Regeneration Hub Model
Smallholder farmers face enormous obstacles: lack of training, fragmentation, inadequate financing, limited access to innovations, and more. Regeneration Hubs address these challenges by providing comprehensive technical assistance, shared equipment, improved seedlings, value-added processing capacity, and other services needed to develop profitable regenerative livelihoods.
Originally developed to protect Orangutan Habit
The regeneration hub was originally developed by Dr. Willie Smits in Indonesia. Its goal was to protect vanishing orangutan habitat and is centered around an innovatively engineered micro-factory, designed to serve all the basic needs of a remote village while adding value to a variety of products derived from a multi layered tropical agroforestry system.
Regeneration hubs not only create diverse streams of income, they also produce all the basic essentials for a rural village to be self-sufficient and resilient. Hubs become a mechanism to scale long term forest protection while at the same time, its profits are being invested locally into services that improve the lives of women, and into community led reforestation.
"Our model provides a holistic solution that transforms each step of the ingredient value chain from a degenerative supply chain with roots in colonialism and slavery to a regenerative supply ecosystem designed for justice and empowerment that provides prosperity for all entities that make up the web.”
Mary Johnson, founder of Regenerative Farms
Regeneration Hubs combine ecologically responsible agroforestry with multiple innovations including a remarkable village scale micro-factory. The model was designed to provide a revolutionary social & economic driver for forest protection and regenerative livelihoods. This way, women are empowered to help protect biodiversity and regenerate degraded lands.
Regeneration Hubs are environmentally friendly - they produce no waste, release no carbon, create biochar-based natural fertilizers, provide clean drinking water, clean bio-fuels, and clean electricity for rural farmers.
Hubs are highly scalable and can serve up to 6,000 small-holder farms in rural sites
Hubs facilitate the delivery of tools and processing equipment for social entrepreneurs, farming co-ops and other producer groups to help process crops and connect with market.
Hubs uplift women and the entire community by enabling equitable profit distribution and creating inclusive governance structures with shared decision-making power.
The Enormous Potential of Agroforestry
tons of carbon/hectare
million hectares possible expansion (IPC)
gigatons of carbon/hectare/20+ year
gigatons needed to stabilize climate
Case Study: Masarang Foundation
The model generates revenue for reforestation and forest protection. As a result there is improved biodiversity, more water and higher carbon sequestration.
Condensed steam provides for clean drinking water. Forest grown biofuels create electricity and clean cooking fuel. This allows for green transportation, clinics and schools.
A micro food-processing factory which is built using off the shelf components and fits in 3 shipping containers. It is zero waste, zero emissions and incentivizes the restoration of local forests.
At the Masarang Foundation in Indonesia, the regenerative hub revolves around Sugar Palms and an ingenious way to reforest. Everything is done in collaboration with traditional sugar tappers who plant more forests with Sugar Palms. In return the villagers must protect the rainforest and the animals that live there.
The largest version of the factory has helped 6,000 families improve their quality of life while protecting important carbon rich orangutan habitat. The model has begun to scale outwards in 8 other locations in Indonesia and has also been adapted to commercial scale syngas and biocoal production by a large investment company that is restoring 1.5M hectares.
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