One thing I won’t do on this site is lay out every minute component of what I’m trying to accomplish; I’m working on a prospectus that will have a lot more of the details, and I’ll make that available to potential investors and partners. This site is more about sharing ideas and updating people on my progress. That said, here are the broad strokes.

Sustainable Agroforestry: Purchasing land for animals, crops, trees, and NTFPs, and using the products on-site or selling them locally. Certain products can also be exported. There are a great number of facets to this, and I’ll be writing about them on this site, but one of the most important aspects of my plan is that I want to do this in the tropics. There are a lot of reasons why, and I’ll get into those, too, but for now, suffice it to say that the extreme biodiversity of the tropics and the year-round growing season are particularly conducive to this sort of endeavor.

Co-ops: There are many different co-op models for various types of enterprises, but as it pertains to this project, I’m talking about a way for farmers and forest workers to pool their resources and products, make more money and keep more of it, and have increased access to local goods. If you’re confused as to how local communities wouldn’t have access to their own stuff, you probably don’t live in a small town, but don’t worry — I’ll be explaining all of this. By helping to organize co-ops and working with them, my proposed business makes money essentially as an agent for the co-ops, taking a commission on their sales, as opposed to buying and reselling their products at a massive markup and pocketing all the profit. The advantages of this include the development of a more diverse product line and a more robust business that’s less subject to the whims of nature and the marketplace than a typical commodities vendor, strengthening the local economy on which other aspects of the business rely, and in general, sleeping better at night. The main caveats are that local people have to want to do business this way, and they have to want you to be a part of it, so it’s a process. I’ve seen well-meaning people try to impose their plans on communities without getting their input, and it didn’t go so well.

Tourism: Agro-tourism and eco-tourism are major draws if they’re in the right location and marketed effectively, and it doesn’t take much to get a tourism-related business up and running. The short startup time and potential for rapid growth make tourism an ideal income source to subsidize other parts of the operation until they’re able to be profitable on their own, but a tourism project also benefits immensely from an agroforestry operation that provides it with things like food and building materials, not to mention a place to take people on tours.

Housing: Retiring abroad has never been more popular, and expats who pay top dollar in the local market still feel like they’re saving a fortune over what they’d have spent back home. From the snowbirds who go back north for the summer, there’s even more money to be made, because after you’ve sold them a lot and built them a house, you can manage it for them as a vacation rental when they’re away. That’s a win for everyone. At the other end of the economic spectrum are low income families and individuals, all of whom need a place to live, and no downturn in the economy will ever change that, making low income and affordable housing a solid investment, whether it’s in the same neighborhood as the farm or on a different continent. For employees, the provision of quality housing can also be a way to derive greater compensation for their work at a lower cost the the employer.

Triple Bottom Line: I’ve spent most of my working life in the nonprofit sector, but the longer I did that kind of work and the better I understood it, the less I believed in that model of doing business. I’m of the opinion that many, if not most, nonprofit organizations would be more effective as for-profit companies, and there is no reason for-profit companies can’t be a benefit to their communities beyond generating jobs and profits. The Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet, and Profit, is a philosophy that echoes that notion. While so many businesses are extractive, sucking resources out of local communities, draining the workforce, and realizing the profits someplace else, triple bottom line businesses invest in communities and make them stronger.

Experimentation: I believe that any startup is an experiment, or a set of experiments to determine what works and what doesn’t. I believe that by trying different things, having the freedom to fail and try again, and learning along the way, we can develop a model that can be implemented around the world. Likewise, there’s a lot of work already being done that we can learn from, and I’m always on the lookout for those lessons as well.

When and Where: As soon as possible, and wherever it’ll work; I’ve been traveling around, scouting locations, and I have more trips planned, but the most likely region is Latin America. I realize that’s not very specific, but I’ll keep narrowing it down. That said, if someone offered me a place in Hawaii or Ghana or Australia or Texas, would I take that offer? Probably. In fact, a location in Texas could be an incredible asset, even if it wasn’t ultimately the location. That’s something I’ll be exploring in future blog posts as well, but think multiple international airports, railways, highways, a massive port, a tech hub, some excellent schools, a long border with Mexico, a central location between the east and west coast, and a favorable tax code. One could almost forgive them for Tex-Mex and Ted Cruz.