From Cow Pastures to Food Forest: Arnoldo Mora's 5-Year Permaculture Journey

Five years ago, Arnoldo Mora announced he was going to build a permaculture farm in the South Caribbean of Costa Rica. A lot of people have big ideas. Mora went and found the land.

The journey from that announcement to a working food forest took experimentation on borrowed soil, years of hiking through the region to find the right parcel, legal negotiations and a patience that most people would have worn through long before mid-2022 — when Mora finally closed on two hectares of his own. Mora, a software engineer who has been at X-Team for six years, sat down for a second conversation to take stock of where the project stands, what it has demanded of him and where it is going next.

In this story, Mora walks through how the farm has transformed from degraded cow pastures to a regenerating food forest, how he and his community took on — and beat — powerful interests to protect the region's ecology and why six years of remote work at X-Team has been central to making all of it possible.

From Pastures to Food Forest

The first step was never about living on the land — it was about learning how to bring it back to life.

In 2018, Mora began experimenting on a separate parcel an hour from where he lived, regenerating its soil as a way of learning the process before committing to a permanent location. The experiment worked. That land has been producing food ever since. But the search for the right permanent site continued, and it wasn't simple. "It's been a long and crazy journey," he says.

Mora spent years hiking the region, weighing everything from terrain and water sources to legal complexity. He eventually closed a deal in mid-2022 on two hectares that included some tropical forest and creeks but was mostly degraded cow pasture. The challenge was clear: restore the soil, then build a food forest on top of it.

A year into that work, roughly a third of the soil has been regenerated. The farm now hosts around 60 food and medicinal plant species. The team has also built a camping deck and is finishing out a set of basic infrastructure — a rainwater collection system, a shower, a compost toilet and a small warehouse. It is modest by some standards, and deliberate by Mora's.

The Road Ahead: Solar, Internet and an Open Camp

The next phase is practical before it is aspirational. Without cell signal on the property, coordinating with the people who work the land is a persistent challenge. Mora's near-term priority is installing solar panels and a satellite internet connection — not for comfort, but to make sustained presence on the farm viable.

"Internet will make it possible for us to stay on the farm for longer periods of time," he says. "It'll also help us accelerate the agricultural process." With connectivity in place, he expects the remaining two-thirds of the soil regeneration to move faster than the first third did.

Once that infrastructure is in place, Mora plans to open the farm to family, friends, travelers and permaculture enthusiasts — either free or at low cost — as a working campsite where visitors can learn about regenerative development. He also wants to organize day trips that go beyond farming to cover the region's history and the mysticism of local indigenous cultures, which he describes as "very powerful but not well-known or appreciated." The long-term plan is straightforward: build a house and live there.

Fighting for the Region — and When to Step Back

The farm has not existed in isolation. Building it pulled Mora into a broader effort to protect the ecology of the South Caribbean, and that effort produced results that went well beyond his own two hectares.

The work began with something he had been trying to build before: a community network to promote what he calls bio-regionalism. He scaled that back — the farm had to come first — but the farm itself became a catalyst for collective action anyway. "Because of the farm, we've spoken to the national press about our regional ecological challenges," he says. That attention had consequences: the Minister of Natural Resources removed a corrupt local authority that had been working with parties engaged in ecologically destructive projects in the area.

The community's most significant victory came when local authorities proposed a regional plan to turn the coastline into a tourist area with large hotels. Mora and his network brought in the national ecological movement and lawyers who challenged the plan in court, pointing out scientific and technical inconsistencies in the government's justification. The plan was blocked.

Mora eventually stepped back from the most active organizing work. It was time-consuming, he says, and carried personal security risks. But the network remained, operating as what he describes as "a decentralized community who make important things happen."

Through all of it, X-Team's structure has been more than backdrop. Remote work means Mora can live near the farm and, soon, on it. He has used X-Team's Unleash+ budget toward his education in regenerative development and for expenses like trees. And the rhythm of professional work, he says, brings a balance that gives him clarity for everything else. "It's exactly that balance that gives me the clarity to think about my side projects, where I am right now, and where I want to be in the future."

After six years, he counts the people as much as the flexibility. "I'm extremely grateful for my six years at the company, for the amazing people I work together with every day, and for the opportunity to learn and share."

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