What Regenerative Tourism Really Means

What Regenerative Tourism Really Means

And Why It's the Future of Eco Travel
Case Study: Finca Luna Nueva Lodge

A quiet revolution is underway in the world of travel. Travelers who once felt virtuous booking "eco-friendly" hotels with recycled towel programs and solar panels are beginning to ask a harder question: Is it enough to simply do less harm? Or is it possible to travel in a way that actually heals the land, restores ecosystems, and regenerates communities? That question is at the heart of regenerative tourism — and it is rapidly reshaping the way conscious travelers think about where they go, how they stay, and what their presence means for the planet.

Nowhere is this question answered more compellingly than at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge on the biologically rich Caribbean slopes of Costa Rica. Nestled beside the Children's Eternal Rainforest and run on the principles of regenerative agriculture, Finca Luna Nueva is not merely a destination — it is a living demonstration of what tourism can be when it is designed not just to sustain, but to restore.

Finca Luna Nueva Lodge: At a Glance

Location: San Isidro de Peñas Blancas, Costa Rica (10°23’19″N, 84°35’48″W)
Founded: 1994 by Steven Farrell
Size: ~130 acres
Co-founders/Co-stewards: Tom and Terry Newmark (1999)
Notable: Featured (2026) by Lonely Planet as one of the top wellness destinations in Costa Rica; featured (2025) in Culture Trip as one of “The 10 Best Ecolodges in Costa Rica That You Can Actually Afford”; featured (2025) as one of four global examples of regenerative agritourism by the Dominican Republic publication Acento; featured (2024) by Travel Noire as one of five top yoga and wellness retreat centers in Costa Rica; founding site of Regeneration International (2015); featured in Rodale Institute white paper (2020)
Neighboring Reserve: Children’s Eternal Rainforest (54,000+ acres, largest private reserve in Costa Rica)
Accommodation: Eco-lodge with farm-to-table dining

Beyond Sustainability: Defining Regenerative Tourism

To understand regenerative tourism, it helps to first understand what it is not. Sustainable tourism, for all its merits, is built around the idea of minimizing damage — using fewer resources, generating less waste, and leaving a lighter footprint. Eco-tourism goes a step further, drawing travelers into natural settings and funding conservation through admission fees and guided visits. Both represent meaningful progress. But neither, by definition, requires that a destination become more alive, more biodiverse, or more fertile because of a traveler's presence.

Regenerative tourism demands exactly that. It asks: does this place improve because guests come here? Are soils rebuilt? Are ecosystems expanded? Are local communities enriched and empowered in ways that compound over time? The goal is not net-zero impact — it is net-positive impact. Regenerative tourism operates on the understanding that human activity, when thoughtfully designed, can be a force for restoration rather than depletion.

The principles of regenerative tourism draw directly from the regenerative agriculture movement, which holds that farming should work with natural systems rather than against them — building soil organic matter, increasing biodiversity, sequestering carbon, and restoring watershed health. When these principles migrate into hospitality, the result is a lodge or farm-stay that functions as a productive ecosystem: one that grows richer, wilder, and more resilient the more it is tended and visited.

Finca Luna Nueva: A Living Classroom of Regeneration

Founded in 1994 as a 74-acre organic ginger and turmeric farm by Steven Farrell, Finca Luna Nueva was among the first certified organic and regenerative farms in all of Central America. Over the decades that followed — as Tom Newmark and his wife Terry became co-owners and co-stewards — the farm evolved into something far more ambitious: an approximately 130-acre regenerative farm and eco-lodge devoted to demonstrating that food production, conservation, and hospitality can and must reinforce one another.

Tom Newmark's vision for the farm was shaped by a pivotal encounter with Dr. Timothy LaSalle, then CEO of the Rodale Institute and co-founder of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems at California State University, Chico. That meeting, Newmark has said, "rocked his world." It crystallized for him the understanding that carbon sequestration through regenerative farming was not merely a farming methodology but a response to the existential threat of climate change. From that moment, he and Terry committed their lives to regenerative agriculture — and Finca Luna Nueva became their proving ground.

