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When Gabi Besser and Michel Bottan moved from New York to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2007, they decided to invest in what they thought would be a great way to bring "the knowledge of healing people and planet to the urban communities," they say in a press release.
Instead, they bought a swath of land that had been burned by slash-and-burn to clean up, as well as a water source that had dried up.
Their goal: to restore the land to its natural state, using syntropic farming, which involves planting food forests.
"We saw syntropic farming as a simple way for anyone to become involved in ecosystem restoration by planting food forests and developing an awareness of the vital importance of this in young people," they say.
But choosing degraded land wasn't easy.
Some of the land had been grazing before they bought it, and the soil was very compacted and impermeable.
After strong rainfall, water washed the soil away and no longer flowed away, but after five years the surface water no longer flowed away.
They tried to sell their produce at the local market but found that people didn't value organic locally produced food enough to make this work.
So they put guest houses on Airbnb and for two years kept working on improving the farm.
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A customized collection of grant news from foundations and the federal government from around the Web.
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