Reunity Resources

Reunity Resources was founded in 2011 to “create value from waste.” Reunity’s first project was to collect used cooking oil from Santa Fe restaurants and turn it into biodiesel fuel. In 2014, they leased an acre of unused land from the Santa Fe Community Farm, located in Agua Fria Village, and established a commercial scale composting facility, collecting food waste from 30+ Santa Fe restaurants and public schools, and hundreds of local households. The resulting compost is used on the farm and sold to the public. Reunity diverts some 7 million pounds of food and plant waste from landfills each year. In 2019 Reunity purchased the 12-acre Community Farm after its long-time owner, John Stephenson, passed away. Stephenson had provided the only source of fresh produce in Agua Fria Village, which the USDA classifies as a food desert, often donating it to food insecure community members – a tradition Reunity Resources has continued and expanded upon. Today Reunity donates 10,000 pounds of fresh produce each year to a number of local non-profits which serve food-insecure clients, including the Santa Fe Indigenous Center, Many Mothers, Black Health Equity, Santa Fe Food Depot, and the Santa Fe School District’s Adelante program, serving homeless students. Reunity donates free Farm Cards redeemable at the Farm Stand to its partners (worth $10,000 in 2022), participates in Double-Up Bucks (which doubles SNAP benefits for farm stand purchases), and operates a free 24×7 no-questions-asked Community Refrigerator stocked with fresh produce and food pantry on site. Reunity successfully models a closed-loop farm which uses regenerative farming techniques to improve the soil’s health, boost productivity, and combat climate change by sequestering carbon in the soil and diverting food and farm waste from landfills, where it produces methane. Reunity runs a seasonal Farm Stand offering fresh produce grown onsite and farm products made by 15+ small/new farmers, serving as a business incubator through sharing expertise and infrastructure, including a commercial kitchen. Reunity offers an array of environmental educational programs for young and old, including a summer Farm Camp for local children, programs offered for local schools, and Root to Fruit tours for adults. The Farm provides a place where the Agua Fria community and local visitors gather to eat fresh foods prepared at a farm-to-table food truck, listen to live music, take a class, and purchase fresh produce and farm products. In the process of injecting new life into an historic farm, Reunity has also helped to reinvigorate and re-center the Agua Fria community. Reunity’s founders were honored by the Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe’s daily newspaper) with its 2021 “10 Who Made a Difference” award, for their work in building community and promoting food justice and equity. (https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/10who/juliana-and-tejinder-ciano-grow-food-and-community-through-santa-fe-farm/article_e7f9fb76-329a-11ec-a5fb-df33b0fe870a.html. More recently, Reunity was honored by the New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council with its 2023 “Living Land Award: Outstanding Leadership in Land Stewardship.” https://nmfoodpolicy.org/food-farms-day/