Guatemala - Contour Lines

Our vision is a landscape of rural communities with the skills, resources, and knowledge to manage their lands in both sustainable and productive manner. That is the most efficient and truthful manner, one that advances both humans and nature. Our goal is to transition land into such uses, mainly agroforestry with mandatory soil conservation practices. We do this through raising funds, then providing participant communities with the fruit trees, tools, and training to establish these agroforestry systems, and through hiring a local team of technicians to organize these communities, train and supervise, while purchasing and value-adding harvests. This support incentivizes these communities to adopt the soil conservation practices, to transition their lands to regenerative agroforestry.

Ecological impacts include preventing soil erosion and improving biodiversity, carbon sequestration water infiltration and habitat. Economic benefits include food security as well as income from harvests, value-adding, hosting tours and workshops, selling seed to other projects, and generally a transition away from land use systems that exported only corn and firewood while reducing land's fertility and relied on foreign imports, to biodiverse production systems that improve fertility and build local economies.

Contour Lines is a soil-conservation nonprofit. We work with rural communities, transitioning their lands to regenerative agroforestry systems. We provide the trees, tools and training, not as "charity to the poor" but as work grants to campesinos, with performance-based agreements that support those most interested in empowering their communities and restoring their lands.