The past 6 years, Contour Lines Corp has planted over 13k productive agroforestry sites (or "food forests") in 374 villages across Guatemala. By transitioning land out of slash-and-burn chemical monocultures into these organic food forests, our mission had always been ecological: conserving soil, restoring land, sequestering carbon, improving biodiversity. And we've achieved this by incentivizing smallholder farmers, offering tree grants, and designing these food forests to produce a diversity of crops for improved income and family nutrition.🌱🌳🌳🌳

But now, through years of data collection and interviewing the families,* and also seeing the common error of other nonprofits (who only deliver trees, take a picture, then disappear), we've realized that in order to achieve our ecological goals, to achieve anything, our work must widen to include the post-harvest, the processing, shipping and marketing of the harvests. If the farmers aren't able benefit from these sites, they would be abandoned, or cut down and the land reverted to slash-and-burn.🌱🌳🌳🌳

Therefore, since 2021, Contour Lines has launched our "Post-Harvest" department with this objective: to buy the harvests from the 13k Contour Lines farmers. To date we have the Contour Lines Center in Antigua, Guatemala, where we receive shipments from the communities, value-add into products, and sell in the tienda and restaurant. We have also established three value-added setups in communities so far, so that more of the process (and income) remains in the hands of these smallholder communities. That brings us to this fundraiser, where we will expand this initiative; we will build and install two more fermenter/dryer setups in two more communities. So please support, and help build the infrastructure of this movement to transition rural Guatemalan communities, to regenerative agroforestry... not only transition the lands, but also the economies.🌱🌳🌳🌳

*(In interviews with 11k families, when asked "what is your objective in planting these food forests?" over 95% responded to sell the harvests, to make income.)

Solar Dryers For Indigenous Communities

By Contour Lines Corp

Solar Dryers For Indigenous Communities

Support Contour Lines value-adding Cacao