Our latest report from the field is about two female agroecology “promoters” in the Pinebetal community in Municipality of San Cristóbal de las Casas. Along with their families, these women are practicing sustainable agriculture and sharing their skills with others thanks to your continued support.

They share their experiences on a variety of sustainable agricultural methods, such as:
•   Diversified crops: On the plots they are growing corn, bean, potato, turnip, pea and coriander crops, as well as peach trees. In the backyard they sow coriander, radish, turnip, cabbage and oat seeds. The promoters say that “working with agroecology is part of being healthy. If you have a range of different crops it means your diet is varied; you’re not just eating corn and beans, but other kinds of foods too”.
•   Soil recovery: “We came from the hot lands, where a lot of corn grows because of the climate there. When we came here, the land was barren and badly degraded. We talked about it and said (we would have) to get working on soil conservation, but it was just an idea. A short time later we started work. Now we only buy corn every two months, but before it only yielded two hundred kilos per hectare, and now it’s a thousand”. The starting point for this thinking is to work on soil conservation, so that the other tasks of incorporating organic materials and fertilizers prove to be more effective.
•   Use of fertilizers: The families in this community make various types of solid and liquid organic fertilizers. By applying these organic fertilizers and conserving the soil, production has increased from 200 to 1,000 kilos per hectare.
•   Use and conservation of native seeds: Corn, bean, vegetable and fruit seeds are native to the region. Year after yearm they perform seed selection with the aim of conserving them; these seeds, as well as being used locally, are shared with other promoters from other communities.

Thanks to your continued support the coffee cooperative “Ssit lequil lum,” (Fruit Of The Good Earth) in the northern part of Chiapas continues to report back many successes.

Since our last update on Fruit of the Good Earth in December 2007, the cooperative has succeeded in acquiring much sought-after export permits. They immediately took orders for Europe. They successfully signed contracts and exported whole bean organic coffee to 4 countries: Tatawelo in Italy; Solidarity Café in France, Free World in Italy, Osporos in Greece and Café Liberty in Germany.

Currently, the members are building the capacity of the cooperative. This involves some technical support and DESMI is assisting the group in developing accounting protocols and maintaining fiscal responsibilities with the local tax authority to solidify their legal status as a commercial entity. This means they need to stay on top of the many necessary registrations and certifications.

The cooperative does not just grow coffee. The farmers also grow citrus fruits and bananas, and other small-scale crops. This diversifies their crops and their incomes. DESMI has been helping with the search for new markets for these crops.

More About Fruit Of The Good Earth

The cooperative is comprised of 594 members (coffee producers) from 5 autonomous municipalities, from both the Mayan Chol and Tzeltal ethnic groups. It includes 555 men and 39 women from 45 different communities. Over 2,900 people indirectly benefit from the cooperative.

The members take extraordinary pride in preserving indigenous culture and unity despite being from different ethnicities and language groups.

By organizing collectively, the farmers gain the scale they need to sell their products directly to exporters. This eliminates the need for middlemen and increases their profits.

Training programs help the cooperatives achieve export quality and obtain organic certification for their coffee crops. Just as importantly they develop knowledge to grow a wide variety of organic food crops for consumption and local sale.

The diversification of crops improves family nutrition (a critical need in this part of Mexico with the highest malnutrition rates in the country) and economic security while nourishing the soil for future generations.

Donate to DESMI now, through April 28 and in honor of Earth Day (April 22) GlobalGiving will match your donation at 50%. Please share your support of these coffee farmers with your family and friends.

We are pleased to report that DESMI has an impressive wood-saving stove project underway. In addition to saving wood, the stoves greatly improve the health of women, and their children, who use them.

Exposure to and inhalation of smoke from burning wood with traditional stoves (lacking chimneys) causes a whole host of serious health problems- everything from respiratory infections and asthma to cataracts and carbon monoxide poisoning. Installing efficient, enclosed wood burning stoves is a simple, effective way to conserve the forests (deforestation is an increasing problem in rural Mexico) and remove smoke from the home.

In the small community of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, DESMI has ensured that all 18 families have wood-saving stoves, increasing their overall health and quality life.

The new stoves are culturally appropriate to Mayan cooking traditions and several nearby communities have expressed interest in installing the stoves in their own communities. DESMI provides training on the construction of the stoves, loans for the purchase of materials to build them, and on-going support to the families who use them them.

The women from the community are very grateful for their new stoves and have already seen tangible improvements. “We hope other women will be able to have wood-saving stoves, as they have helped us very much,” says one woman from the community. Others mentioned feeling better physically and saying their eyes were no longer red and irritated. Women reported that with their stoves, they are saving wood and cooking time because they can now prepare several dishes simultaneously. And yet another said: “Even the cats and chickens come up to the wood-saving stove and smile.”

In 2008, DESMI staff conducted a total of 22 workshops and 83 follow up visits on sustainable agriculture, involving 950 participants representing 131 communities. The participants are ‘agroecology promoters’ chosen by their communities who attend the workshops in return for making a commitment to training their neighbors in sustainable agriculture techniques.

The training is multiplied as the promoters replicate what they have learned in follow-up workshops that they give in their own villages. The impact therefore reaches many more people than those who attend the initial workshops.

DESMI worked with community collectives to build a training center in Agua de Leon, a community in the municipality of San Cristobal de las Casas. While groups from 14 communities are initially using the center, eventually it will benefit 48 communities in the southern zone of Chiapas.

The center is designed to be a model for promoting ecological sustainability. It includes a greenhouse for germinating organic vegetable seedlings and saplings for reforestation. There is also an organic garden for hands-on training, composting toilets and rainwater harvesting tanks. To accommodate villagers from across the region there is a dormitory and a kitchen (including a wood-saving stove) for hosting multiple day workshops on-site.

