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Our team has a combined 75+ years of experience at your service. We manage our own multi-decade, ongoing agroforests and are fluent in all aspects of this work from shovels to spreadsheets. We are aware of all common pitfalls and have a deep experience in successful techniques. We will help you avoid mistakes and optimize your system for ecological, financial, and social goals. With experience in over ten eco-zones (from temperate to tropical environments), our team is ready to help you from assessment and design to training for installation and management.

The Problems & Solutions

Single-crop systems greatly degrade soils and ecosystems throughout the world. We have dedicated our lives to developing practical and financially feasible solutions that harness nature's own regenerative processes.

We help you realize agroforestry plantings that build soil, produce food, fiber, medicine and many other products, conserve biodiversity including native species, all without the need for chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. Instead of imported inputs, our systems incorporate time-tested knowledge, genetics, photosynthesis, natural succession of species and rainfall irrigation. We match the crops with current environmental conditions and follow the flow of natural processes towards abundance.

Our experienced team can efficiently plan, guide installation and provide valuable training for the successful management of diverse agricultural systems for many types of climate zones. Backyard gardens, degraded pastureland, rocky soils, and ailing commercial single-crops system in need of regeneration are our specialties.

Our Value Proposition

Most agriculture today relies heavily upon expensive and harmful inputs. We specialize in agriculture that relies upon the self-regenerating natural resources like plant materials, photosynthesis, biodiversity, natural plant succession, and nutrient cycling.

We help you grow the right crops in the right place at the right time—matching crops to the environment
We plan agroforestry systems that are both highly productive and resilient
We apply our skill sets and experience to your project to customize a design that best suits your unique needs and site
Our designs emphasize socio-cultural equity
We help you avoid the problems and pests associated with soil and ecosystem degradation while being much more productive.

About Us

Our Team

NATURE

Executive Officer of Life on Planet Earth

Nature is our wise elder. With 3.5 billion years of experience in the business of life on this planet, we strongly value the wisdom inherent in Nature and look to her for inspiration and guidance of all our designs.
It is through observation and understanding of life processes we find our own place in the world and confidence to know how to act in any situation. Life perpetually unfolds in a trajectory where each organism creates the next while genes and the environment play in dynamic flux. This flow accumulates energy and capacity in time so that each step of succession increases in stability and resiliency in the face of unceasing change. Regenerative agroforestry depends upon and actively participates in the natural cycles of succession and accumulation in order to create the soil nutrition needed for abundant and productive crops.

SOPHIA BOWART, MBA

Operations Officer

Sophia Bowart, MBA, is a specialist in financial analysis and operations optimization and committed to regenerating degraded lands using successional agroforestry. After being introduced to this work by Ernst Gotsch and her husband, Neil Logan, Sophia has been implementing successional agroforestry techniques on Mohala Lehua Farm in North Kohala, Hawaii since 2008. In addition to converting former pastureland into a diverse, multistory agroforest, she has been developing a range of value-added-products to offset the cost of planting and maintenance. Over the last 10 years, Sophia has been developing techniques to refine financial analysis of complex agro-ecosystems throughout the project lifecycle. She recently published an in-depth financial analysis guide for multistory agroforestry (Bowart and Logan 2020) and was the Research Analyst and Project Administrator for AgroforestryX (2018–2021).

CRAIG ELEVITCH, PhD

Executive Officer

Craig Elevitch, PhD, is a specialist in systems modeling, education and community outreach. Since 1991, he has worked in agroforestry and consulted for numerous landowners and managers, including authoring dozens of agroforestry, Forest Stewardship, and native forest dedication plans throughout Oceania and the tropics. Craig’s internationally recognized publications and workshops have guided thousands in becoming more proficient in regenerative agroforestry and reforestation. He has published 14 books on Agroforestry in the Pacific. In addition to working directly with dozens of growers, consultants, and educators, he has facilitated over 200 agroforestry workshops in the Pacific, with over 10,000 producers and resource professionals. He is also co-director of Ho‘oulu ka ‘Ulu—Revitalizing Breadfruit and agroforestry director of the Pacific Regional Breadfruit Initiative, projects founded in 2010 to restore breadfruit agroforests in Pacific Island landscapes. He was honored with the Shining Stars of Oceania award in 2019 and the Global Aloha 'Aina 'Ohana award in 2016. Craig holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering (Systems) from Cornell University for research focusing on agroforestry growth modeling and is the Team Leader for AgroforestryX.

NEIL LOGAN

Innovations Officer

Neil Logan is a specialist in systems research & development of natural products along with the agro-ecological and socio-cultural contexts that support them. To this end, Neil develops whole systems that integrate information technology and agro-ecosystems. With agroforestry experience on three continents, in both arid and wet conditions, temperate to tropical, Neil is also trained in western herbalism, natural products development (25 years experience), and in relational database and web-based software systems. Neil developed an on-line relational database for the Greater Southwest bioregion, creating a novel system for organizing and managing natural and cultural resources. Neil is a teacher of agroforestry, horticulture, mycoculture and information technology via workshops, lectures, publications and presentations. He co-directs FARM Center with his wife, Sophia Bowart. Most recently, Neil co-authored the forthcoming book Agroforestry Design for Regenerative Production (2022, in press). He is also Lead Developer for the AgroforestryX design tool.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank all our mentors who have shared their wisdom and illuminated the path to regenerative agroforestry:

Bill Mollison, Ernst Gotsch, Henrique Souza, José Fernando dos Santos Rebello, Felipe Pasini, Dayana Andrade, Ali Sharif, Louie Hena and Clayton Brascoupe (TNAFA), Dr. Enrique Salmon, Gary Paul Nabhan, Richard Stephen Felger, Jude Hobbs, Toby Hemenway, Tom Ward, Ben Kamm, Kat Harrison & Susan Leopold.

We are grateful for every kernel of wisdom that has been shared. Without the influence of these teachers and friends, we would not be where we are today.