online meeting space for us to learn from one another.
You are invited to watch ARC's webinars
Smallholder Farmers’ Challenges
The world’s increasingly erratic weather harms farms: intense storms, drought, soil erosion, and crop losses result in farmers becoming climate refugees with limited options, including risky immigration.
Population growth over the last century has reduced farm size, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, where converting forests to farmland is no longer viable. Human impacts to formerly wild forestlands, including cutting trees for firewood or clearing land for crops leaves degraded landscapes.
Chemical fertilizers and pesticide use, encouraged by the industrial-agricultural sector, are costly to farmers and damage soil health. Farmers become indebted, leading to economic hardship, despair and even suicide.
Monocrop farming of maize (corn), coffee and other crops reduces diversity in the field and in diets. Nutritional deficiencies lead to poor health and unfavorable economic outcomes for not only farming families, but entire communities.
Here is the good news!
Regenerative Food Forests are Economically & Socially Viable
ARC’s network of regenerative farming communities is changing how food is grown across the world. Successful small farmers can remain in their countries with their families and communities, because their incomes and health are vastly improved thanks to ARC’s proven abilities to provide access to needed resources, training and connections to vital opportunities, building synergy upon synergy. ARC provides food-producing, native and nitrogen-fixing trees along with food crops such as cassava, pineapple, ginger and turmeric. These choices restore soil fertility and eliminate the need for expensive and damaging agrochemicals, mimicking nature, sequestering carbon and providing year-round healthy foodstuffs, versus relying on limited annual harvests.
In Fall of 2021, ARC partnered with One Tree Planted, securing $400K in funding to plant 500K trees in Guatemala during 2022, working with community-based organization Contour Lines. ARC is exploring carbon offset programs to fund additional plantings which also provide direct economic benefits to our member farmers.
Our Impact by the Numbers
ARC is impacting lives by restoring ecosystems and bringing prosperity to local communities.
Our projects focus on the capacity building of women. 60% of Permaculture Paradise Institute trainees are women while Contour Lines only supports tree programs that involve women and children.
Current Countries ARC has worked in so far:
And this is just the beginning!
Mchinji, Malawi; Permaculture Paradise Institute
Zomba, Malawi; Imagine Afrika
Hannah Apricot Eckberg
John Roulac
Get Involved
While our small team has made significant progress , it’s time to expand this work and bring more partners, allies, and supporters. Together, we seek to plant an abundant Earth for all.
Through one-time or monthly donations, planned giving, cryptocurrency donations, and other forms of financial support, your tax-deductible donations (in the US) will help us regenerate the global food system. .
Have an agroforestry project and want to join our Allies network? Tell us more here.
