How We Leverage Data to Support Landowners

Spruce Bluff Preserve, Port Saint Lucie, Florida

We are diving into our outreach work in Florida! Our outreach team has taken the exciting step of beginning to visit Hispanic forest landowners there as we launch this new phase. 

Analyzing a variety of data sets from across the United States has helped to guide our outreach to Hispanic forest landowners and increase awareness, leading our team to choose Florida as one of our target states. In Florida, Hispanics/Latinos own or manage about 25,000 acres of forestland. We plan to center our outreach efforts on some of the Florida counties where Hispanics/Latinos have the greatest amount of forestland, including Okeechobee County in south-central Florida (about 3,900 acres) and Hillsborough County (about 1,700 acres).

In Florida, Hispanic landowners own about 25,000 acres of forest, making it an ideal place to concentrate our outreach efforts.

Across the U.S., Hispanics/Latinos own about 1 million acres of forestland. We will focus our efforts on states including New Mexico and Florida due to the high density of Hispanics/Latinos who own or manage forestland in those states, making them ideal places to connect historically underserved landowners with sustainable agriculture and forestry resources. (Stay tuned for an update soon about our work in New Mexico!)

This map shows the land owned by Hispanic forest landowners across the United States.

In Florida, we plan to collaborate closely with Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offices to leverage existing relationships. Paul Pendergast, mano-Y-ola Chief Agronomist (Florida), is leading our outreach efforts under the guidance of Senior Conservationist Advisor Ismael (Maelo) Reyes. Our team is using data collection and real-time analysis to provide tailored support to Hispanic forest landowners. These efforts build on our successful pilot project in Puerto Rico and incorporate insights from landowners’ goals and challenges.

Connecting with landowners in person will continue to be an essential part of our efforts in Florida. As our program grows in Florida, Paul and Maelo will visit more landowners who are interested in participating in our program and learning more about sustainable agriculture and forestry opportunities.

Hispanic Forest Landowner Spotlight: Manuel Baez and Finca Gaia 

When Manuel Baez plants trees at Finca Gaia in Dorado, Puerto Rico, he thinks of the beautiful legacy he is creating for his two young sons, 10-year-old Mateo and 8-year-old Joaquin. The two boys love exploring the farm’s unique ecosystem and learning about the many species of trees, birds, insects, and other flora and fauna that are found there. The farm has already been part of the family for several generations. Manuel’s grandfather acquired the land that is now Finca Gaia some 60 years ago, Manuel explained. 

Decades later, about 8 to 10 years ago, Manuel’s mom visited the farm and decided that she wanted to start planting fruit trees. The family went to the farm to explore it and began spending their Sundays there more and more often, eventually beginning to plant trees.  

“My mom was always the force behind everything,” Manuel said. “A little bit at a time, we fell in love - me, my brothers, my dad.”  

Manuel Baez of Finca Gaia

Their vision of Finca Gaia grew from that initial dream into what the farm is today - a space dedicated to conservation, sustainable agriculture, and education.

“The little trees that I’m planting today with my mom, if my grandfather had planted them, I would be seeing a paradise now. It’s up to me to plant them so that perhaps one day my sons can enjoy century-old trees, spectacular fruit trees,” Manuel said. “But I know that the ones who are really going to enjoy them are my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren will probably be the ones who are really going to see some majestic trees.” 

To help share their message of sustainable agriculture and conservation with a wider audience, Manuel and his mom also started their own podcast, called Gaia Podcast. Recent episodes explore topics from coral reef conservation to composting. Mateo and Joaquin are guest stars on one of the episodes, too!

Finca Gaia hosted our first forestry outreach workshop in Puerto Rico in February and will also be hosting our next workshop there tomorrow. Tomorrow’s workshop focuses on bat conservation, an area that Finca Gaia has actively worked to support. These workshops are an opportunity for participants in our Hispanic Forest Landowners Outreach (HFLO) Program to visit local farms and learn from each others’ experiences in sustainable agriculture, conservation, and agroforestry. 

Cultivating shade-grown coffee

In April, mano-Y-ola Natural Resources Intern Caroline Sanabria Colón participated in our forestry outreach workshop about agroforestry and shade-grown coffee! Below, Caroline tells us about the workshop:

My experience at the workshop at Finca Cruz in Maricao, Puerto Rico, was enriching and educational. I learned about different methods of planting coffee and agroforestry techniques. It was inspiring to see how the owners of Finca Cruz cared for the farm and planted there.  

During the workshop, the participants worked together to build an “A”-shaped level (or easel), which is an instrument used to measure the contour and mark the level of the ground before digging the holes that will be used for planting. The participating farmers were ready to work together in all of the activities and the tour of the farm. Another instrument that was used as part of the demonstration is a densitometer, which was made by hand using materials such as string, scissors, the cardboard from a roll of toilet paper or paper towels, and tape. It is used to look through while looking up at the tree canopy and is useful for measuring the percentage of canopy cover in the area. 

In April, our forestry program participants explored Finca Cruz, where coffee is grown under the shade of other trees.

Finca Cruz has 22 cuerdas of land where bananas, coffee, and orangelos — a cross between an orange and a grapefruit — are cultivated under the shade of other trees. (Cuerdas are used to measure land area in Puerto Rico. One cuerda is equal to about 0.97 acres.) José Cruz, who owns the farm, comes from a family of farmers and has maintained his traditional method of cultivating shade-grown crops, which has proven to be efficient and productive. His method of planting has been more than effective, producing a constant supply of coffee berries and resisting impacts such as Hurricane Maria thanks to the forest that he and his family had cared for with so much dedication. 

Edwin Más, Agriculture and Forestry Advisor at mano-Y-ola, also spoke about management and conservation best practices in agriculture, comparing older methods to newer ones. 

For me, the visit to Finca Cruz was a valuable experience that helped me in my personal and professional growth.

---

Coming Soon!

In June, participants in our fifth forestry outreach workshop in Puerto Rico will explore the importance of pollinators and how to create habitat for them.