Uplifting Smallholder Farmers through Regenerative Agriculture

Wain Collen, co-founder and executive director of Fundación Aliados in Ecuador, joins Scott Stone, Marlies Quirino, and Lucia Guaita on The Lookfar Podcast: Voices from the Wild. Aliados’s work is centered on four pillars – practicing regenerative agriculture, incubating bioeconomy initiatives, connecting to responsible markets, and creating new ecological value. Aliados just launched the Center for Bioeconomy with eleven indigenous and local community organizations, spearheading an innovative investment hub in the Ecuadorian Amazon to scale resilient community-led businesses. A fascinating discussion with Wain about Aliados' remarkable work. Available on all major podcast platforms. Just search Lookfar and you'll find it! 

Sara Lara and Isabella Cortes join us on the Lookfar Podcast to talk about how they are striving to break down barriers at grassroots levels in Colombia preventing rural and indigenous women from becoming conservationists through their work with ⁠⁠Women for Conservation⁠⁠⁠ (W4C), founded by Sara and now run by her daughter Isabella, and ⁠Fundación ProAves⁠⁠, now run by Sara. In a wide ranging conversation, we talk about how helping women to become park rangers in remote protected areas and providing accessible reproductive healthcare to rural communities supports inclusive conservation and how this has been a life-changer for thousands of girls and women. Available on all major podcast platforms. Just search Lookfar and you'll find it!

We talk with Daniel Aristizabal of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) about his work protecting isolated indigenous peoples in Colombia. These are indigenous communities that, sometimes centuries ago, decided to withdraw and avoid contact with the outside world, which Daniel describes both as a defense strategy and an act of rebellion. Protecting the rights of indigenous peoples is never easy, and here ACT faces the exceptional challenge of having to do so without contacting the communities it seeks to protect. Available on all major podcast platforms. Just search Lookfar and you'll find it!

The intrepid team at the Gouritz Cluster Biosphere Reserve (GCBR) in the Western Cape in South Africa joins Marlies Quirino and Scott Stone of Lookfar Conservation for an in-person discussion about community-level conservation work done at a landscape scale. The 3.2 million hectares of the GCBR, declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2015, is a living laboratory for complex conservation and restoration initiatives in a region where three global biodiversity converge: the Fynbos, the Succulent Karoo, and the Maputoland-Tongoland-Albany. It's no substitute for an authentic South African braai, but a fascinating and inspiring discussion nonetheless! 

Luís Paulo Ferraz and Carlos Ruiz of the Associação Mico-Leāo-Dourado (AMLD) join Marlies Quirino and Scott Stone of Lookfar Conservation to talk about protecting and restoring the habitat of the endangered Golden Lion Tamarin – a small monkey found only in surviving fragments of the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Luís Paulo and Carlos talk about how AMLD’s work is driven by local communities, sparking social entrepreneurship throughout the region – such as the organic farm and bed and breakfast Fazenda dos Cordeiros and women-led tree nursery businesses that supply seedlings for hundreds of native tree species to AMLD and other NGOs, including recent Lookfar Podcast guests Nicholas and Raquel Locke of REGUA.

Nicholas and Raquel Locke of the Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu (REGUA), located in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, join us on the Lookfar Podcast for an in-person discussion with Scott Stone and Marlies Quirino of Lookfar Conservation. We talk about REGUA’s efforts to connect and protect the highly biodiverse forests of the Guapiaçu Valley, just a few hours drive from Rio de Janeiro, and the many ways in which restoring forests helps create sustainable economic opportunities for surrounding communities.

David LeZaks, a Senior Fellow at the Croatan Institute, and David Strelneck, founder of Nourish, join us on the Lookfar Podcast to discuss the opportunities for farmers and the benefits for the public of regenerative agriculture. LeZaks and Strelneck tell us about the different dimensions of regenerative agriculture, discussing ecological, economic, social, and cultural drivers and ways in which new technology platforms could revolutionize price discovery and market access, including through an initiative they’re working on called New Food Marketplace. We then dive into the benefits of regenerative agriculture for nature, people, and the economy, and how the United States and Europe can learn from regenerative systems that have been implemented in the Global South. Make sure to listen until the end where David LeZaks takes us to ‘the dark matter of food’. The Food Marketplace project is a collaboration between The Croatan Institute, Nourish, MarketSquare, and the Bionutrient Food Association. See links below for more information. New Food Marketplace rewards farmers for the benefits of Regenerative Agriculture  Croatan Institute Nourish MarketSquare Bionutrient Food Association

Rafaela Nicola and Gaston Fulquet of Wetlands International join us this month on the Lookfar Podcast. We talk about the many threats facing the world’s great wetlands and how Wetlands International’s community-centric efforts seek to combat those threats, working collaboratively with regional and local governments, civil society, and the private sector. Rafaela also shares insights from partnering with the Kadiweu indigenous communities in the Pantanal in Brazil, and Gaston details his work in the Parana Basin in Argentina. A fascinating and hopeful discussion as we kick of "Season 2" of the Lookfar Podcast.

Paul Rice joins us on the Lookfar Podcast this week. Back in 1998, Paul founded Fair Trade USA and serves as its president and CEO. Paul shares with us his first introduction to fair trade when working with farmers in the mountains of Nicaragua in the 1980s. We then delve into Fair Trade today, with nearly one million farmers and workers from 62 countries selling products into the United States under the Fair Trade Certified label, generating $846 million in premiums that’s helped to provide much needed housing, education, health care, and other benefits to local communities. And we look ahead at the future of Fair Trade and the powerful role socially and environmentally conscious businesses can play in building a more sustainable world.

The Lookfar Podcast returns to the Canandé Reserve in Ecuador this week, where we find a mostly dry and somewhat quiet spot to sit and talk with Martin Schaefer and Adriana Argoti of Fundación Jocotoco, which manages Canandé and fifteen other protected reserves across much of Ecuador’s most biodiverse and threatened ecosystems. Martin and Adriana talk with us about the significant new land acquisitions that have added more than 4,000 hectares (nearly 10,000 acres) to Canandé and the construction of the Chocó Lab, where Jocotoco can expand the scientific research conducted throughout the reserve. With the late afternoon sounds of the forest in the background, we also dwell on the immense challenges still facing the imperiled forests of the Ecuadorian Chocó and Jocotoco’s ambitions and hopes for the future.