Today, Finca Luna Nueva grows cacao, vanilla, black pepper, ginger, turmeric, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, and more than 300 other tropical fruits, spices, and medicinal plants. It maintains a holistically managed dairy herd on pastures free of synthetic inputs. And it operates a farm-to-table lodge where guests do not merely eat well — they eat meaningfully, dining on food whose story begins just steps from the table and whose cultivation is designed to rebuild the very earth from which it comes.

The Farm-to-Table Experience as Regenerative Act

In the context of regenerative tourism, the phrase "farm to table" carries a weight that goes well beyond locavorism or culinary freshness. At Finca Luna Nueva, food on the table is the endpoint of a chain of regenerative decisions: soil that has been built up rather than depleted, plants grown in polyculture rather than monoculture, animals whose manure feeds the land rather than pollutes waterways. Each meal is, in a very real sense, an argument about what food production can look like when it is oriented toward life.

The lodge actively invites guests into this story. For the curious traveler, Finca Luna Nueva offers a suite of immersive experiences that transform a vacation into an education:

• Farm Tours illuminate the principles of regenerative agriculture in action, showing guests firsthand how syntropic systems rebuild soil, sequester carbon, and restore biodiversity.
• Cacao Tours take visitors on what the farm describes as “a thousand-year journey through the history” of chocolate, from tropical forest to finished bar.
• Early Morning Dairy Tours take guests to the farm’s holistic dairy, where everyone — especially the youngsters — can milk the cows, meet the adorable calves, and learn how holistic livestock management produces not only delicious dairy products but ecologically improved pastures.
• Beekeeping Tours introduce guests to the farm’s extensive mariola bee project. Those tiny native stingless bees not only produce a bright citrusy-flavored medicinal honey, but they thrive in biodiversity and are the “wild stock” of a regenerative farm in the neotropics.
• Herbal Medicine Workshop — Many herbs of traditional medicinal value grow throughout the farm and are integrated into the overall regenerative farming approach. The Herbal Medicine Workshop gives guests a hands on experience of making traditional herbal preparations using the wisdom of nature contained in Luna Nueva’s living “farmacy.”
• Farm-to-Table Tours tie everything together: guests head out into the farm, harvest fresh ingredients, and with the farm’s chefs prepare a meal to enjoy on the land itself — the most direct possible expression of regenerative agriculture.

For the guest, these are not add-on activities — they are the education that gives every meal its meaning.

This model of hospitality aligns precisely with the requirements of regenerative tourism. Guests are not passive consumers of a natural setting — they are participants in an ongoing experiment in land stewardship. Their presence funds the farm. Their curiosity drives the educational mission. Their experience, ideally, sends them home changed: more conscious consumers, more aware advocates, more willing to ask hard questions about where their food comes from and at what ecological cost.

“Finca Luna Nueva is not a fully realized regenerative dream. Regenerating is always a work in progress, and the lodge and farm are on the journey. There are big holes in our game. There are mistakes that will become lessons. In so many ways this paper is both a description and a mission statement, and the mission is the work of our lifetime. It will also, we hope, be the work of the next generation of regenerators.”

— Tom Newmark, Co-Founder, Finca Luna Nueva Lodge

Syntropic Agriculture: Growing Like a Forest

One of the most fascinating dimensions of Finca Luna Nueva’s farming practice is its embrace of syntropic agriculture — a system developed by Swiss-Brazilian farmer and philosopher Ernst Götsch that seeks to design agricultural systems that mimic and accelerate the natural succession of a forest ecosystem. Rather than simplifying the land into rows of a single crop, syntropic farming layers plants in temporal and spatial succession, allowing each generation of plants to prepare conditions for the next, building complexity and biological abundance over time.

In a detailed case study published by Porvenir Design — the permaculture and agroforestry consultancy that commenced guiding Finca Luna Nueva in 2018 — the team documented the installation of a one-hectare syntropic cacao orchard on the farm's Caribbean slope. The Porvenir Design team, led by Scott Gallant, had organized their first syntropic farming workshop in 2019 and recognized immediately that Finca Luna Nueva offered the ideal setting: a farm with experienced crew, a commitment to regenerative outcomes, and stakeholders deeply embedded in the global regenerative agriculture movement.

