How ForestFoods Uses Technology to Scale Regenerative Agriculture

Summary

ForestFoods is a regenerative agriculture company using syntropic agroforestry to restore soil health, rebuild biodiversity, and produce food across highly diverse farm systems. Unlike a conventional monoculture farm, ForestFoods manages many crop species in the same field, with planting, harvesting, inventory, sales, and field observations changing every day.

To manage that complexity, ForestFoods worked with Vanguard BI to move beyond spreadsheets and build a connected technology stack using Google Workspace, AppSheet, custom inventory and shop systems, and dashboards. The result is a set of tools that help farm teams capture field activity, help sales teams see live stock, and help management make planting and operational decisions from real data.

In this interview, Tim Vinopal, Chief Strategy Officer at ForestFoods, speaks with Roger D. Odipo, Chief Technology Officer at Vanguard BI, about the role technology plays in scaling ForestFoods’ regenerative agriculture work.

About ForestFoods

ForestFoods is a regenerative agriculture company focused on syntropic agroforestry, a model of farming that brings many complementary plant species together in one growing system.

As Tim explains, the aim is not only to produce food, but to restore soil health, tree cover, biodiversity, and local economic opportunity at the same time.

It produces a lot of food while restoring natural biodiversity and ecosystems.

This model is powerful, but it is also operationally complex. A single field may contain many crop species at different stages of growth, with different off-take schedules, different environmental conditions, and different market demand patterns.

The Challenge: Complexity That Spreadsheets Could Not Handle

ForestFoods started with spreadsheets and basic macros. The goal was simple: let the team record what happened each day.

What was planted?
What was harvested?
What was sold?
What condition were the beds in?

But the farm quickly outgrew that approach.

Tim described the challenge clearly:

We have a hundred different species on one field that all benefit each other from being in proximity.

That meant the farm did not operate on a simple cycle of input, wait, harvest. Something was happening every day. Crops were being planted, harvested, monitored, sold, and adjusted continuously.

Spreadsheets were useful at the start, but they were not reactive enough for the operation ForestFoods was building.

Sometimes you need things updated in real time. You need submittable fields that grow in complexity very quickly as you begin to understand the reality of how the fields work.

There was also an adoption challenge. The tools had to be used by farmhands, farm managers, and team members with very different levels of technology experience. For some, this would be the first time they were being asked to digitize any part of their daily work.

The system had to be clear, intuitive, and difficult to break.

The First Step: AppSheet for Field Operations

ForestFoods’ first major operational tool was built with AppSheet.

The goal was to make field data capture simple enough for daily use, while structured enough to support management decisions later.

Tim said the key word was “intuitive.”

It couldn’t be the case that we let them have this and say ‘figure it out.’ It had to be very clear. Which module, which plant, and what day.

AppSheet allowed ForestFoods to create field-friendly forms and workflows that matched how the farm actually operated. Instead of forcing the team into a generic tool, the system was shaped around the farm’s modules, crop records, daily tasks, and reporting needs.

For Vanguard BI, that meant learning the farming model before building the technology.

Tim described the collaboration this way:

You were willing to learn first about how these systems work, as opposed to taking our requests at face value and coming back with something in the hopes to collect a paycheck.

That approach mattered because the right answer was not always the first requested feature. Sometimes the better solution came from understanding why ForestFoods needed something in the first place, then designing around the real operational need.

Building a Custom Online Shop

After the field operations system, ForestFoods and Vanguard BI built a custom online shop.

At first glance, a custom shop might seem unnecessary. Platforms like Shopify already exist. But ForestFoods needed something more tightly connected to the farm’s inventory.

The shop had to know what was available right now.

That availability changed every day, because the field activity, harvest records, and stock levels were constantly changing. The sales team needed live visibility into what could actually be sold.

Tim explained why an off-the-shelf shop was not enough:

We needed something intimately and natively integrated with our inventory system. The same place that was collecting data of what was happening on the field is talking to the store to notify our salespeople of what they have in their stock to sell right now.

The custom shop became more than a sales channel. It became part of the same information pipeline connecting field activity, inventory, sales, and decision-making.

The impact was significant.

As of today, we sell more produce through this online shop, we earn more income through this shop, than we do any other sales channel today.

Google Workspace as the Foundation

ForestFoods also uses Google Workspace for email, document collaboration, and everyday business operations.

For Tim, one of the key reasons the organization has stayed with Google is trust.

We trust its security and its reliability because it’s Google. That has meant that we’re never going to steer away from it.

Google Workspace also placed ForestFoods in the broader Google ecosystem, making it easier to build on tools like AppSheet and connect the organization’s working environment to its operational systems.

Turning Data Into Decisions

The most important outcome of the technology work is not just digitization. It is visibility.

ForestFoods uses dashboards to understand what is selling, through which channels, and how that should influence planting decisions.

Tim described how sales insights affect the planting plan:

We make a lot of decisions based on the insights that we see from this data.

The team looks at retail, wholesale, and commercial sales channels. They consider seasonality, agroforestry methodology, and market demand. If a product is selling strongly through the online shop, that information helps guide what crops should remain part of the planting consortium.

This is where the technology becomes central to the business model.

ForestFoods is not only using data to report on what happened. It is using data to guide what should happen next.

Field Visibility at Scale

The technology also helps the team monitor field conditions.

Farmhands can input observations about planting beds, pests, insects, or other crop conditions. Management can then see that feedback through aggregated dashboards.

That matters because ForestFoods’ farms are complex. Without a digital system, small field observations can remain isolated. With the system in place, patterns become visible earlier.

Tim explained the value:

Management has the ability, through an aggregated dashboard, to see all those pieces of feedback from all these farmhands that are going around the farm.

As the farms grow larger, this kind of visibility becomes even more important.

As we expand and grow towards having bigger farms, we wouldn’t be able to do that without this. It’s key.

The Result

ForestFoods now has a connected technology foundation that supports field operations, inventory visibility, online sales, collaboration, and management reporting.

The systems help the team:

• Capture daily farm activity in a structured way
• Give sales teams live inventory visibility
• Sell produce through a custom online shop
• Use dashboards to guide planting and sales decisions
• Track field conditions and respond faster
• Scale a complex regenerative agriculture model with better operational control

For ForestFoods, technology is not a side project. It is part of how the organization makes syntropic agroforestry manageable at scale.

As Tim put it:

At the very core of how the business operates, we are using this information to say, let’s make sure we are guiding these fields towards economic stability through what we’re seeing on the backend. That’s all due to the tech.

Looking Ahead

ForestFoods and Vanguard BI have worked together for several years, and the technology continues to evolve with the business.

As the farms expand, the systems will keep supporting the same core objective: turning complex field activity into clear information, then using that information to make better operational, commercial, and ecological decisions.

For a company working to restore ecosystems while producing food and creating local economic value, that visibility is essential.