From Entrepreneur to Ecopreneur: The Journey to Save Soil and Create an Eco-Resort

We bought this farm 35 years ago, with a broken down adobe house. It had been abandoned many years before, and ten years later we bought another house part of the same original property because it looked like it could be a safe place for the future. The future is now, after my retirement. trying to evolve from entrepreneur to become ‘’an ecopreneur’’.

We figured out we could do something of this place, as if we were just starting out in life. The goal is to have in the future an eco-resort to be a live example of wellbeing in harmony with nature, by practising the concepts of sustainable living, regenerative agriculture, love of nature, self-transformation and peace.

No market call meetings, no power point presentations, no market screens flashing, just you vs you. And this is very important because there is something romantic about this place. It gives you time to listen, to think, to talk and to wonder.

It is there that I realize that there is no waste in nature, everything is in a cyclical fashion, but it was Sadhguru the mystic yogi, who was responsible for the message who inspired me: ‘’The future of climate change is in our soils’’.

So Vinagra Village started a journey to restore soil, and increase the organic content. I love when we recognize a problem and have a solution for it. So we started working on water retention, helping at the same time mitigating droughts.  We started to apply Biocel, Kalisop, and lots of compost to regenerate the soil in order to plant trees which will then help regenerate Vinagra Village soil. By applying practices from Savory Institute we use livestock as a way to restore land. The goal is to bring at least 3-6% of organic content back into the soil of Vinagra Village, while at the same time joining the Save Soil Campaign to bring awareness on the problem of soil extinction. A lot of work is needed to generate compost.

At Vinagra Village like most places across the globe, soil degradation is approaching levels that threaten food production and our very lives on this planet. Good soil is able to sustain life, store water. That is a simple fact that do not require rocket science, but most agricultural regulations promote the use of poisons, threatening our biodiversity, causing extreme weather conditions washing away good soil.

We are not believers in ‘’net zero’’ climate change, nor on experts telling us what we have to eat, or how we have to travel and mainly spreading alarm. Don’t like either the way science ‘’experts’’ impose their expertise with, ‘’do as you told’’. Probably because I believe that this political process to make a ‘’green transition’’ is mostly about money and taxes.

But our bit now is save soil, not money, so it is important to report what has been done and what I have learned.

Save soil is a practical objective way to correct what is wrong, on the other hand Net zero climate change seems to be a dangerous process of disruption with the goal to have more intervention in the economy.

The goal of Vinagra Village is to have like minded people, who work, explore and appreciate nature without disturbing its harmony. People who value nature as much as we do.