The goals of the syntropic cacao system, as Porvenir Design documented, were explicit: demonstrate the principles of regenerative agriculture, prioritize carbon sequestration, create a system as far from monoculture as possible, and grow food for the lodge's kitchen while developing export-quality crops — cacao, turmeric, ojoche — across multiple time scales. The design worked with the site's existing vegetation, pioneer species and early secondary forest, and layered in timber trees, fruit trees, cacao, and medicinal plants in a succession that would grow more productive and more biodiverse with each passing year.

This is syntropic agriculture's great promise: that a farm can behave like a forest — not merely co-existing with nature, but actively becoming it. For guests at Finca Luna Nueva, walking through the syntropic cacao orchard is a profound encounter with a different vision of agriculture: one that looks, smells, and sounds like a forest.

Based on the success of the initial cacao system, Finca Luna Nueva has, under the leadership of its farm manager Gerardo Calderon, now created three additional areas of syntropic management. The new areas feature different “climax” species: Coffee, Breadnut (also known as Maya nut, ramón, and ojoche), and Rice/Beans/Annuals/Chickens. Gerardo notes that these areas are working as anticipated: “we have observed greater microbiological efficiency in energy use (an increase in microbial biomass and a decrease in microbiological respiration.)” In the coffee system Gerardo observes “soils with a darker organic matter layer in the tree lines.” Overall, he notes “a lower incidence of pests and diseases.” In other words, biomimicry works! We’re letting Mother Nature be our guide.

That this is not merely poetic language but measurable scientific reality is attested to by Dr. Anil Somenahally, Associate Professor of Rhizosphere Biogeochemistry at Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences. Dr. Somenahally has conducted advanced soil research at Finca Luna Nueva. For a guest staying at the lodge, there is something quietly extraordinary about knowing that the soil under the cacao trees has been the subject of university-level scientific inquiry — and that the scientists have come away impressed.

“The techniques and practices at their farm aren’t just inspiring — they are scientifically grounded and thoughtfully implemented in a truly holistic way. The whole concept at the lodge connects personal well-being with the well-being of nature and the planet Earth. You don’t just learn about the farm’s innovations and natural benefits, but you get to experience and live them.”

— Professor Anil Somenahally, Associate Professor of Rhizosphere Biogeochemistry, Texas A&M AgriLife Research,
Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University

The Children's Eternal Rainforest: Conservation as Community

No discussion of our regenerative mission would be complete without considering our most cherished neighbor: the Children's Eternal Rainforest, known locally as el Bosque Eterno de los Niños, or the BEN. Created in 1986 through the remarkable fundraising efforts of schoolchildren from 44 nations, the BEN is the largest private reserve in Costa Rica — encompassing over 54,000 acres of cloud forest and lower-elevation tropical forest and anchoring a 250,000-acre rainforest system that defines the entire region.

Tom Newmark and Steven Farrell have long been among its most passionate champions. "This is where life began," Newmark has said of the tropical rainforest belt. "If you look at the thin strip around the equator — maybe only 2 percent of the land on the planet — the tropical rainforests there represent 50 percent of known life on Earth." And yet, as Newmark has urgently noted, an acre of rainforest is destroyed every single second — some 31 million acres a year — to make way for industrial monoculture agriculture, the very antithesis of everything Finca Luna Nueva stands for.

