REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE
What if we could grow an heirloom corn, produce a traditional arepa and help regenerate ecology and community?
With our regenerative business model we believe that we can grow organic, heirloom corn, provide a high quality nutritional arepa, cultivate community and demonstrate a new way forward connecting regenerative farming practices and cultural traditions.
We believe that consumers should know where their food comes from and thus have prioritized transparency in every aspect of our project and production. The goal is to build a sustainable system starting with corn; how it is grown, processed, packaged, distributed, shared and eaten. By centering traditional methods of growing and preparing corn (arepas, tortillas, corn chips, corn meal, etc) within a regenerative growing system, these value-added products will meet the needs of growing Latin American cultures and restore depleted farm systems.
It is through the markets and sales of the arepas and from the Moon & Stars food cart that we have access to a platform for education.
For Latin American cultures, depleted foods are the single most important issue that humanity is facing as a society. The issues of human health as well as environmental and social justice revolve around our food system and our model represents a future where ethically grown, nutrient dense foods will replace the current failing conventional system that we have today
By connecting land and people through ethically cultivated food, we aim to increase quality of life for farmers and consumers while celebrating multicultural diversity in the marketplace.
Beyond the triple bottom line model of people, profit and planet, we recognize that transparent, community- and employee- supported modes of production are key to an ethical and ecological food system.
We plan to create a sustainable planting process that involves a traditional crop rotation by incorporating legumes (black beans, pinto beans, etc.) into heirloom strains of corn, serving as a buffer to protect our watersheds and return nitrogen to depleted soils in a sustainable manner. This way of growing also gives farmers growing silage corn a way to diversify by growing heirloom varieties that can get processed into value-added products. We are currently working with local diversified farms to grow heirloom corn as the basis to most of our products.
