Your Purchase Directly Supports a New System
Our current global food system is broken: it takes advantage of poor, hard-working farmers, strips the Earth of its nutrients and poisons it, and prioritizes mass-produced, industrialized food processing. The global chronic disease epidemic and ecosystem collapse shows just how much this system is taking its toll on human bodies and the Earth.
Awanima
is planting seeds for a new global food system by building relationships with family farmer cooperatives, preserving the original, artisanal way of cultivating and processing foods, and educating consumers on the importance of ethical and regenerative food sourcing.
Together, only with your support, can we reweave the story of humans, earth, and food.
Food is Edible Intelligence
What happens in the soils directly influences our bodies. Food is filled with information that we call “nutrients” that signal to your body how to react to what you eat. When food is laced with pesticides, heavy metals, and chemical fertilizers, the body reads that it’s being poisoned, which leads to inflammation, disease and cancer as a way of coping.
In contrast, if we feed our bodies with high-integrity, whole foods, grown in diverse soils, that imprint of information tells our bodies we are safe and nourished, and it can then function properly. Food is edible intelligence that programs your body to be well or unwell. Eat well, and you will be well.
From Forests instead of Factories
Food forests are designed to create an abundance of food for people and animals, while protecting soils and safeguarding biodiversity. Food forests are just bursting with life! It’s just about the best, most nutrient-dense way to receive your sustenance.
We want to protect these forests from the threats of deforestation and incentivize people to plant more of them. We are developing pathways of support to those hard-to-reach communities taking care of forests, so they can sustain their families and continue tending the lands. In our regenerative commerce model, we incentivize farmers to maintain diverse forests by purchasing the variety of foods they cultivate on their lands.
** Did you know the Amazon forest was planted by indigenous communities thousands of years ago as a food forest?
Creating a Better Option for Families
Indigenous communities in rural or forested areas are severely left out of the modern economy. Their options are to leave home to work on monoculture plantations many hours away, earning little and leaving families with no men at home, sell their harvests to coyotes (bulk ingredient buyers who pay the cheapest prices possible), or sell their lands to cattle grazers or monoculture farmers to support the families’ daily needs or medical expenses.
This isn’t fair. We are offering a new option for hard-working indigenous families to earn a dignified living while caretaking their ancestral homelands. Our hope is that by offering financial stability to these families, they can continue to steward lands in the original ways, pass down this biocultural wisdom to the next generation, and preserve the biodiversity in their territories which supports all of life.
Hand-Crafted Artisanal Foods by Tuqtuquilal
Our current products are sourced and produced by 65 Mayan Q’eqchi families in the mountains of Guatemala as part of our sister project Tuqtuquilal. The families are part of a cooperative called Red Ratzum, where they are paid high rates for raw ingredients then employed to hand-craft the foods in the original Q’eqchi ways, using fire, clay, wood, and sun. To learn more about Tuqtuquilal and even schedule a visit, visit the website [here].
