Helen Yuill from the UK Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign (NSC) visited Nicaragua on a delegation organised by Friends of the ATC, a US network building solidarity with and support for the ATC.  Over the coming year NSC will be developing a programme of raising awareness and solidarity links with the ATC including the organisation of a speaker tour of the UK by an ATC representative in 2020. We are grateful to Helen for permission to reproduce the article arising from her visit on this website.

By ENCA member and NSC representative Helen Yuill

November 2019

Key words: La Vía Campesina; agroecology; food sovereignty; organic food production; climate crisis; crop diversification; Latin America Agroecology Institute.

According to an International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 7 August 2019, our food system – including farming and grazing, transportation, packaging, and feed production – produces a catastrophic 37% of greenhouse gas emissions.  

With the sharp rise in international awareness of the gravity of the climate crisis, the 200 million strong international movement of small farmers and indigenous peoples, La Vía Campesina, is playing a key role in not only denouncing our current system as unsustainable but also proposing and putting into practice alternative models that protect the environment as well as people.

On 17 December, 2018 the UN approved a declaration of the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, the outcome of a 17 year struggle by La Vía Campesina and other organisations.  The declaration “endorses the protection of livelihoods of peasants and all small-scale food producers feeding the world.”

The Rural Workers Association (ATC) in Nicaragua was a founder member of La Vía Campesina in 1993 and plays a prominent role nationally and internationally in advocating for agroecology, food sovereignty and climate justice.

The ATC has two areas of work: defending the employment rights of rural workers in the coffee, banana and tobacco sectors; and supporting co-operatives and communitiesgrowing coffee, maize, beans, fruit, and vegetables using agroecological methods.

In line with La Vía Campesina principles and practice the ATC views agroecology as much more than organic farming. It’s about transforming the way we live and our relationship to the land. This transformation can only be achieved through a holistic integrated approach that includes poverty reduction, gender equality, overcoming dependence through food sovereignty, the cultural recovery of traditional medicines, political activism, building the social economy, and community, intergenerational and international solidarity.

Empowering women farmers: the Gloria Quintanilla Co-operative

One of eight communities that the ATC is supporting is a co-operative of 22 women in the village of Santa Julia south west of Managua where 79 families live.

The land was a heavily polluted coffee plantation owned by the Somoza family. Since being granted the land under the Sandinista agrarian reform programme in the 1980s, the women have successfully transformed the area through using agroecology. This has strengthened their self-sufficiency in food and also enabled them to secure extra income through selling food to neighbours and in the local markets.

As well as organic coffee, the women grow bananas, plantains, cassava, yam, vegetables, maize, bamboo and a wide variety of fruit. These are grown under taller trees that provide shade from the intense tropical sun. Seeds are produced locally, saved and exchanged with other farmers.

This diversification increases resilience to crises whether they are related to climate chaos or political upheavals. To overcome water shortages the co-operative together with the local community harvest water in the rainy season in underground tanks and pits and use it to water plants in the dry season.

The strength of the co-op lies in the way in which older women and younger women work together, and its commitment to community solidarity and promoting gender equality. One member commented: “Now we are rich in terms of our organisation as a co-operative.”

Agroecology: the next generation

“Agroecology is a revolution! [W]e are killing the Earth … the most urgent task we face is the search for ways to protect it.” Marlen Sánchez, director, Latin America Agroecology Institute, Nicaragua (IALA)

A fundamental area of the ATC’s work is providing training for the next generation of small farmers. This is carried out through an ATC youth network and the setting up of an IALA.   

The first group of students aged from 17 – 30 from  Central American and Caribbean La Vía Campesina organisations are due to graduate in November this year. The objective of IALA is to provide a very broad, holistic training — technical, political, and ideological — as the basis for not only working towards food sovereignty but also fundamentally transforming society and people’s relationship with the land.  

The campus itself is an agroecological farm created and maintained by the students, course facilitators, and workers.

The course creates a shared learning community with training that covers the principles and practice of agroecology. Time spent in the IALA is alternated with time spent on practical application in their home communities.

Equally important as the training in environmentally sustainable agriculture is political preparation so that the students are able to have a multiplier effect in strengthening their own communities and organisations on their return home.

