In Guatemala, a country where communities rich in culture, agriculture, and natural beauty coexist alongside major tourism developments, a paradox persists: rural communities, smallscale farmers, and Agricultural Producer Organizations (APOs) often remain excluded from these economic benefits and value chains. Social inequities continue to widen, opportunities remain limited, and resources are not distributed equitably.
In response to this reality, EARTH Futures Developing Solutions, part of EARTH University’s global solutions center, drew upon more than five years of experience working in western Guatemala to create the Agribusiness Model for the Acceleration of Territorial Ecosystems (AMATE).
“We have seen how many non-governmental organizations and cooperation agencies invest in APOs and social enterprises for a limited period of time. However, many of these investments are abandoned once the projects end. This has created an unsustainable landscape where, instead of strengthening capacities, dependency is generated and the skills needed to make projects sustainable in the long term are not developed because there are no strategies or coordination among different stakeholders,” explains José David Zelada, Market Access Coordinator for the project.
Based on this premise, the EARTH Futures team took the different models they had developed throughout their experience in Guatemala and redesigned them into AMATE, a program with the goal of fostering competitiveness and building bridges between APOs and the opportunities agritourism can generate. For EARTH Futures, sustainable rural development occurs when communities, stakeholders, and opportunities move forward together.
So, how is this collaboration created?
The model operates on two simultaneous levels. On the one hand, the Entrepreneurship Level strengthens APOs through a three-month training process focused on strategic thinking, productive resilience, and innovation, all under EARTH’s distinctive experiential learning approach. After the three months, APOs participate in AgroConecta – Impact Investment, an annual event where each organization has the opportunity to present a business proposal to a panel of experts and investors with the possibility of receiving funding.
Funding is not distributed evenly; instead, it responds to the quality, viability, and potential of each initiative, encouraging competitiveness. Following AgroConecta, APOs receive guidance and support through specialized packages to implement their projects, and over time, the most outstanding ventures will become integrated into the strategies and routes of the Agritourism Value Network.
The Ecosystem Level is the project’s second cross-cutting pillar, bringing together stakeholders from public, private, academic, and community sectors to coordinate efforts and build a shared vision for long-term territorial development. This coordination takes shape through the Agritourism Value Network, a collaborative platform designed to connect initiatives and develop strategies that position the community through concrete agritourism routes and even the potential development of digital platforms that help showcase ventures and compete in the global market. The agritourism promoted by AMATE is based on Mayan cultures, ancestral agriculture, Indigenous worldviews, agricultural diversity, and natural capital.
Before scaling the model, the EARTH Futures Developing Solutions team conducted a pilot program with four organizations in the Atitlán region. Beyond gaining access to seed capital, these APOs began diversifying their revenue streams and exploring new market niches while incorporating financial analysis and strategic decision-making tools that had previously not been part of their day-to-day management.
Between 2026 and 2028, the AMATE Project aims to strengthen 40 rural enterprises in western Guatemala, integrate at least 24 of them into the strategies of the Network, and achieve an average 28% increase in their income. The goal is to establish a sustainable model that can be replicated in other regions of Guatemala and around the world that face the challenge of building more equitable and inclusive societies.
