Living Chacras: Regenerating Land and Learning in the Peruvian Amazon

In the Nanay River area of the Peruvian Amazon, many local families live close to the forest and depend on the land for food, medicine, income, and daily life. At the same time, soils can be fragile, sandy, and easily exhausted, and many families face pressure to keep relying on traditional clearing with fire - often described from the outside as slash-and-burn farming - because other options are not always accessible, practical, or well supported.

This project supports families and community members who want to move toward no-burn, diverse agroforestry systems known locally as chacras integrales. A chacra integral is more than a farm plot. It is a living system that can bring together food crops, fruit trees, timber trees, medicinal plants, bee-friendly species, soil cover, family knowledge, and long-term care for the land.

At the Chaikuni Center, we have been learning, practicing, and demonstrating this approach for years. Our Center functions as a living classroom for regenerative agroecology, native seedlings, stingless bees, natural inputs, and hands-on education. We are now ready to take a focused next step with families and community members from the Nanay area, especially around San Pedro, 8 de Octubre, 3 Unidos, and San Pablo de Cuyana.

What we will do

Over five months, we will support 8-10 local families/community members through 4 practical field schools, 300-500 diverse seedlings, 2-3 follow-up visits, and the strengthening of 1-2 demonstration stingless bee hives. The learning will move between the Chaikuni Center and local chacras, so participants can see, practice, adapt, and bring the work back to their own land.

The field schools will focus on simple, practical themes: no-burn chacras integrales; dynamic agroforestry and biomass management; pruning and light management; stingless bees and pollinator protection; and how a diverse chacra can support family food, household medicine, and small future income opportunities. We will also include a careful introduction to value-added products through Chaikuni's experience with the EcoTienda, without promising purchases or market access before the families are ready.

The seedlings will come from Chaikuni's own nursery and may include cacao, coffee, guaba, pijuayo, achiote, amasisa, andiroba, mahogany, capirona, copaiba, ayahuasca, chacruna, flor amazónica, flor de jamaica, fruit trees, timber trees, medicinal plants, and bee-friendly species. The exact mix will be adapted to each chacra, the season, family interests, and what is healthy and ready in the nursery.

Why this matters

Small funds can make a real difference when they arrive at the right moment. Chaikuni already has the land-based experience, nursery, local relationships, demonstration plots, and team capacity. What this funding would make possible is a compact and well-documented step: bringing together families, plant material, field-based learning, simple follow-up, and a story that donors can understand and trust.

We do not want to promise that five months will transform the whole landscape. What we can promise is something honest and visible: families learning by doing, chacras becoming more diverse, seedlings going into the ground, pollinators receiving more care, and local knowledge being respected as part of the solution.

How this project regenerates

This project regenerates by strengthening the relationships between soil, plants, pollinators, families, and learning. More biomass and plant diversity help protect the soil. Fruit, medicinal, timber, and bee-friendly species help make the chacra more resilient and useful over time. Stingless bees support pollination and remind us that regeneration depends on small beings too. Field schools help knowledge move through practice rather than only through words.

The project also regenerates confidence. Many people already know that the land can give more when it is treated with care, but they may need accompaniment, seedlings, examples, and encouragement to make the transition. The Chaikuni Center can serve as a bridge: a place where local and ancestral Amazonian knowledge meets practical agroecology, and where families can see that another way of farming is possible.

Our experience

Chaikuni is not starting from zero. In 2025, the Chaikuni Center strengthened its demonstration chacras, produced and distributed more than 4,000 seedlings from a nursery with high species diversity, continued its work with stingless bees, and hosted workshops with local people and partner communities. We have also deepened our technical agroforestry work through collaboration with ECOTOP and other allies. This Ma Earth project would complement that existing work and help us bring it into a clear, community-facing pilot with the Nanay families and community members closest to the Center.

Our team includes Diego Carhuaricra, Stefanie Telecki, Eder Baneo, Juan Asipali, René Padilla, Alfredo Asipali, Jorge Guzmán, Connie del Castillo, and Daniel López, with support from the wider Chaikuni team. Together, we bring practical experience in agroforestry, nursery work, meliponiculture, field education, community coordination, product transformation, documentation, and project management.

What success will look like

By the end of the project, we expect to have completed 4 field schools with 8-10 local families/community members, delivered or installed 300-500 diverse seedlings, strengthened 1-2 demonstration stingless bee hives, completed 2-3 follow-up visits, and shared a short visual story/report for donors with photos, simple before/after documentation from selected chacras, and 2-3 short testimonies from participating families/community members.

For us, success is not only the number of seedlings planted. Success is when a family sees its chacra as a living classroom; when soil is covered instead of burned; when bees, trees, food, and medicine return together; and when local families feel that regeneration is something they can practice with their own hands.