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The Ecological Association of Permaculturalists of Suchitoto (AEPS) / Asociación Ecológica de Permacultores y Permaculturas de Suchitoto

Towards the end of 2014 problems of land tenure, staffing and management of the Permaculture Institute of El Salvador (IPES) led to a change in organisation both on the ground and in management of the IPES Demonstration Plot outside the town of Suchitoto, El Salvador. From the start of 2015 the Ecological Association of Permaculturalists of Suchitoto (AEPS) assumed management, control and working of the land on the Demonstration Plot. Many of the same characters involved with the IPES are now also involved with the AEPS and the business of organic agriculture on the plot remains much the same, including the training of campesinos from communities all around El Salvador.

The following two items – a short video and a Powerpoint presentation of the work on the Demonstration Plot – were produced by members of the AEPS during 2015.

The following article by Lorraine Potter of the Inga Foundation USA appeared in Forests News. We are grateful to Lorraine, the Inga Foundation and Forests News for permission to reproduce the article in The Violence of Development website. (The only changes made to the original content have been the addition of key words and minor changes from US spellings to UK spellings.)

By Lorraine Potter, Inga Foundation: Ingafoundation.org

Forests News. The original article dated 20 February 2020) can be found at: https://forestsnews.cifor.org/64178/agroforestry-land-restoration-technique-improves-food-security-in-honduras?fnl=en

May 18, 2020

Key words: Agroforestry; food security; Honduras; land restoration; slash and burn; alley cropping; INGA Foundation.

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Five years ago, farmer Damas Núñez had reached a point of economic desperation. He had decided the best option to feed his family was to flee north to the United States from Honduras, despite the risks involved.

He made a farewell visit to a friend with a farm in the upper Cangrejal Valley and was astounded to see a beautiful crop of corn and a large stack of firewood, plentiful enough to last a year.

His friend Eli Cruz had implemented a new agroforestry system known as alley cropping, introduced to Honduras by the Inga Foundation. The method had transformed his fields.

Damas visited the nearby Inga Foundation demonstration farm. He got his own seeds to plant, and the team showed him how to revitalize his degraded plot of land by planting hedgerows of Inga edulis. Damas now has food security and cash crops to sell.

Since 2012, the Inga Foundation’s revolutionary agroforestry system of Inga alley cropping in Honduras has dramatically transformed the lives of 300 subsistence farming families, planted over 3 million trees, and become a model for true environmental sustainability and ecological resilience.

Damas and his family were following in the footsteps of 40 families that in 2012 planted half their land – less than a hectare in size – in Inga alleys and half using traditional cultivation methods.  Severe drought followed by torrential rains affected Central America that year, and the families feared their crops would die.

However, the Inga trees proved their resilience. There were only a handful of losses and although the crops planted between the alleys produced modest yields, there was a basic source of food at a precarious time. The farmers observed that their plot treated with swidden techniques produced nothing and the soil washed away, while their first alley produced a yield.

The native, fast-growing Inga edulis is the main tree species, but other Indigenous species are also used. Overall, the Inga team has planted 3 million trees since 2012 – nurseries have provided 250,000 cacao plants, Rambutan, citrus, avocado, and 75,000 black pepper plants. More than 100,000 hardwood tree saplings have been distributed. Species include Caoba (Swietenia macrophylla), Laurel Negro (Cordia megalantha), Nogal (Juglans olanchana) and Marapolán (Guarea grandifolia). In 2019, distributions included Ciruelillo (Astronium graveolens), Granadillo (Dalbergia spp.), and 70,000 Redondo (Magnolia yoroconte which is listed as highly vulnerable).

The Inga Tree Model is based on over 25 years of research and Cambridge University trials by Inga’s founder and director, tropical ecologist Michael Hands. His research focuses on farming techniques that protect against land degradation. Through the use of swidden, a traditional method known as shifting cultivation or, formerly, ‘slash and burn’ to prepare the land for planting, land becomes infertile, is taken over by weeds, erodes and leaves farmers with limited hectarage unable to produce healthy crops. In former times, farmers would just move onto another parcel of land.

