THE NATURE CONSERVANCY
Supporting Mexican smallholders to adopt regenerative farming practices
WHAT?
Dalberg was engaged by The Nature Conservancy to conduct a foundational study on the livelihoods of smallholder producers living near three key protected areas in southern Mexico—Calakmul, Sierra Madre, and Lacandona. The goal: to inform the design of financial and non-financial products that could enable and ease smallholders’ transition toward regenerative agricultural practices.
WHY?
Producers in the coffee, honey, and cattle value chains play a vital role in sustaining the region’s biodiversity. Yet their transition to regenerative models is hindered by inconsistent cash flows, fragmented support ecosystems, and limited access to financing tailored to their production rhythms and risk profiles. The Nature Conservancy sought a user-driven understanding of these barriers to design a financing approach that meets producers where they are.
OUTCOME
The study laid the foundation for the launch of COA, a blended finance platform designed to support the regenerative transition of smallholder producers in Mexico. Through insights from 88 producers across 21 collectives in 10 municipalities, Dalberg developed user archetypes, regenerative adoption journey maps, value chain production cycles, and design principles. These directly informed the structure of COA—ensuring it is contextually relevant, inclusive, and responsive to producers’ real financing and capacity-building needs. Read more here.
DURATION
3 Months, 2022
LOCATION
Mexico
MY ROLE
Project Co-lead
Design Research
Led and conducted Design Research
Led and conducted services protoyping
TEAM
Fabiola Salman
Pablo Peña
Patricia Santillan
Daniela Cespedes
Sofía Vanegas
LINKS
Read: A New Harvest: How Blended Finance is Enabling Sustainable Farming
HOW?
We used a layered, multidisciplinary approach across 10 municipalities to understand producers’ financial lives, production cycles, and readiness to adopt regenerative practices. Our research combined three key components:
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In-depth HCD research with 88 smallholder producers from 21 collectives across coffee, honey, and cattle value chains. We used tools such as practice cards to surface barriers to regenerative adoption, and financial life and production maps to capture seasonal dynamics, cash flows, and decision-making.
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Ecosystem analysis of the current financing landscape in southern Mexico to map key actors, identify product and service gaps, and understand systemic constraints.
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Collaborative solution design through remote validation activities—including WhatsApp panels and service cards—to test product ideas and co-create a financing facility aligned with producers’ real needs.
This end-to-end approach grounded the creation of COA, a blended finance platform now supporting the transition to regenerative agriculture in southern Mexico.
