Community-supported Agriculture
In early December 2016, after multiple visits by local residents to Rancho Tiombo (an avocado farm) just 10 kilometers west of Nopoló, neighbors looked into the potential for having ranchers in the Sierra de la Giganta provide them with a regular supply of locally grown vegetables. They identified a model in which consumers and producers share the investment and the risk: community-supported agriculture (CSA). In Mexico, such ventures are known as Huertos Comunitarios.
“We meet once a week to collect our harvest boxes where the farmers’ produce and other freshly made items are available for purchase by non-members as well as members. Come join us at the courtyard of Azul restaurant between 10:00 and 11:15 a.m. on Wednesdays.”
Ask about a subscription to our work-sharing program.
Our history: community outreach for ongoing wide benefit
Planning entailed many sit-downs arranged by Eve Giovenco, a Loreto Bay home owner, with Ricardo Fuerte from Rancho Tiombo along with seasoned farmers who run CSAs in the U.S. state of California and a biologist from Los Cabos Organics. With startup financial support from The Ocean Foundation, a small work plan was agreed upon for a local rancher to begin a pilot season for growing fresh vegetables that would come to harvest in 30 to 60 days.
Given the demand for locally and organically grown fresh vegetables at fair prices to farmers, our program is engaging with more farmers to create more community-supported agriculture groups.
In fact, the CSA project has created such demand that other suppliers have started selling vegetables via similar memberships. This turnaround is important because the 400 ranches in Loreto Municipality two decades ago have now dwindled to 150 struggling operations.*
In 2019, The Keep Loreto Magical Foundation investigated how a CSA project might create income to offset any sacrifice of paychecks or royalties that might have come from mining, if the eijidos were to relent with their opposition to Grupo Mexico in the San Javier area.
After researching the business case for a CSA, the Foundation has lent two refundable grants to San Javier ranchers for a CSA startup intended to meet a further market of 10 community subscribers.
Participants were amazed by the strength of local support and demand for the CSA project, known as Rancho Dona Chela Veggies. The CSA administrative group chose to enlist a small membership so as to focus on working out the unknowns of a new project. After 6 months of weekly deliveries, the participants had learned a lot from working together. The local farmers had successfully braved the unknowns in pesticide-free market gardening, motivated by their commitment to delivering good produce. Customers who had not previously grown their own vegetables now found they enjoyed seeing a crop develop from week to week and at close range. The project, now independent of The Ocean Foundation, went on to further seasons.
The Keep Loreto Magical program continues to work so that neighbors from the upper and lower Sierra La Giganta in the Municipality of Loreto unite around the goal of sustainability for mountainside ranches with their diverse and delicious products, their lifestyle and their admirable ranch culture.
The sources of this information include Ricardo Fuerte, head of a local 10-ranch-collective which is transforming family enterprises into commercial ranches, as well as the Internado of Colonia Zaragoza. The Internado is federal housing for children from ranching families in the Sierra, and the numbers of those children has decreased as, not having found markets for their products, families have had to abandon their lands.