Our Permaculture team uses both local knowledge and scientific analysis to understand our landscape, to set carbon sequestration goals for Playa Viva’s forests, and to identify the most appropriate trees to introduce through reforestation. At present, our reforestation and agroforestry designs focus primarily on improving soil quality and water retention capabilities, capturing carbon in the sandy soil around our borrowed landscape, and improving nitrogen cycles in the soil to improve microbial activity. As we build upon our successes in regenerative agriculture and land management, we expect our work to encourage historic water cycles to return to this ecosystem. 

Dramatic shifts in climatic conditions are occurring in and around our watershed. Our community receives half the rainfall it did a generation ago. The river runs dry more days each new year. We trust that permaculture principles and reforestation through a lens of agroforestry design will improve the soils ability to retain water and begin to turn our sandy earth into microbial rich loamy soil.  

Organic matter and soil microorganisms are key components for soil fertility and soil quality, including the ability of soil to provide nutrients for plant growth, and the capacity of soil to maintain key ecological functions such as decomposition of organic material and water retention. 

For us, permaculture and regenerative landscapes mean our team members are thinking about future generations. Not only those people who will live off the bounty of food and forest products produced, but also those who will tend this same land in the future. We are expanding our bamboo production this year to include 100 new clumping patches, and we are focused on timber production in the form of tropical hardwoods. These harvests are sometimes 50 to 100+ years down the road, and we could not be more proud to put the work, the seed, and the trees in the soil now to offer a harvest to the generations to follow.