Tree-Range Farms

Tree-Range Farms is part of the Poultry-Centered Regenerative Agroforestry (PCRA) business ecosystem. The PCRA is led by the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance—a system of farms, organizations, and businesses devoted to building holistic and contextually-appropriate poultry-centered agroforestry systems. The system is designed to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of the energy transformations taking place in the Earth’s natural systems for the production of nutritious food, abundant ecosystems, thriving communities, and resilient economies.

While known best for their delicious chicken, Tree-Range Farms is much more. Led and co-founded by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin—an entrepreneur, a survivor of the 36-year Guatemalan civil war, and a man dedicated to helping others—Tree-Range seeks to transform the food system from one of centralization, disease, and dependence to one of regional production, health, and independence.

The company's business model drives triple-bottom-line benefits. TRF provides market access for small farmers while paying them fair prices and supplying consumers with highly nutritious foods. Tree-Range focuses on bringing in new and beginning farmers as well as BIPOC-owned farms into their network. The farms that TRF contracts provide habitat for chickens that mimics their original habitat (the jungle). The agroforestry growing method captures CO₂ from the atmosphere while also improving soil, air, and water quality. TRF is designed to aggregate and sell multiple crops, including the native nuts and berries that this agroforestry system produces. This approach of products allows TRF to increase their margins and diversify their income. TRF is managed by a diverse team with ancestral knowledge and wisdom of regenerative agriculture and has the ability to be a change agent in the regenerative agriculture space.

Regenerative & Sustainable Practices

Tree-Range Farms is building agroforestry ecosystems—using native and contextually-appropriate plants and animals—to restore and optimize the natural cycles of the land. The practices used on each farm will vary as each farm’s context is different, but each Tree-Range farm employs at least the following practices:

Animal Welfare

• No antibiotics or other pharmaceuticals;

• Animal health is managed through the optimization of animal health as a foundation as opposed to a focus on treatment;

• Natural medicinal supplements and treatments;

• 100% free-range (no food indoors) from 28 days when the chickens are large enough to range through 70 days when they are harvested;

• Slow-growth breeds only;

• Paddock system to allow for rotational grazing;

• Chickens live in their natural habitat that mimics their original jungle habitat and food production methods in Central and South American communities;

Ecological Management

• Perennial crop production;

• No-till or low-till;

• Rotational grazing;

• Composting & waste management;

• No herbicides or pesticides ever;

• Native crop production;

• Forest creation/restoration;

• The chickens eliminate the need for synthetic fertilizers (Chickens forage in paddocks during the day and are provided sprouted grains as additional feed, manure serves as fertilizer for the agroforestry crops);

• The multi-species canopy forest & ground forage also provide a protective habitat for birds and pollinators;

• Chickens live in small flocks, fostering healthy behavior and happy birds;

• Agroforestry integration builds biodiversity and increases soil health;

Economics

• Farmers get upfront financing from Tree-Range for chicks and feed;

• Farmers are paid above market rates per bird and have the option to sign 1- or 3-year contracts;

• System design reduces on-farm labor;

• Processing facility owned by a non-profit partner where workers are paid above minimum wage, have power in defining working conditions, and are working toward a worker collective;

Social

• The system is designed for social impact at the center of a larger theory of change;

• The system is first and foremost designed with small independent farmers and supply chain workers;

• The design is fully compatible with larger farms removing the limits for large-scale systems impact and change. The current system favors larger farms and consolidation, and is structurally not in alignment with small farm operations;

• Chicken is a very important global protein, healthy, easier to raise than other livestock, and compatible with the over 700 million small farmers operating under 25-acres of land and providing up to 70% of the food in the world;

• Barriers to entry and be commercially viable are significantly lower than larger livestock and the infrastructure needed to make living off the farm.