Now, through the implementation of Inga alley-cropping, families achieve ‘land for life,’ the ability to remain on the same plot of land indefinitely – regenerating steep, degraded land that has been abandoned as ‘sterile’ for over 50 years. Hands and a team of Honduran foresters, agronomists and field and nursery staff have facilitated native Inga alleys in 15 countries, including Honduras, with training and seeds at no cost.

The Inga tree model is not just an alternative to swidden; it is a solution to stopping it altogether. Rarely has there been a more successful, simple solution to our most serious global problems.

Now in year 9 of the 10-year ‘Land for Life’ programme in Honduras, Inga alley-cropping has always been a bottom-up programme and over 200 families are on a waiting list for seeds and training to start their own alleys.

The fast-growing, wide-ranging Inga (300+ species of Inga) are easy to germinate, resistant to disease, able to thrive on steep, degraded slopes surviving both 7-month droughts and 8 inches of rain falling in 18 hours. When the Inga trees are about 10-15 feet high, they are pruned to chest-high, the leaves stripped and applied as mulch, and the branches are valuable firewood.

The trees require only an occasional side dressing of K Mag and rock phosphate, through which from the Cambridge University research through 15+ years of trials/demonstration plots, Hands cracked the problem of soils. He learned that failing availability of soil Phosphorus was the key.

The sun is better able to reach the corn or bean seeds planted between rows of trees and when their season is finished, the Inga have regrown – the cycle repeats.

The programme creates an integrated ecosystem that provides an organic and resilient means for subsistence farming families in the tropics to achieve food security while protecting wildlife habitats, water sources, and improving soils.

Inga alley-cropping addresses:

1. Food Insecurity – 100% of the families with established Inga alleys (1½ to 2-year old) achieve food security
2. Slash and burn agriculture unsustainability and unintended escaped fires prevented
3. Carbon capture/carbon sequestration and avoidance (180,000 tons from 2012-2019)
4. Regeneration of degraded land – steep, sterile, abandoned land greened in 1½ years – 2500 acres from 2012-2019)
5. Nutrition improved and stunting reduced – all organic grains/crops (black pepper, turmeric, pineapple, allspice, Rambutan, citrus, cacao, vanilla)
6. Watershed protection – rivers, ocean and reefs
7. Improving rural livelihoods – cash crops – no debt or loans for the families
8. Erosion and mudslides eliminated
9. Renewable firewood from yearly pruning without harvesting forest trees
10. Reducing migration to cities and reduces climate refugees
11. Eliminating herbicides and pesticides
12. Eliminating chemical fertilizers and high-inputs, GMO seeds/heavy equipment
13. The entire family works together – close to home – no technology needed
14. Climate shocks withstood – families have grown bean and corn crops with no irrigation or a drop of rain — the thick mulch keeps the ground cool and retains water
15. Positively addresses 11 of the 17 U.N Sustainable Development Goals with no negative impact whatsoever on the remaining six.

Regenerating steep degraded land is the largest and lowest cost carbon sequestration landscape restoration opportunity – sterile, eroded land is restored in 2 years with the Inga Tree Model to sustainable plots for food security, ecosystem restoration, and economic management.

The Inga Foundation model can be replicated, at scale, across the whole of the wet forest zone of Honduras and the rest of Central America and into South America. We have facilitated Inga alley replication in 15 countries with farmer/NGO/government groups by providing training.

“I was working for so little for someone else, when I could find work, that I could not feed my family.  But now with the Inga tree alleys for planting, I am a producer,” Damas said.

All views are the author’s own, and not those of the Centre for International Forestry Research.

This figure is referred to in the book as Table 2.1 (Page 38)

The Permaculture Institute of El Salvador (IPES) was founded in 2002, by a small group of farmers concerned about the destruction of their environment and way of life (Permacultura America Latina). Juan Rojas, a Salvadoran political and trade union activist, as well as a key figure in the solidarity movement, was the instigator of the organisation. Keen to revive the country’s agricultural potential after the war, he introduced the concept of permacultural design, which he learnt whilst exiled in Australia.