Newmark and Farrell's commitment to the rainforest has never been merely rhetorical — and nowhere is that more vividly illustrated than in an account by New York Times reporter Andrew Martin, published on December 9, 2008. Martin joined Newmark, Farrell, and a remarkable group of green business pioneers for a two-day trek through the Children's Eternal Rainforest, one of the most physically and metaphorically demanding conservation efforts in recent memory. The expedition — organized by Newmark in part to raise funds to expand the preserved forest corridor — brought together Walter Robb, then co-president of Whole Foods Market; Michael Besançon, then Senior GVP of Whole Foods and for many years a trustee of the Earth University Foundation; Jeffrey Hollender, president of Seventh Generation; Anthony Zolezzi, founder of Pet Promise; and Bryan Meehan, founder of Fresh & Wild Stores, who went on to serve as CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee and today owns the Park Hotel Kenmare adjoining the Dromgarriff Rainforest in Ireland, among others. Newmark called them "the true spiritual warriors and visionaries of our industry."

The hike was not for the faint of heart. Martin's account captures the physical toll with unflinching candor. Stephen Brooks, co-founder of Kopali Organics and now a leading voice for regenerative agriculture and permaculture, was attacked by a fer-de-lance — one of Central America's most venomous snakes — saved only by the leather of his boot. Older and heavier members of the group barely made it through. There was talk of evacuating stragglers by helicopter. And Newmark himself, the chief organizer, was ultimately carried out of the jungle on a stretcher by local guides after injuring his knee on a descent down a hill called La Mona — arriving at the lodge at 11 p.m., three kilometers of jungle trail behind him. He described the feeling in his knee, Martin reported, in the same terms as the hill's name. "It gave and gave," Newmark said, "but finally gave out."

Despite the ordeal — or perhaps because of it — the expedition was a triumph. The participants contributed $190,000 toward expanding the rainforest preserve, and the effort generated national media attention that amplified the conservation mission far beyond what any press release could have achieved. Newmark's characteristic equanimity never wavered. As Martin noted, he retained a Zen-like calm befitting a former instructor of transcendental meditation. "It was altogether too close of a brush with mortality," Newmark told the Times. "I can guarantee that raising that $10 million will be easy compared to that hike."

Those funds went to work. Since 2006, Whole Foods Market and New Chapter together contributed approximately $1 million toward purchasing parcels of land to create critical wildlife corridors. Finca Luna Nueva itself worked with a coalition of U.S. companies to purchase seven hectares of land along the Rio Chachagua, which was reforested and donated to the Children's Eternal Rainforest. Those trees, planted less than a decade prior, have grown to 50 to 70 feet, creating a functioning wildlife corridor that biologist Alberto Rico reports is now especially attractive to female jungle cats — jaguars and ocelots — seeking safe territory in which to give birth.

“As the Children’s Eternal Rainforest celebrates its 40th Anniversary, we look back on the good souls who have supported us with heart and energy. Steven and Tom, and their magical Finca Luna Nueva Lodge, are two such souls. I remember hiking through the rainforest with them — and oh what a hike it was! — and it was clear that they had pulled together an incredible network of support for our mission. With the funds they raised, the Monteverde Conservation League was able to purchase land along the Rio Chachagua and establish a new wildlife corridor for our rainforest. That corridor is working! Animals are now finding their way to new sources of food and new areas for breeding, and the success of this corridor confirms the value of this ecological concept. The MCL is grateful to everyone at Finca Luna Nueva who, with Steven and Tom, have supported our beautiful forest. Finca Luna Nueva, you’re a good neighbor! Muchas gracias.”

— Dr. Julia Matamoros, MD, Board Member, Monteverde Conservation League since 1995;
President of the MCL at the time of the great hike

Tom Newmark and the Science of Regeneration

Tom Newmark's advocacy extends well beyond the boundaries of Finca Luna Nueva. As past chairman of the American Botanical Council, and a founding member of the Leadership Council of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems at California State University, Chico, Newmark has been one of the most influential voices in defining what regenerative agriculture means — and in insisting that it be rigorous, inclusive, and outcome-driven.

In June 2015, Finca Luna Nueva served as the birthplace of a global movement when more than 70 leaders of the regenerative agriculture movement, representing 22 nations, gathered at the farm to inaugurate Regeneration International — the organization that would carry the principles of regenerative agriculture to every corner of the planet. That the founding took place at Finca Luna Nueva was not coincidental: the farm had become, by then, one of the most credible living demonstrations of regenerative principles in the tropical world, and a natural gathering point for those committed to transforming how humanity grows its food.

