Sustainable Agriculture
The new frontier for agriculture is vertical.
Bio-Logical Capital’s agriculture business is a strong anchor for our projects and generates meaningful profits for our company and the local farmers who work the land. We believe that for farming to be sustainable, it must be designed to build soil productivity and yield a variety of nutrient-rich crops that produce strong revenues and sustain communities.
Our approach to farming exists nowhere else on the planet at the scale we envision. Our farm management goals are long-term diversity, health, and productivity through rotational management of animals and crops. This approach results in a transformative impact on how people grow food and understand their relationship with the land.
Every decision we make is designed to increase the unique capacity of the land. Actual practices will vary significantly depending on the characteristics of an individual site – climate, topography, existing land cover, culture – but the goal is always the same: to do what is best for the land over the long term.
Through their own instinctive behaviors, animals provide the labor and materials needed to increase soil productivity and fertility. Farm animals naturally chew, scratch, peck, and dig. These behaviors can be channeled to renew the land and produce food. Our plan is to move herds of densely stocked cattle and other herbivores across the land to till the ground and add manure to the soil. Other animals, including poultry, manage insects and spread nutrients. Together, the animals create soil that easily supports the production of fruits, grains, legumes, and vegetables. This is a natural way to farm without the use of equipment and chemicals that damage the land and place increased financial burdens on farms.
A farm is only sustainable if it enriches the lives of the people who work the land. Conventional farm life can be both physically challenging and socially isolating. Our approach embraces the physical, social, and entrepreneurial needs of farmers. And our farms are integrated into the broader community, creating social networks and connecting farmers to each other. This leads to shared resources and opportunities for training in new sustainable agriculture techniques. As stewards of the land, the farmers we work with become educators for their community and for the next generation of sustainable and successful farmers.
Sustainable farmers often do not have the business support and infrastructure to widely distribute their products, so each of our farms operates with a business plan developed for local and regional markets. We identify market opportunities for farm-fresh products and then process, package, and distribute products to meet existing demands. This is coupled with a branding and marketing program to educate people on the unique attributes of our products.
Bio-Logical Capital’s marketing approach creates rising expectations of quality that our food products will be specifically designed to meet, thus unlocking new markets for investors and creating better profit opportunities for farmers.
By building healthy, living soil, our approach prevents erosion and captures carbon in the ground. The organisms living in the soil create a dynamic system that is resilient and forms the organic foundation of all life above ground. Through this approach to sustainable agriculture, we anticipate increasing organic matter by 5-8%. This living soil also acts as a sponge, holding and releasing water slowly over time, reducing flash floods and the impacts of drought. Every 1% increase in organic matter in the soil increases the ground’s capacity to hold water by 160,000 gallons per acre.
Sustainable agriculture produces superior fruits and vegetables with more nutrients and better taste. These crops pull their nutrients from living soil, rather than from chemical fertilizers that typically only provide three major nutrients. With more trace minerals and micronutrients, food is rich in diverse nutrients that are good for the human body. A diet of such food can help people lead healthy lives and avoid some chronic and debilitating diseases.
A diverse agricultural system provides habitat for wildlife. Rich pastures have numerous grasses and flowers, and provide habitat for native birds, insects, and small mammals. Perennial orchards of fruit trees and understory crops planted on the periphery of pastures and woodlands improve forest habitat connectivity and increase diversity on forest edges. Our approach welcomes wild inhabitants as natural pest control, pollinators, and productive members of the living system.
By leveraging nature’s ability to produce fertilizers and control pests, our agricultural approach uses less machinery and less synthetic fertilizers and chemicals. It reduces the reliance on expensive fossil fuels and materials derived from them, and protects farmers from the impacts of fluctuating fuel prices.
Ultimately, our approach to agriculture will spark vibrant community development where people have deepened relationships with nature that create a sense of ownership, stewardship, and connection that last for generations. It supports locally owned businesses, high quality jobs, stable economic benefits, and connections to local culture and vision.
