regenerative practices
Crooked Vege is built on organic, regenerative, community-first principles. Regenerative agriculture seeks to regenerate, rather than degenerate the soils and biodiversity of agricultural systems.
Prioritising soil and ecological health produces healthy vegetables without the need for the destructive processes of industrial agriculture.
We minimise soil disturbance (such as mechanical tillage), remove synthetic fertilisers and sprays, use cover cropping, diverse plantings, and grow habitat for insects. This fosters healthy soil and enriches biodiversity, which in turn fosters healthy plants, while looking after our environment. Looking after our environment and producing healthy kai is key to healthy communities.
social enterprise market garden
Our mission is to improve access to locally, ethically-grown kai while working towards a fair wage as farmers.
The ideal legal structure for this would be a ‘social enterprise’, but there’s no way to do this officially in Aotearoa. So we’ve registered as a charity instead. This is as close as we can get to a structure that shows we don’t measure success by profits. Rather, we measure success by the wellbeing of the community, the farmers, and the environment.
A brighter future of localised, environmentally-friendly food production cannot depend on volunteer labour or the volatility of grants and philanthropists. We must build systems that respect the hard work and knowledge required to grow healthy vege, while remaining economically viable.