AgroforestDAO

We are a movement of people building a rooted narrative that incentivizes food, forest and culture. We believe that regeneration is not just a measure of forest cover or sequestred carbon. In our view, regeneration also involves food sovereignty and cultural connection with natural resources.

Seasonal management of intergenerational food forests should be part of our societies lifes, should be a career anyone can choose to engage, directly or indirectly. In fact that's how it was a few centuries ago in many human tribes. However, In the modern era, we went from community-oriented to market-oriented agriculture, and the many values involved in this activity were reduced only to financial value. The community engagement was reduced to individual farmer investment and risk taking, which rarely pays off, so it's better to move to the city, and so the rural exodus started.

We now live in a time of packed cities and empty fields, a dichotomy between urban and rural. Many of us are tired of this way of living and want to change, often taking some permaculture course, saving money to buy a land and becoming a neo rural, having to start from zero, with no intergenerational legacy and with no community support.

Our goal is to build the web3 trails that can support the emergence of a blended urban/rural global society of food forest commoners. Where anyone from their own apartment can have shares in supply chains, join training and experiences in the agrifood sector, be supported, recognized, rewarded for the engagement and grow older together with their pet food forests. People with their belly full are harder to be exploited, as Kropotkin says, and if we can share a global agenda of seasonal food forest harvests and activities, share seeds and experiences we can have a bit more piece of mind, a bit more food sovereignty, and know that our kids and grandkids can inherit the rooted wealth we create.

Commoning around food cultivated by the AgroforestDAO community during our side event at ETH Rio

We are fundraising to continue on the ground experiments that co-produce food and forests, contextualizing the process in order to make it easy to comprehend by other local stewards and the global community. We are also testing strategies and tools for governance (Wonderverse.xyz), tracking (Spatial), and voucher sales (RWA NFTs).

How we used the funds raised in previous rounds:

Building a Treasure

We are saving part the funds in our multisig, with the goal of supporting new local stewards once we have the web3 trails ready to go.

Feijão Amigo NFT Collection

During Q2 (Autumn in Brazil) we launched a NFT campaign to test a model to forward finance the production of 1 acre of beans. The Feijão Amigo collection was a way to buy a share of the beans production before the harvest, thus taking part of the risk together with the local steward, allowing him to focus solely on agriculture for the community and not having to worry about markets.

With the NFT sales we managed to fund 25% of the costs, and the rest was paid by the funds received during the Gitcoin Alpha round.

Metaverse

A metaverse exhibit was created and updated during every new activity on the cultivation, providing storytelling and contextualization space for the followers and allowing them to meet the stewards and understand the cultivation process. It was also connected with the metaverse created during NFT Brasil, the biggest web3 event in 2023: https://www.spatial.io/s/SAF-Morro-da-Redencao-Redemption-Hill-Bias-Fortes-MG-Brazil-642bf48f455b3cf31acabc13?share=3146598460728500605.

Web3 Conferences

Speaking at NFT Brasil, about decentralized food sovereignty, June 2023

Besides funding our first decentralized cultivation of beans, the Gitcoin Rounds funds also allowed AgroforestDAO to spread the word in Brazillian Web3 conferences from Q2-Q3, such as ETH Rio, NFT Brasil (São Paulo), Hack Town (Minas Gerais) and host a side event dinner with local ingredients and other Regen web3 organizations in a coordinated effort called Regenerative Resources or ReRe.

How will we use the funds from GR18

The funds raised in this round will be used locally to buy seeds, seedlings, pay the costs of establishing a collective food forest and create a 3 years lease contract in the name of AgroforestDAO. It will also support a training program together with regional institutional offices of agriculture and forestry with the goal of building capacity within the local community for agroforestry management.

The Spring/Summer intervention is a more complex challenge than the Autumn beans, because it involves a policulture of species organized in time and space, and therefore we will create different NFT collections for those willing to engage with the short term crops and/or the long term forest lines.

Beyond the local production goals, we also want to inform and make biodiverse agriculture more familiar for the web3 community, so we will share content with our followers and the Spring/Summer tasks in a task management tool called Wonderverse.xyz. Our goal is to build a model for future stewards share their 6-month plans and get reviewed by the DAO. NFT holders will have monthly updates in our gated exhibit on Spatial, will get a share of the harvests, invitations to our annual meetup and a ticket-pass to book a local experience on the land.

We believe that it is possible to create new types of access to land and community-oriented agriculture, and thanks to the Gitcoin Community we are able to trail this unknown path. We are very thankful for your support and will be broadcasting our process, please connect with us, let’s build this together!