IPES is a grassroots organisation whose members are small-scale farmers. They use the ‘campesino a campesino’ approach to teach methods of ecological agriculture and sustainable living (Permaculture America Latina). “Our prime focus is on sustainable farming for family food production” (Karen Inwood, 31/07/10). In its infancy, IPES worked directly with self-selected communities, simply teaching them to farm in a more natural way. Karen Inwood, the British director, believes the organisation has developed in such a way that IPES will no longer go into communities directly, as it is for the best that heads of municipalities teach their peoples themselves. Once the community leaders, who become ‘promoters’, have learnt the necessary skills, it is more effective that they pass on their knowledge to create a sub-system of leaders, and therefore the permaculture network is built up with minimal intervention from the primary institute. The heads of communities acquire permacultural knowledge to share in their respective districts via the design course run by IPES.

Many people have lost the concept that they are able to solve their own problems and a dependence on aid from NGOs has evolved in places (Karen Inwood, 30/07/10). What makes IPES’ work different is that “the promoters are taught on the basis that they have a commitment to educate others, and with this methodology, it truly becomes a process within their community that doesn’t need outsiders to be part of.” (Karen Inwood, 30/07/10)

There are eight employees receiving a small salary at IPES, thus the institute relies heavily on its 25 voluntary staff. Together the team have just revised the curriculum of the design course and are currently writing a book to accompany it. The year long course is run for two or three days each month in the municipalities of the course attendants. The programme begins with an overview of El Salvador’s agricultural history, including how the land has changed and why. Participants are then introduced to the fundamental principles of permaculture: relying on natural resources, everything being interrelated and interactive, and every design attribute having more than one practicality and function (Karen Inwood, 30/07/10). “We open their hearts to the concept of a link with Mother Earth, and this also develops naturally as the course progresses” (Karen Inwood, 30/07/10). Groups of students then start designing a particular plot of land on paper. The designs are then put into practice, whilst learning techniques such as improving soil fertility, natural pest control and seed selection. The final module relates to permaculture in everyday life and how to enlighten others of its benefits. “Everything learnt on the course can be replicated without outside help, resources or technology” (Karen Inwood, 30/07/10).

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Sources:
Global Permaculture. www.permatopia.com/dictionary.html (accessed 09/08/2010).
Permacultura America Latina (PAL), IPES, http://www.permacultura.org/elsalvador.html (accessed 09/08/2010).
Karen Inwood (30 July 2010) in interview specifically for this book. Suchitoto, El Salvador.

In its 2003 report entitled ‘The Adoption of Organic Agriculture Among Small Farmers in Latin America and The Caribbean’, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) drew the following conclusions and lessons.

The shift to organic production had positive impacts on the incomes of small farmers in all the case studies.

Small farmers dominated organic production in all the countries in which the case studies were located.

The organic models of production have also been associated with positive effects on the health of producers and workers and on the environment.

Most successful organic producers own their land, and small farmers with unstable land tenure … have been unable to produce organic products.

The most successful organic producers have been those who were already applying a production system characterised by technologies not based on chemical inputs.

Exporters and marketing firms recognise that the buyers of organic products in industrialised countries are becoming increasingly more demanding in terms of quality.

Groups of small farmers could be hurt significantly if only one group member or a few group members do not comply with the organic methods of production.

Organic production in all the cases studied has developed in spite of the limited availability of formal sources of on-farm credit.

Shifting to organic production has not required significant on-farm investments.

The transitional period – the first two or three years after farmers start to produce organically – has been the most difficult period for organic producers in terms of financial needs.

The most important off-farm investments required by organic production are similar to the ones required by conventional production, including packing and storage facilities. … They have usually been carried out by farmer associations and marketing firms.

Projects working with small producers should focus on strengthening associations that will play a major role in the marketing of production, the dissemination of organic technologies … and the monitoring of their members’ compliance with organic methods of production.

The marketing of organic products through farmer associations that have established direct contact with buyers has been key in helping small farmers obtain better prices.

Contract farming schemes involving processing and marketing firms have facilitated the marketing of the production of small farmers and given them access to extension services.

Small farmers have a relatively weak position in negotiations with firms because they have limited information and are poorly organised.

The domestic market for organic products in developing countries show good growth prospects.

NGOs have played the most influential role in the emergence of organic agriculture, usually by promoting alternative models of production among indigenous farmers that are based on the use of local resources rather than on the purchase of external inputs.