Our Hub strategy continues to grow and evolve into a strong network of partners. Hubs are locally owned, led, and managed and partner with Savory Institute in:
- Demonstrating, educating, supporting, and facilitating the adoption of Holistic Management by farmers, ranchers, and pastoralists in their regions.
- Incubating entrepreneurial solutions to local and regional challenges that stand in the way of regenerative land and livestock management practices.
- Facilitating investment and project management for regenerative land and livestock projects along the relevant supply chains in which the Hub is operating.
- Aggregating regenerative farmers and product, with data backed traceability, making it easier for buyers to achieve needed volumes of food and fibers that are healing the planet.
With 27 Hubs already actively working with us around the world, we are in the process of selecting the 2016 Hub candidates. We have incredible talent and passion from new corners of the world. We will have established 40 Hubs in 2016!! positioning us to reach our goal of 100 Hubs around the world by 2025. Accredited Hubs have already trained over 3,000 people, and influenced the management of an estimated 10 million hectares (~25 million acres). We look forward to exponential impact as new Hubs become accredited and old Hubs engage more farmers and scale these practices in the regions, with the highest of training and implementation standards. Additionally, training and demonstrations sites are being launched in countries new to Holistic Management such as Myanmar, Pakistan, Senegal, and Colombia.
Savory has continued to develop programs, tools, and partnerships needed to catalyze our network’s success in the regeneration of grasslands. With these new tools and programs, in 2014 we were able to bring state of the art online courses through our digital platform to new interested people. 1,277 online courses were taken! A course specially designed for communal land settings in developing countries is about to be launched with accessibility through smart-phones in remote areas of the world.
We are super excited to have just launched our new GIS based data management tool for land managers, with all aspects of Holistic decision making integrated, as well as supporting educational materials, that will allow regenerative practitioners around the world to track, record, and report their progress, and if desired position themselves to access market incentives as they become available (and we are working on that angle as well!). With this effectively packaged data, and new aligned partnerships providing buying power, Savory Hubs will be able to serve as aggregators of regeneratively raised food and fiber in their regions, allowing for transparency and traceability in the marketplace and enhanced opportunities for producers.
We were happy to see many of your faces at our wonderful international conference which this year took place in San Francisco, California, with close to 450 participants from 19 countries, 3,000 + virtual attendees, and a new record of 24 event sponsors!! Representatives of the business, investment, ranching, farming, food, government, civil society, and educational spaces all gathered around to celebrate the Artisans of the Grasslands, the emergent global network of regenerative food and fiber producers. Soils have hope!
The last months of 2015 will be exciting as the Savory Institute and Network will be represented in Paris during the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference in early December, where governments, businesses, and NGOs will gather to make commitments to addressing the climate crisis. While talks are focused on curbing emissions, the Savory Institute and its network along with an alliance of leaders in regenerative agriculture will be positioning and elevating the importance of healthy, living soils in the fight against climate change through the signing of a SOIL MANIFESTO. This effort strives to be a strong call for the transformation of agriculture. This will be done strategically through working sessions in Paris during COP21, and through simultaneous gatherings hosted by Savory Institute in Boulder and by Savory Hubs in many regions of the world, as well as global social media.
We look forward to a wonderful end to 2015 and a new year filled with meaningful work and progress. Thank you for your continued support.
