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OUR MISSION

Manzanita Cooperative is driving a fundamental shift in how Americans produce
and consume food by bringing low water climate adapted native foods to the
mainstream, starting with Acorn.

Meanwhile, our crop domestication work, funded by the National Science
Foundation, is developing new climate-adapted crops derived from native plants
that provide habitat and food at the same time.



By doing so we can restore habitat, dramatically reduce water usage, and create
lasting food security in a changing climate. Once we’ve proven that it’s
possible, our approach can be replicated almost anywhere.

For more than 150 years, farming in California has meant adapting the
environment to agriculture, damming and draining our rivers and aquifers to grow
non-native crops that require summer irrigation and provide no habitat for our
native species. This is one of the biggest reasons California has more
endangered biodiversity than any other part of the contiguous United States. We
are taking the opposite approach and finding ways to adapt agriculture to the
environment and produce food at scale while working with the natural systems.

The damage to our wild rivers, wetlands, and groundwater by conventional Ag has
been catastrophic. Our salmon are at less than 1% of their historical levels and
facing extinction while the aquifers under the central valley are collapsing.

In 2024 alone, Manzanita Cooperative will save more than 50 million gallons of
water, and by 2030 we will be saving more than a trillion gallons a year by
producing food from native crops that don’t require irrigation.

Adapting native plants for agriculture solves a long list of problems.

 * Growing locally adapted native foods that do not require irrigation relieves
   pressure on our rivers and aquifers.
 * Western native plants, particularly in California, are uniquely adapted to
   drought, and drought is the biggest driver of crop failures from climate
   change.
 * Wild harvesting of acorn instead of cutting forests to plant orchards full of
   non-native nuts preserves existing habitat. California’s Oak forests support
   more than 6,000 species, including more than half of all vertebrates and
   keeping them intact is critical to the resilience of our state.
 * Acorn is also incredibly nutritious, can be easily stored, and provides a
   resilient food supply even as climate change causes rapidly accelerating
   failures of conventional crops.
 * Agriculture is responsible for more than a third of climate change causing
   emissions globally, with a huge portion of that being driven by soil
   degradation from factory farming. Meanwhile, forests have shrunk rapidly in
   the last century as they’ve been cleared to make way for farms and housing.
   Keeping forests and soils intact is one of the most powerful things we can do
   to prevent emissions. Over time we will move from safeguarding existing
   forests to replanting and restoring them.

Want to learn more? Sign up for our mailing list to get regular updates as we
build a more resilient and sustainable native agriculture in Northern
California.


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INVEST IN SUSTAINABILITY

Native foods aren’t just good for humans and the environment, they’re good
business. While the majority of Manzanita Cooperative’s shares are owned by our
worker-owners and community stakeholders, we are looking for mission-aligned
investors to take a minority stake in return for startup funds.

This year, we plan to launch a prototype factory to process acorn at scale. At
an expected capacity of only 2,000 lbs a day, it will be tiny by conventional
standards, but still by far the biggest facility to process acorn in North
America.



This lean factory will use Agile production on demand, testing and developing
the equipment needed to efficiently process acorn at scale. Once we’ve dialed it
in, we can expand; adding additional equipment for scale in 2025 and 2026. We
expect to provide very strong ROI and a full investor kit – including financial
projections and terms – is available on request. Please contact
invest@manzanitacooperative.com


A PRECARIOUS STATUS QUO

Commercial agriculture is dangerously centralized. There are around 30,000 known
edible plant species, adapted to every biome that supports human life, and yet
less than 1% of these are grown commercially. Only 3 (wheat, rice, corn) make up
the absolute majority of calories consumed by humans, and 1 (soybean) is 3/4 of
the plant based protein for humans and livestock globally.

Putting all our eggs in so few baskets creates real risk, and crop failures are
already increasing as the climate changes. Just in the US, USDA crop failure
insurance payouts have increased by 15% a year or more for three years running.
It’s no wonder that groups from the UN to the World Economic Forum are now
urging industry to diversify food supplies and find new crops!



Manzanita Cooperative is answering that call by bringing the native foods of
California and the West back to the mainstream. In addition to our work with
existing native superfoods like Acorn, we are the only company in North America
doing the hard work of domesticating new crops.

Our cutting edge breeding process allows us to do so in a fraction of the time
that domestication used to take – without using genetic engineering – and while
preserving habitat value for pollinators and more.


A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO AGRICULTURE

The work we are doing to produce nutritious climate-adapted foods while cutting
carbon emissions and preserving habitat is essential. Bringing living wage jobs
to North Coast communities that have long been neglected is just as important to
people living here.

In partnership with tribes, local governments, and community investors; we are
developing a biodiverse approach to sustainable organic polyculture that can
produce healthy and delicious food at scale with little or no summer irrigation.
By doing so, we can restore habitat for native pollinators and other species and
provide real food security in a changing climate.

In the short term, we are working with landowners across the North Coast and
North Bay to sustainably harvest Oak and Bay Laurel trees that have gone
unharvested for generations, while being sure to leave enough behind for
wildlife. Active monitoring of our impact on local biodiversity ensures there
are no unpleasant surprises down the road. Modern processing techniques allow us
to make traditional foods like Acorn flour available at affordable prices and at
scale for everyone.

Over the long term, we want to do more than just harvest wild forests, we want
to purchase former forests that have been cut down or burned and restore them as
cultivated wilderness. Instead of monoculture farms that kill pollinators,
destroy rivers, and deplete aquifers; we will plant carefully tended cultivated
wilderness that combines multiple species to produce food while providing
habitat.


SO WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE?

Planting trees like Oak in fields alongside other crops stabilizes soil against
erosion, meaningfully reduces carbon emissions, and draws water up from deep
underground. They also provide delicious, healthy, and abundant nuts – without
irrigation.



Native legumes, domesticated through a partnership with the National Science
Foundation, provide a nitrogen-fixing cover crop that enriches soil and produce
plant based protein.  Native currants, hazelnuts, and manzanita berries provide
additional high quality foods, while hedgerows grown with dense flowering
natives like lilac and wild rose provide plentiful forage for pollinators – and
provide a barrier against the spread of pollen from domesticated varieties to
their wild cousins elsewhere. Regular controlled burns, conducted in partnership
with indigenous experts, return nutrients to the soil, prevent the spread of
disease, and protect our working forests against destructive wildfires. With a
variety of crops grown together, fluctuations in weather may hinder one crop
while helping another; but there will always be a harvest.



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