Why We Work Close to the Ground

Terra Productiva is a finca in Aldea Gavidia, above the town of Mucuchies, in Merida, in the Venezuelan Andes, within reach of Sierra Nevada National Park. It sits at about 11,150 feet, roughly 2.3 acres, most of it cultivable. There is a warehouse almost ready for a mushroom facility, a guesthouse that is not operating now but has hosted more than 25 guests and can reopen, a natural spring, solar panels, and working satellite internet. The finca is not yet operating, so these are things to put to work, not income coming in today. Our model is plain: we raise support to fund productive ventures, local families produce and earn wages, and the revenue recirculates into the next venture. Support, not handouts.

People sometimes ask why we do this privately and through the community rather than through a large public program. It is a fair question, and the answer is about how things work, not about politics. This is not an argument against any government or any party. Big public programs have one great strength: scale. They can reach many places at once. But scale works at a distance, and distance loses the details. The further a decision travels from the family it is meant to help, the more of the detail gets lost along the way.

Merida is a place where institutions are thin and infrastructure is hard. Over the past decade the economy contracted, savings lost their value, public services weakened, and many people left to send money home. The grid fails often, water is intermittent, fuel can be scarce, and connectivity is patchy, more so this high in the mountains. In a place like this, closeness matters more than reach. What survives is what is close: the neighbor you can call, the wage that reaches a family directly, the cow named Florencia whose milk becomes the mascarpone at a restaurant down the road.

So we work close to the ground on purpose. When support goes straight into a warehouse, a spring, and a family that knows the paramo, you can see where it went and who it fed. The first buyers already exist: El Quinto Sabor in Mucuchies, run by chef Indira Vasquez, and the restaurants and supermarkets of Merida. I was born and raised in Venezuela, I am now an American, and I am proud of how Texans look out for one another. That is the same instinct here. It is neighbors helping neighbors, directly, and accountable to the people they can see.