Nature Farms FAQ

• Food Insecurity: A staggering 15% of residents face food insecurity, with 18 out of 47 zip codes lacking grocery stores, disproportionately impacting Black residents.
• Vanishing Farmland: Travis County is rapidly losing agricultural land, with an 11% decrease in acreage and a 21% decrease in the number of farms since 2017, translating to approximately 16.8 acres lost daily between 2012 and 2017.
• Food Worker Exploitation: Essential food workers often earn low wages, averaging $15.45/hour for service workers, leading many to struggle with hunger themselves.
• Supply Chain Vulnerability: Reliance on distant distribution centers creates fragility, as starkly revealed during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021.
• Massive Food Waste: 1.24 million pounds of food are wasted daily in the greater Austin area, producing harmful methane emissions.

• Living Systems Thinking: We operate with the mindset of gardeners, not engineers, working with nature's intrinsic intelligence to create the conditions for life to emerge full of potential.
• Community-Driven Financing: We leverage Agricultural Development Districts (ADDs) under Chapter 60 of the Texas Agricultural Code, allowing homeowners to finance vital agricultural infrastructure through low-cost, tax-free municipal bonds, primarily repaid by food sales. This de-risks participation and creates a stable, self-sustaining economic engine.
• Holistic Transformation: We focus on building a deconcentrated, equitable, healthy, and resilient food system that connects soil health, plant health, and human health from soil microbes all the way to health insurance.

• Measurably Healthier Living: Experience tangible improvements in health biomarkers, with increased energy and a calm assurance about the nutrient-dense food your family consumes.
• Effortless Access to Superior Food: Enjoy exceptionally flavorful, locally-grown food delivered to your door or a local food hub, with options for chef-prepared meals in refillable glass jars, all without the work of personal gardening.
• Plastic-Free Home & Reduced Toxic Exposure: Achieve a dramatic reduction in single-use plastics, contributing to less exposure to microplastics and associated inflammatory conditions.
• Enhanced Home Value & Financial Security: Your home's resale value can potentially increase, as your Nature Farms Membership conveys with your property, securing your investment in a healthier future.

 Our core personal values are Innovation and Integrity. We embody persistence, "keep[ing] moving as if our kids, and their kids lives depend on it". We are driven by optimism, inspiration, and hope for a thriving, healthy future. We believe in empowering participation, recognizing that the health of the whole depends on the unique contributions of all its parts, and fostering community capital and self-organization. We advocate for a robust circulatory flow of money, information, and resources, much like a healthy circulatory system in a body, or "money flow[ing] through landscapes like water - nurturing life and creating abundance".

• Corporate/Industrial Agriculture: That is toxic, takes over family farms, and hollows out rural towns.
• Farming Shortcuts: Such as the use of synthetic chemical inputs that degrade soil and land.
• Siloed Thinking: That fails to see the interconnectedness of global issues like climate, health, and economic inequality.
• An economic system that encourages farmers to "live poor, maybe retire rich" by selling land for development rather than preserving it.