The Inga Foundation promotes Inga Alley Cropping as a sustainable alternative to ‘Slash and Burn’ agriculture, which destroys tropical rainforests. Developed by founder Mike Hands, this revolutionary method integrates fast-growing, nitrogen-fixing Inga trees into farmland, with crops like maize grown in the alleys.
The Inga trees are soil-healing superheroes that enrich the land, naturally suppress weeds, and provide clean firewood. This approach offers farmers economic resilience while allowing deforested land to recover. The flagship project in Honduras supports 600 families, has transformed 2,400 hectares, and sequestered and avoided over a million tons of CO2, proving that human needs and nature recovery can be met simultaneously.
How can research from Cambridge University help save the world’s tropical rainforests?
Mike Hands, founder of the Inga Foundation, has the answer: Inga Alley Cropping, a revolutionary farming method described as “the tropical equivalent of turning water into wine.”
The Global Rewilding Alliance is proud to welcome the Inga Foundation into our ever-growing network.
Inspiration behind Inga Alley Cropping: Healing Soil
Across the tropics, 250 million farmers rely on ‘Slash and Burn’ agriculture to feed their families, a practice where forest is cut, dried, and burnt, crops are then grown for a year or two, and as soil fertility crashes, new forest areas are felled and the destruction continues. Mike Hands, from Inga Foundation, recognised that to protect tropical rainforests and begin to restore previously forested areas, farmers’ needs must be met. As is so often the case in rewilding throughout our network of Alliance Partners, people are at the heart of nature recovery and the success of projects. His revolutionary Inga Alley Cropping method, developed over 16 years at Cambridge University and a further 23 years in the field, presents a sustainable alternative livelihood to ‘Slash and Burn’, paving the way to a more resilient, wilder world.
Watch this short video, a real drone footage captured by filmmaker Adam Wakeling, on the Inga Foundation demo farm in Honduras.
Inga Alley Cropping with Inga trees and maize. Photo credit: Inga Foundation
What is Inga Alley Cropping and where is it being rolled out?
Inga Alley Cropping integrates soil-healing trees into farmland. In this system, rows of fast-growing, nitrogen-fixing Inga trees are planted along steep, degraded slopes. Crops like maize are grown between these rows. The Inga Foundation’s flagship Inga Alley Cropping project in rural, northern Honduras has already transformed 2,400 hectares of degraded farmland, where nearly 3 million Inga trees support 600 smallholder families.
Why the Inga Tree?
The Inga tree used in Inga Alley Cropping is a soil restoring superhero.
With around 300 species of Inga, each adapted to specific tropical conditions in South and Central America, Inga trees:
- Grow rapidly and tolerate degraded soils.
- Enrich soil fertility through nitrogen-fixing roots and mycorrhizal fungi partnerships.
- Suppress weeds naturally with their dense canopies and slow-decomposing leaf mulch that mimics a rainforest floor, eliminating the need for herbicides.
- Protect nearby crops by producing edible fruits and nectar that attract pest-controlling insects.
- Provide firewood through annual coppicing, saving new areas of rainforest from being cut. Inga burns much cleaner than most firewood.
- Offer farmers economic resilience, no longer dependent on deforestation as a means of survival.
The Headline Results from Inga Alley Cropping
Farmers no longer need to slash and burn, freeing land for more extensive agroforestry systems such as Inga/fruit-tree or Inga-timber-tree associations. Secondary forest previously destined for slash-and-burn can now proceed to fully mature.
That means more forest for Jaguar, Tapir, Howler Monkeys and many bird species. What’s more, the project in Honduras has sequestered and avoided over a million tons (est. 1,040,138 tons) of CO2 over 12 years!
Inga Alley Cropping frees up space for trees. Photo credit: Inga Foundation
Spreading and growing the seeds of the model
As Inga is only native to South and Central America, the Inga Foundation is collaborating with Kew Gardens to identify alternative tree species for Inga Alley Cropping in other tropical regions.
In the spirit of ‘Protect the best and restore the rest’, the Inga Foundation is addressing a root cause of deforestation, empowering farmers and giving degraded land a chance to become vibrant again. Their pioneering work illuminates a hopeful path forward for tropical landscapes and the communities that depend on them. The true success of this model lies in its intelligent reapplication rather than replication, and its greatest legacy is the powerful, adaptable principle it demonstrates: that we can meet human needs while healing the natural world. The Inga Foundation’s lasting positive impact invites a global conversation, a sharing of knowledge and experiences that will allow communities everywhere to tailor this transformative approach to their unique environments. Through this spirit of collaboration and adaptation, the seeds of this model can grow into a diverse and flourishing future for farming and forests across the tropics.
Visit Inga’s Foundation website to learn more about Inga Foundation’s impactful work.
Farmer using the Inga method. Credits: Inga Foundation