“We held the formation meeting for Regeneration International at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge in June 2015. It was an ideal place to bring together women and men from every continent to build a consensus on regenerating agriculture, our climate, and communities. The delegates enjoyed excellent accommodation, regenerative organic food, and conference facilities in a stunning rainforest and farming environment.”
— Dr. André Leu, International Director, Regeneration International;
Past President, International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements

Today, Regeneration International has grown into the world's largest regenerative organization, with 730 partners across 82 countries — a testament to the momentum ignited in those June days on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. That a 130-acre farm and eco-lodge in the rainforest served as the cradle of that global coalition says everything about what Finca Luna Nueva has always been: not merely a place to visit, but a place where consequential things happen.

That same commitment led Newmark to partner with the Rodale Institute — the oldest and most respected regenerative and organic agriculture research organization in North America — to produce a landmark white paper, "Regenerative Agriculture and the Soil Carbon Solution," published in September 2020. Tom and Terry Newmark provided funding for the paper, which was co-introduced by Newmark alongside Jeff Moyer, CEO of the Rodale Institute. The paper, grounded in peer-reviewed research from around the world, made a bold and rigorously documented claim: that global adoption of regenerative practices across both grasslands and arable acreage could sequester more than 100 percent of current annual CO2 emissions. Finca Luna Nueva's own syntropic cacao fields — a pioneering example of multistrata agroforestry in the tropics — were featured in the paper's introduction as a model of what regenerative tropical agriculture can achieve.

The paper's findings were urgent and specific. Global emissions in 2018 stood at 55.3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. Agricultural soils have lost between 30 and 75 percent of their original soil organic carbon to the atmosphere through conventional farming practices. Two-thirds of the world's corn and wheat cropland now contain less than two percent soil organic carbon. These are not abstractions — they are measurements of a crisis unfolding in the ground beneath our feet. The paper argued, with considerable scientific support, that regenerating those depleted soils is not only possible but is already happening on farms around the world, including in Costa Rica, where multistrata agroforestry systems like those at Finca Luna Nueva have demonstrated carbon sequestration rates among the highest recorded anywhere on the globe.

“At Rodale Institute, we have long appreciated Tom Newmark and Finca Luna Nueva Lodge for their dedication to regenerative organic agriculture. Tom has often credited his visit to Rodale Institute nearly twenty years ago as the catalyst for his lifetime devotion to regenerative farming. Tom had the idea to work with Rodale Institute to create two pivotal white papers on regenerative organic farming, and it’s fair to say he was our catalyst! We know that Finca Luna Nueva is the place where Tom dreams of a regenerative future for all.”
— Jeff Tkach, CEO, Rodale Institute

In a widely discussed article published by Chico State's CRARS, Newmark also challenged the entire movement to reconsider its foundational language. Writing under the title "Don't Call Mother Nature a Sink," he argued that describing soils as a "carbon sink" was scientifically imprecise and strategically counterproductive. The word "sink" conjures a finite vessel filling up — one that will eventually overflow. But what regenerative agriculture actually produces in healthy soil is something altogether different: living tissue that expands, grows more porous, more nutrient-rich, and more biologically active as carbon flows into and through it. Regenerative agriculture, properly understood, is not about storage. It is about life.

What gives Newmark's advocacy its unusual authority is that it is grounded in the hard experience of farming itself. When Finca Luna Nueva conducted soil testing after years of organic and biodynamic cultivation, the results were humbling. The farm's most intensively managed cropland had lower soil organic matter than the farm's margins where secondary forest had been allowed to regenerate naturally. Mother Nature, managed by no one, was outperforming humanity's best agricultural intentions. That epiphany drove the farm's pivot toward syntropic agriculture and a deeper reckoning with what regeneration actually requires.

