Konbit: Fostering Food Sovereignty

The problem we are committed to solving is food insecurity within tribal nations. COVID-19 has deeply impacted tribal communities, and many tribes began to look critically at their food systems to establish food sovereignty amidst the lockdown.

Our solution is creating community farms where tribal members can share in localizing food production. Food has always been at the center of Native Culture. Creating a medium in which communities can share in the amplification of food culture is a step toward creating prosperity and building resiliency in the community. 

Now, our solution is not only applicable to tribal nations. According to the UN, on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is also a “hunger pandemic.” There are presently a billion people facing food insecurity, meaning that our impact can start small in Indian Country and then scale up for communities worldwide. 

Over a billion people worldwide are food insecure, with over a quarter-billion people worldwide face acute hunger.

In the US, despite our efficient food systems, we have growing food insecurity. The current socio-economic system is not working for many people. There is a lack of sustainable livelihoods and a lack of overall well-being. Native Americans across the nation have been especially bearing the brunt.  Over 50M people are food insecure in the US, and over 2M living on tribal lands are in food deserts.

We need to re-design our food systems so that food sovereignty & equity became the norm. 

In Indian Country, there are often limited options for community members to buy affordable, healthy produce conveniently. Tribal members might have to travel a considerable distance outside the reservation or rely on the limited options available at local grocery stores.

By delivering a means to produce healthy foods locally, we can ignite a movement of social entrepreneurs toward tackling these food deserts and food insecurity. Beyond tribal nations, economic development offices, city governments, and educational institutions can all be potential funding sources for this kind of community project. 

Our solution is to deliver for tribal nations community farm spaces that enable the localization of food production with healthy, local, organic produce. Additionally, to create economic opportunity, we want to give community members with an entrepreneurial spirit the ability to help their tribes create economic prosperity. 

By operating at the nexus of revitalizing traditional food cultivation and modern bio-intensive farming practices, Konbit is the solution tribes are looking for when establishing a foothold on the journey to complete food sovereignty.

For too long, the focus has been on short-term gains instead of building resilient systems. 

Konbit believes now is the opportune time for a paradigm shift towards enabling food sovereignty and equity by taking a system approach, we call, Regenerative Renaissance – Plant, People, Prosperity. Together. 

Konbit accomplishes this by: 

• Catalyzing a community-centric social entrepreneur-farmers network;
• Harnessing indigenous wisdom & circular economy, guild based bio-intensive farming practices;
• Localizing 4-season food production in geodesic infrastructures; 
• Enabling smart farming of nutrient-dense foods;
• Providing digital tokens for value exchange; 

The outcome is resilient individual, community & landscape. 

Again, 2 million Native Americans who live in areas considered food deserts and face food insecurity. One of the difficult aspects to discuss is the often-poor socio-economic conditions affecting tribal members. Colonization has led to historical trauma within tribal people, and a result of this is the health disparities that affect tribal communities.

By creating a means for tribal members to have more access to healthy, affordable foods, we can work to reverse these disparities. 

Thus, the target population we are focusing on are tribal communities with independent, sovereign governments in which food sovereignty is a prominent concern. 

We consult with tribal councils, program directors, and tribal elders through a co-creative design process. And we seek to find ways to incorporate those motivated by economic development and those interested in revitalizing traditional ecological knowledge surrounding food production. 

Konbit’s mission aligns perfectly with the goal of furthering the access of tribal communities to healthy and sovereign foods. 

Our focus is food sovereignty.

Through the creation of community farms, we are primed to make a lasting impact in the communities which we serve, and with that, we are also simultaneously creating jobs in the community.

We recognize that systemic issues are at the forefront of many concerns for tribal leadership. The promotion of social entrepreneurship through agriculture is a means to allow skillshare for Natives with a passion for gardening or tribal traditions surrounding food. 

We are presently about to break ground in July on a community farm funded by a $100,000 grant from the USDA NIFA at the Colville Confederated tribes in Eastern Washington.

This will serve as a test to validate the model, and some of the questions we are looking to answer are: 

• How might we ensure food equity and food sovereignty across Native American nations using social entrepreneurship to remove food and credit deserts? 
• How might we provide balanced supply and demand in the food systems -- with the right substitutes (different forms, but similar health utility) and alternatives (various forms and other health utility -- tapping into the rich indigenous culture and knowledge and the existing bio-diversity of locally available food produce? 