In the past year, DESMI conducted a total of 22 workshops and 83 follow-up visits on Sustainable Agriculture, reaching 950 participants in 131 communities. The participants are “agroecology promoters” chosen by their communities to attend the workshops while making a commitment to training their neighbors in sustainable agriculture techniques. This has a multiplier effect, reaching many more people that those who attend the initial workshops. By region:
o   In the Southern Zone of Chiapas: 486 people (288 men and 180 women) participated from 48 communities. In follow-up visits, DESMI found that 90 families had created new backyard gardens and 148 families had implemented sustainable agriculture on existing corn, bean and vegetable fields. Of these, 60 families have been implementing such techniques for three years. For those families, production has increased on average by 500 kilos to 1000 kilos total (or double).
o   In the Highlands Zone: 301 people (167 men and 134 women) participated from 62 communities. A key focus of the trainings in this area was on the promulgation of fruit trees as a source of nutrition and income. Grafting and disease prevention were the skills taught and reinforced in many of the workshops and follow-up activities in the field.
o   In the Northern Zone: 163 people participated from 21 communities. In this area of Chiapas much of the land is concentrated in the hands of large landowners while many indigenous families have very small plots of land. The training emphasis is on improving soil quality and increase crop yields to make the most of limited land. An important practice is the use of liquid fertilizers and soil amendments. On follow-up visits DESMI found in 12 of the target communities, the participating agriculture promoters had conducted 31 community workshops with their neighbors to share what they had learned from DESMI.

Since the last project update, three workshops on livestock rearing were carried out in the Northern Zone of Chiapas. One workshop was a general training on raising animals in your backyard that eight women from four communities participated in.

The other two workshops were more focused on raising cattle raising and had a total of 19 participants. The topics that were covered were related to disease control, starting from what diseases cow can get and how they are caused as well as how to vaccinate and take care of the cow. Thanks to the workshops, the participants have now a veterinary kit that can be used for disease control.

After the workshops the participants provided feedback on what training they will like to receive to continue to improve their livestock-rearing project.

DESMI provided technical assistance to farmers from 5 municipalities seeking to form a cooperative to export their coffee without needing to sell to intermediaries. The cooperative represents over 1,000 farmers. They are currently in the final phase of legal paperwork, and have negotiated their first sale. In late 2007, they will export two containers of coffee to Italy.

Most of the participating farmers are applying the organic farming techniques they learned not only on their coffee crops but also to their crops of corn, beans and vegetables. The members are studying the possibility of selling some of their vegetables in the local and national markets as their next step.

In the communities of Francisco Villa, DESMI provided training workshops to the community members to reflect on the importance of sustainable agriculture when it is based on a model that respects and conserves the environment. The training raised awareness of the effects of conventional farming that depends on external raw materials and can destroy natural resources in the long term.

Throughout the workshops, DESMI imparted skills on how to produce organic fertilizers such as the ones made through vermicompost and by cattle droppings.

Summary of Progress to Date

With the support of IDEX, DESMI provided monthly training workshops to representatives of 27 community collectives with over 650 members total on a variety of issues including sustainable agriculture, ecological management of livestock, financial administration and marketing, and women’s rights. DESMI also provided ongoing support to two organic coffee cooperatives called Nich Klumatic Maya (“Ancestral Home of the Maya” in the Mayan Ch’ol language) and El Chapuyol (a name derived from the chapuya, a local tree variety) to make progress towards obtaining organic coffee certification.

These two coffee cooperatives are on track to obtain organic coffee certification in 2007. The cooperatives are looking into the possibility of selling organic coffee within the growing Mexican market for this product, as they still are not producing at the volume needed for export.

Major progress was made in training 32 community members from 12 villages of the municipalities of Rubén Jaramillo and Akabalná to become sustainable agriculture promoters. With the support of the DESMI staff agronomist, these promoters completed a comprehensive training that focused on soil conservation and fertility, the usage of natural pesticides, and organic vegetable cultivation.

Promoters learned how to implement contour farming, which is a conservation practice the helps protect rich soil and water resources. In contour farming, crop row ridges are built by tilling and planting, which creates hundreds of small dams that slow water runoff and increase infiltration. Contouring can reduce erosion as much as 50 percent, helping to conserve the soil.

DESMI also trained the promoters to teach their neighbors to eliminate the practice of 'slash-and burn' farming, which is commonly used to prepare the soil for planting. This agricultural practice causes serious environmental problems, including destruction of local habitats, as well as severe respiratory problems amongst villagers. Replacing this practice with the composting and mulching of agricultural waste reduces air pollution, increases soil fertility, and protects biodiversity.

The promoters also learned how to produce plant-based pesticides, including a potent combination of chili pepper, garlic, onion and tobacco leaves for eliminating common pests, including a worm, which destroys the shade trees in many coffee fields. The mitigation of this pest using natural means helps to protect bird habitats and improve the quality of the coffee harvest while protecting the soil and water from toxic pollution.

IDEX staff met with some of the agriculture promoters during site visits in September 2005. They expressed pride in the way they are promoting the adoption of organic agriculture methods amongst their fellow farmers. They told IDEX that this has visibly improved crop yields, and therefore nutrition for local families. Interestingly, they also specifically see their commitment to organic agriculture as an important means to challenge the enormous influence of transnational agribusiness companies on farmers in the area by decreasing the sale of toxic petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Collectives in six villages of the municipality of Ruben Jaramillo have been working with cattle-raising projects and have received training in ecological management of pasturelands and sustainable animal care. IDEX staff visited two of these collectives and were shown how pastureland is rotated to prevent desertification, as well as how lush the nearby collective corn crops are, having benefited from the application of cow manure at planting time.

Attachments:

• DESMI Project Update August 2006 (DOC)