Why Conscious Consumers Must Make the Jump

The urgency underlying all of this cannot be overstated. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, at the current rate of soil degradation — driven by industrial monoculture, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, and chemical herbicides — the world could lose all of its arable topsoil within 60 years. Combined with the escalating climate crisis, to which destructive agricultural practices are a major contributor, the case for transforming how humanity grows food is not a matter of preference or ideology. It is a matter of survival.

Conscious consumers — people who already read labels, choose organic, avoid plastic, and think about their carbon footprint — are a natural constituency for regenerative agriculture. But there is a jump to be made. Organic certification, for all its importance, does not guarantee that a farm is building soil. A crop can be grown without synthetic pesticides and still deplete the land. A product can carry every eco-label in existence and still be produced in ways that erode biodiversity, compact soil, and release carbon. The question is not just what is absent from a farming system — it is what that farming system is actively producing over time.

Regenerative agriculture asks for a different kind of consumer attention: one focused on outcomes rather than inputs, on systems rather than ingredients, on the health of the land ten years from now rather than merely the purity of this year's harvest. Regenerative tourism, in turn, asks for a different kind of traveler: one whose presence is a contribution rather than a consumption, whose curiosity drives learning rather than just entertainment, and whose travel dollars fund the long-term restoration of ecosystems rather than simply the maintenance of a pleasant vacation.

For those travelers, places like Finca Luna Nueva are not just beautiful destinations — they are necessary ones. They offer something increasingly rare: the chance to be inside a working vision of a better relationship between human civilization and the natural world. To walk a syntropic cacao orchard that grows more alive each year. To eat food from soil that was depleted and is being rebuilt. To hike through a rainforest that children in 44 countries cared enough to protect. To learn, from farmers who are still learning themselves, what it means to take regeneration seriously.

The Future of Travel Is Regenerative

Regenerative tourism is not a niche market or a boutique philosophy. It is the logical and necessary evolution of what travel must become in an era defined by ecological crisis and the urgent need for transformation at every level of human society. It asks travelers to be agents of restoration rather than agents of depletion. It demands that destinations become richer, more biodiverse, and more alive because guests came — not despite their presence, but because of it.

Finca Luna Nueva demonstrates that this is not a utopian vision. It is a working reality: a farm where soils are being rebuilt through syntropic agriculture, where wildlife corridors have been extended into one of the Western Hemisphere's most biodiverse rainforests, where every meal tells the story of regeneration, and where guests leave not just rested but transformed. Tom Newmark, Steven Farrell, and the entire Finca Luna Nueva community have spent decades proving that it is possible to farm, to conserve, to host, and to educate all at once — and that each of these activities makes the others more meaningful.

We believe the future of conscious tourism is regenerative, and our resolve is strengthened by sister farms and ranches who join us on our journey. One such regenerative lodge in Uruguay is Smokewood Garzón, owned by the esteemed holistic ranching leader Daniela Ibarra-Howell. She co-founded and was the CEO of the Savory Institute for many years, and we were honored that she, Allan Savory, Jody Butterfield, and their leadership team held an international retreat at our lodge.

“To commit to a journey of regeneration, to be willing to heal and help heal, to experience the magic and beauty of a living, thriving Nature, to learn and be transformed, and to be surprised by awe, one only needs to visit Finca Luna Nueva … a heaven where all senses are awakened. Embraced by the sounds and fragrances of the rainforest, delectable, regeneratively raised local foods, being cared for by the best humans, being surrounded by animals of such rare beauty… and surrendering to all the sweet and fine luxuries one could hope for, Finca Luna Nueva is paradise on Earth!”
— Daniela Ibarra-Howell, Owner, Smokewood Garzón, Uruguay; Co-founder and Past CEO, Savory Institute

The next time you plan a trip, ask the question that regenerative tourism demands: Will the land be better because I was there? If the answer is yes — if the farm will be more fertile, the forest wider, the community stronger, the ecosystem more alive — then you have found not just a destination, but a purpose. That is the future of eco travel. And it is already growing, one syntropic cacao field, one wildlife corridor, one farm-to-table dinner at a time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is regenerative tourism?

