reNature receives investment from Meraki Impact

It has been one-and-half-year since the launch of reNature, the growing organization received a financial boost from Meraki Impact. 

The investment makes it possible to increase the core team and expand global operations. reNature will start Regenerative Agroforestry projects in seven major commodities. 

Meraki’s Fernando Russo describes re Nature’s mission: “Marco de Boer and Felipe Villela have a business approach to make Agroforestry mainstream. They developed a scalable model to help farmers with the transition to agroforestry and make sure farmers can have financial return in the first years.” In their start-up year, reNature developed a white pepper Agroforestry model for Verstegen Spices. The model was successfully executed in Indonesia. In Brazil,  in partnership with Farfarm, reNature developed a cotton Agroforestry system. Both systems are self-sustaining and 100% chem-free.

Changing the landscape

Meraki Impact believes that reNature will not only change the visible landscape but also the way companies collaborate in the future. Meraki’s Anaisa Seneda says: “I see investing in reNature not only as a financial opportunity; reNature has the potential to change the landscape of production on a large scale.”

Connecting companies

One of the benefits of reNature is their engagement strategy. In less than 1 year and half, the organization managed to gather a large crowd on Social Media, followed by corporations like Verstegen, Rabobank, and Ellen MacArthur Foundation. In their model, these organizations are connected directly to the source of the production, experiencing the impact of responsible production and seeing how Agroforestry supports five of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Focus on seven commodities

reNature believes that we can only change the system by improving the method, not through restrictions alone. Palm oil is not bad in and of itself, it is the way we mass-produce the oil. In the upcoming period, reNature will focus on developing specialized Agroforestry systems for the major commodities that are now mostly deforesting landscapes worldwide.