Our solution is innovative because never before has there been a whole system approach to addressing food insecurity and food equity in Native American nations. We combine the latest in bio-intensive farming practices utilizing such technology as IOT monitoring, automated greenhouse controls, and soil monitoring with traditional ecological knowledge to work toward the revitalization of traditional food sources. Additionally, as a means to create and sustain a network of social entrepreneurs, we have an app that creates an exchange marketplace, and the use of digital tokens for value exchange is also available. 

With climate change upon us and erratic weather patterns, structures are essential to protect food sources from the elements. Konbit products and services include infrastructure and technologies for 4-season food production. Konbit snap-to-grow simple yet unique geodesic dome farm designs incorporate locally available material assembled on-site. True to the meaning of Konbit -- coming together for community good -- we also create local temporary jobs as the structure comes together. Konbit also provides the technologies to manage the Konbit farms smartly. It considers various macro- and micro-conditions to enable the network of social entrepreneurs-food producers to control and manage their food production across the network of Konbit farms.

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The use of smart-monitoring IoT devices within the community farms may lack connectivity to the internet in some areas. For dead zones, our technology is designed to be ported to smartphones, which obtains the data, and then sends out the data when a suitable connection is established. 

Our beachhead market is Native American lands. Through our five actions Regenerative Renaissance — Planet, People, Prosperity. Together.™ approach, we empower cultural entrepreneurs by localizing year-round nutrient-dense food production, thus kindling pride, spreading prosperity, and driving to the outcome of resilient individual, community & landscape. 

Our hypothesis is 1 > 6 > 100. One Konbit farm owner-cultural entrepreneur can create six local jobs on their Konbit farm and feed 100 people in their community nutrient-dense locally grown indigenous food. 

We hope with good faith PR and good work on the ground, Konbit can expand to amplify the impact of the Regenerative Renaissance business model across original people around the globe.

Our hypothesis is 1 > 6 > 50. One Konbit farm owner-cultural entrepreneur can create six local jobs on their Konbit farm and feed 100 people in their community nutrient-dense locally grown indigenous food. Conservatively, our five-year impact plan includes scaling from 10 such farms in YR 1 to about 100 farms in YR 5. Konbit spawns 100 cultural entrepreneurs by year five, generating 600 jobs and feeding 500 people nutrient-dense locally grown indigenous food. 

We have Confederated Colville Tribes willing to, based on the pilot, expand 4-6 additional locations. The pilot will launch July 2021-Dec 2021, aligned with the SBIR Phase 1 Grant.

We have one LOI with the Navajo Nation chapter in Grando, AZ -- another pilot that can form as the template for more customers across all 110 chapters across Navajo Nation. We are awaiting the community to sign off to break ground on the project.

Additionally, we are in ongoing deliberations with Nez Perce, Coeur D'Alene, Bear River band, Ute Mountain, Nation of Hawai'i, Cherokee Nation, and Kalispel tribes towards enabling food sovereignty and equity across their ancestral lands. 

We are running bootstrapped operations.
We have Confederated Colville Tribes willing to based on pilot expand 4-6 additional locations. The pilot will launch July 2021-Dec 2021 aligned with the SBIR Phase 1 Grant.

We have Navajo Nation Chapter at Gando, AZ ready to have another pilot that subsequently can form as the template for all 110 chapters across Navajo Nation. We are awaiting the community to sign off to break ground on the project.

We 6 people on the team. 4 are part-time, 2 are full-time.

Our synergistic team is interdisciplinary, grounded in the community, and drives at the Speed of Trust. We directly engage with the people most impacted by insecurities, be it food, water, energy, or economic. Their lived experience and working with whole-system capacity builders and key influencers require us to take a JEDI (Justice-Equity-Diversity-Inclusion)approach to everything we do. Both re-indigenization and decolonization play a critical role in our modus operandi. Our BIPOC diversity and inclusiveness are reflected in the team members' rich background, education, and lived experience. Together, we enrich one another's lives and enhance our community members' interactions through active co-creation. 

We are a team of amazing thinkers-doers who believe we are in the epoch time of Regenerative Renaissance — making the world a better place for all.