The Next Ten Years: Bringing the Lessons Home

After ten years working across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting on what we have learned inevitably raises the question: what comes next?

From the beginning, Lookfar's work has focused primarily on biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration. But over the years, one lesson has become increasingly clear: protecting nature rarely succeeds in isolation.

Some of the strongest and most enduring conservation results we have seen occurred where protected areas were embedded within healthier, more productive landscapes. Working farms, healthy soils, restored watersheds and thriving rural economies did not compete with conservation — they strengthened it.

We saw this particularly clearly when conservation organizations reached beyond the boundaries of reserves to work with smallholder farmers and surrounding communities. By helping farmers transition from conventional practices to more regenerative systems — planting trees, introducing shade-grown and diversified crops, restoring soils and connecting producers to markets — these organizations created benefits that extended far beyond biodiversity.

In the best examples, degraded landscapes began to recover while farming families gained new sources of income and greater resilience. Conservation became part of a functioning local economy rather than something separate from it.

These experiences have fundamentally shaped how we think about agriculture — and about Lookfar's own role in the years ahead.

Bringing the lessons home

As Lookfar enters its second decade, we are bringing what we have learned into a new chapter: regenerative agriculture, landscape restoration and biodiversity conservation in Portugal and the wider Iberian Peninsula.

Farming is intrinsically place-based. With Lookfar's new office in southern Portugal, this work will begin close to home, while continuing to draw heavily on the knowledge, relationships and practical experience we have gained from landscapes such as Ecuador's Chocó, Brazil's Mata Atlântica and South Africa's Western and Eastern Capes.

Portugal provides a compelling place to put these lessons into practice.

Soil degradation, water scarcity, wildfire, invasive species, pressure on family farms and declining rural economies are often treated as separate challenges. In reality, they are deeply interconnected. Across Portugal, farmers, landowners, restoration organizations, municipalities, researchers and businesses are already developing promising responses — but many efforts remain fragmented.

Regenerative agriculture offers an opportunity to connect some of these dots.

Healthy agricultural landscapes can help restore soils and water cycles, extend tree cover and ecological corridors, buffer protected areas, strengthen biodiversity and make rural communities more resilient. At the same time, regenerative farming can create viable economic incentives for people to remain on and care for the land.

Lookfar is beginning to explore these relationships through farmer support, water-retention and landscape restoration, productive uses for removed invasive biomass and timber, scientific research, training, and stronger connections between producers and markets.

But our first task is simpler: listen and learn.

Over the past months, we have been meeting farmers, researchers, conservationists, landowners, entrepreneurs and organizations across the Alentejo, Ribatejo and Algarve to understand what is already happening — what is working, what is missing, and where better coordination, resources or partnerships could make a meaningful difference.

That is how Lookfar has always worked. We do not believe solutions need to be imported or reinvented when good ideas and capable people already exist. Our role is often to find them, connect them, strengthen them and help promising approaches grow.

As we begin our next ten years, our measure of success remains much the same: stronger local organizations, healthier landscapes, more resilient rural communities, and practical examples that can light the way for others.

Join us for the next chapter

This is only the beginning, and we would love to hear from you.

If you are working on regenerative agriculture, landscape restoration or biodiversity conservation in Portugal or elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula, get in touch. If you know an inspiring farmer, researcher, project, organization or place we should visit, point us in their direction. If you have experience, ideas or lessons that could help shape our thinking, share them with us.

And follow Lookfar as we explore this new landscape, meet the people already changing it, and discover where we can make the greatest contribution.

Ten years of lessons behind us. A new landscape ahead.