Indigenous wisdom, modern application.

Our model for regeneration is the chakra integral, an indigenous agroforestry practiced in the forests of Ecuador and Peru for millennia before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Meaning "big round garden" in the Kichwa language, the chakra integral forms a landscape that resembles a mosaic, which is economically productive and ecologically friendly to the area’s biodiversity.

Unlike conventional farms that only produce one crop like sugar or palm oil, a diverse agroforestry farm combines high-value crops like heirloom cacao and spices (turmeric, pepper, vanilla, cardamom) with nutrient-dense sustenance foods (plantain, peach palm, jackfruit and breadnut; and superfoods like acai, moringa, borojó). The diversity contributes significantly to the farmer’s income and food security, especially in remote rural communities where commercial food supplies and jobs are rare. 

How agroforestry works

Agroforestry systems operate on the principle of synergy, or interactions amongst species where all actors benefit. Amidst the densely packed riot of vegetation, several distinct layers emerge: the tall trees that make the upper canopy, the shorter trees and plants that comprise the understory, the ferns and creeping plants close to the ground, the vines snaking down from the canopy, and epiphytes, or air plants, surviving on condensation. 

Below ground, each type of plant plumbs the soil to a different depth. Plants on the forest floor cycle nutrients rapidly from leaf fall and other forest debris on the surface. Mature trees with deep taproots mine minerals from the depths where soil meets bedrock, funnel the nutrients up into their leaves and branches, which eventually fall to the forest floor to be recycled by other plants. 

Because a variety of plants are harnessing nutrients from different levels on the surface and underground, they are not directly competing. Rather, they are helping each other.