Preparing for La Siembra

The nightly rains of Jiguina's winter are starting and apparently it is beetle season...they have made my home a landing zone at night.  In brief, I am getting ready to garden with at least one young woman (we hope to plant broccoli!) and I am beginning the tedious process of a USAID grant proposal for a community mill project.  Many families in the community are constructing new homes or additions to their homes, presumably with monies from the coffee harvest.  Everyone is waiting for the first planting season of the year; soon the hillsides will be showing rows of corn or red beans.  Today, Don Chepe was walking up a hill to make sure people had permission to chop down the trees they were chopping.  Todo va bastante normal.

My colleague Simon is rather successfully preparing to plant a plot of 5,000 strawberry plants with a group in his community.  This project is inspirational!  It has potential to really affect the incomes of the participants and I observed that it is teaching the group how to work together and organize a work plan, work schedule, etc.  Best wishes to them.

I am learning the ins and outs of community develop each day.  I try to stay positive, I try to educate, I try to fight off the feeling that I am being taken advantage of.

Venting about campo economics

I suppose there is not much hope for this being an optimistic blog entry...but this is the reality in which I live.

Plain and simple, today I am frustrated. I just got off a bus on which I watched a bunch of people of all ages purchase a quack marketed "vitamin" product that I am convinced (by reading the ingredients on the label) does not actually contain vitamins of any kind. It contains like one type of non-essential amino acid if memory serves me correct. Anywho, people are paying 20 cords for this product on the bus, when some of them will surely not earn 20 cords that day. There is surely more health benefit from eating a tomato, yet the pill salespersons on the busses seem to have far more people following their nutrition advice than I do.

Continuing with nutrition, I frequently observe parents buying their kids small bags of processed junk food, such as cheeto-esque chips. One bag typically costs 2 cords; they are small bags though and usually 2 bags are purchased at once. It is a frequent source of empty Calories. Please people, buy EGGS instead of this processed junk. The huevos could actually help the health of the kid and, at 2.5 cords per egg, are extremely affordable!

Lastly, after being asked for a 100 cord (U$5) "loan" this week, I was a bit aflijido. A young mother who lives in very poor conditions and participates in a community bank told me she needed money to make money. She was trying to sell underpriced food items to school kids to earn a buck. The problem is, she wasn`t even earning a buck each day and she wanted me to finance her next investment in ingredients. Turns out the last loan she took from our community bank was taken, with no thought of how it would be repayed, in order to pay the first payment of a television purchased on credit. This is a complete misuse of community banking! With money from the coffee harvest this season, which should be conserved to be used throughout the rest of the year with little to no employment, this small family purchased a television (which probably only receives one or two channels by the way). Oh, she also states that a large chunk of coffee picking money went to alcohol...in the belly of her husband. The coffee money seems like a distant memory already, and there are still beans being picked...

So, essentially, daddy wanted booz and tele-novelas, so his kids have to suffer the rest of the year eating very poco. The family will likely continue to ask for money from me, because they have a 400 cord T.V. payment due every month, and she already took a LOAN to pay the first installment, for this T.V. that was also bought on credit. So, the debt just grows and grows. Since the T.V. was financed, it will probably end up costing around double the original price, by the way.

Living in the moment is part of the culture here, but it certainly makes me a bit sad sometimes when I desperately want to help the home economics in my community, but when families have money, it gets spent like this. I certainly do not intend to judge other people's purchases, but when a family is trying to feed kids, maybe somebody does need to criticize the use of a loan to by a T.V. on credit...or better yet, the necessity of said T.V.

Café Journey, from the tree to the cup

The coffee trees are typically planted after 3 months of growth in small plastic tree nursery bags. After about two or three years, the tree will start producing enough fruit to harvest. Producers in Jiguina, Nicaragua typically plant the coffee in rows throughout their hillside family plots that often surround the family’s home. The coffee grows in a humid, shaded environment and in our case, at a higher elevation than most of Nicaragua. The trees have narrow trunks and long, thin, flexible branches. The branches have shiny deep green leaves and bright green fruit that mature to bright orange, yellow, red, and when very ripe, a dark cherry red—such a berry needs to be picked! There are many varieties of plants, some with larger fruit than others. I walk through all this coffee, growing under the shade of the banana leafs…


The harvest in this climate, at this altitude, begins in December and sometimes lasts into March. Larger coffee plantations in the area open their doors to migrant workers from other areas of the country. The community comes alive, bustling with the hustle of the harvest. People have more money in their pockets, sometimes there is more crime, and on Sundays, there are more men drinking in the streets (los bolos).

The coffee is hand picked by the townspeople, each with a straw basket tied around their waste. They take pride in the speed at which they can pick—and with good reason because they are paid accordingly. A good day of work may pay approximately $10.00 and often includes at least lunch.

Workers seek to pick only the ripest berries and only the berries, because pulling off too many stems damages the tree. This is where the coffee begins its journey to your cup…

Then the process continues as follows:

1. Wet milling to depulp, ferment, wash, and sort for quality
2. Drying, usually in the sun; more sorting for quality
3. Small farmers then bag the pale beige coffee beans to sell in the market
4. Coffee then enters a dry mill in which it is dried (often in the sun) more before husk
   removal; the dehusked bean is referred to as oro or gold
5. The beans can then be toasted
6. The aromatic toasted beans can then be ground
7. Ground coffee is brewed with hot water
8. A cup can be poured and enjoyed!

A helpful webpage...
http://www.coffeeterms.com/

Coffee Harvest Slideshow

estamos en la temporada, estamos en 2010

Many interesting, beneficial, and sustainable projects will hopefully develop in my community throughout 2010.  Right now everyone is concerned with picking coffee, the primary cash crop of my area in Nicaragua.  I wish all the families the best in their endevours, although I read in the local newspaper today that café exports have dropped some 13% compared to this time last year.

Summer has arrived here and it seems to be getting a bit hotter, although my mountainous climate is quite moderate.  It is definitely drier though...I'm wondering if the current beans planted all over the hillsides are getting enough agua.

Some days are super frustrating, but then there are simple things like buying bananas straight from the bunch in which they grow...that will always be with me as a neat experience.

In the coming days I hope to finalize a "tour" of the coffee process from tree to taza (cup) and I will post this tour on my blog.

happy holidays from the peace corps

Integrated Pest Management

IPM is an important step to take in agriculture extension work. It does not necessarily (in my view) mean eliminating all use of chemical pesticides and fertilizing products, but it certainly encourages reduced and pragmatic use of such products. For example, preventative maintenance of land and strict control of when and how much pesticides to apply (perhaps ensuring that a pest is indeed present before application). IPM should also promote the use of bio-control or natural products such as fungi and certain insects/parasites that control harmful pests. This is not a new topic, it is discussed in the well known food security book FOOD FIRST, and it is key to achieving sustainable agriculture (agriculture that is cost effective and not destructive to the environment).

Today I was given an article that comes from USAID and Fintrac, both of which aim to create sustainable agricultural progress in the developing world. This brief article speaks of using salicylic acid to boost plant resistance to disease. Essentially I understand it as promoting a healthy immune system in a plant just like consumers looking for antioxidant rich foods are trying to do in their body.

Neat concept, ¿no?

Read for yourself! Download the article "El Uso del Ácido Salicílico ..."