Regenerative tourism goes beyond sustainable or eco-tourism by requiring that a destination become measurably better because guests visited. Where sustainable tourism aims to minimize harm and eco-tourism funds conservation through visits, regenerative tourism demands net-positive impact: soils rebuilt, ecosystems expanded, communities strengthened, and biodiversity increased. The goal is not a lighter footprint but an actively restorative one.

What makes Finca Luna Nueva a regenerative farm?

Finca Luna Nueva practices syntropic agriculture — a system that designs farming to mimic and accelerate natural forest succession — alongside holistic livestock management and more than 300 tropical crops grown in biodiverse polyculture. The farm has observed meaningful ecological benefits in soil health, expanded wildlife corridors into the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, and has been featured as a model of regenerative tropical agriculture in the landmark Rodale Institute white paper on regenerative agriculture and soil carbon.

What tours and experiences does Finca Luna Nueva offer?

Finca Luna Nueva offers a range of immersive guest experiences including Farm Tours, Cacao Tours, Early Morning Dairy Tours, Beekeeping Tours with native stingless mariola bees, Herbal Medicine Workshops, and Farm-to-Table Tours in which guests harvest ingredients and prepare a meal on the land itself. Each experience is designed to connect guests directly with the farm’s regenerative practices.

How does Finca Luna Nueva support rainforest conservation?

Finca Luna Nueva neighbors the Children’s Eternal Rainforest (el Bosque Eterno de los Niños), the largest private reserve in Costa Rica at over 54,000 acres. The farm has worked with a coalition of partners to purchase and reforest land along the Rio Chachagua, creating a functioning wildlife corridor that now attracts jaguars, ocelots, and other species. Tom Newmark and Steven Farrell have been among the most active champions of expanding the reserve and the broader 250,000-acre rainforest system it anchors.

What is syntropic agriculture and how is it practiced at Finca Luna Nueva?

Syntropic agriculture, developed by Swiss-Brazilian farmer Ernst Götsch, designs farming systems that mimic the natural succession of a forest ecosystem. Rather than monoculture rows, plants are layered in temporal and spatial succession so that each generation prepares conditions for the next, building biological complexity over time. At Finca Luna Nueva, a one-hectare syntropic cacao orchard was installed under the guidance of Porvenir Design beginning in 2018, with goals of carbon sequestration, maximum biodiversity, and the production of export-quality crops across multiple time scales. The farm’s syntropic fields were featured in the introduction to the Rodale Institute’s 2020 white paper as a model of multistrata agroforestry. The farm now has four areas under syntropic management: cacao, coffee, breadnut, and mixed chicken/annual crops.

Who founded Finca Luna Nueva Lodge and what is its history?

Finca Luna Nueva was founded in 1994 by Steven Farrell as a 74-acre organic ginger and turmeric farm — among the first certified organic and regenerative farms in Central America. Before 1994, Steven had been growing organic ginger at another location for the respected dietary supplement company New Chapter, Inc, and as that company grew so did its requirements for ginger. Tom and Terry Newmark became co-founders and co-stewards in 1999, expanding the farm to approximately 130 acres and deepening its regenerative mission after Tom’s transformative encounter with Dr. Timothy LaSalle of the Rodale Institute. In June 2015, Finca Luna Nueva hosted the founding meeting of Regeneration International, bringing together 70 leaders from 22 nations. The farm has since become one of the most recognized regenerative agriculture destinations in the world.

What scientific research has been conducted at Finca Luna Nueva?

Dr. Anil Somenahally, Associate Professor of Rhizosphere Biogeochemistry at Texas A&M AgriLife Research, has conducted advanced soil research at Finca Luna Nueva. The farm’s syntropic cacao fields were documented in a detailed case study by Porvenir Design and featured in the Rodale Institute’s white paper “Regenerative Agriculture and the Soil Carbon Solution” (2020). Finca Luna Nueva’s own soil testing — revealing that secondary forest margins outperformed intensively managed cropland in soil organic matter — informed the farm’s pivot to syntropic methods and contributed to the broader scientific conversation about regenerative outcomes in tropical agriculture.