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Dateline ACTCosta Rica 01/05
Farming and organizing are keys to a better future after floods in Costa Rica
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Words about the project from the farmers involved |
| The project helps us work independently I had one hectare planted with bananas and plantains. With the January rains, the river overflowed and flooded my farm, and I lost half of my crop. People from the National Emergency Commission came and offered to help, but no one had ever helped me before, until four months ago when the Lutheran Church gave us tools and seeds. I heard about the project from the promoters, and later I talked with the representative of the Lutheran Church. Their help was excellent because with a machete I could cut down the weeds that had grown on the land and with the shovel I planted new seeds. Now my plants are about ready to harvest. The project has been very beneficial for the people because it helps those who had no money to buy seeds. It is also good because it gives us support for working independently. Thanks to them we can now meet our own needs. What is important for us is that now we have tools, and if there is another emergency, these will help us survive, because we will be able to plant seeds and to provide our own food without waiting for help that probably won’t come, or if it arrives, it won’t last forever. Another thing that would help us, as a young man said in the meeting, is to open a market for improving our sales. That way we could place our product at better prices and with better possibilities of selling it at a good price, thanks to good community organization. On the other hand, the workshops on organic agriculture are advantageous because they help us protect the environment. We sell through intermediaries and through the Probanana and Probanza companies. We take the bananas out by river. We do not use chemicals on our plants; we plant in the shade of trees and leave four or five meters between the plants. -- Misael Escalante I work this land with my daughter’s help I have belonged to the community association for four years. When the flooding started, we had already planted a little of everything: plantain, banana and cacao. I lost my hectare; others lost more and some lost less. The project began when the Telire River overflowed. We depend on this for our livelihood. Sometimes we also plant yucca or yams, but just for our family to eat. Other people who have more land plant beans and corn, and even rice, which they sell to others. But, we can’t do this; we depend only on banana and cacao. -- Ignacia Rojas Morales Being organized has allowed us to do new things I have been with the project since July. I have 250 banana plants on one-half hectare of land. I have the advantage of planting quite a distance from the river so I don’t have many problems [with flooding]. However, some people - not all of them - who plant near the river are in a risky situation because any flooding can destroy all their crops. However, those of us who decided to plant somewhere else are not in as much danger. To be sincere, the Lutheran Church has been a great help to us because we have very limited economic resources, and the fact that they have helped us buy seedlings and farming tools has been a great benefit. All of the beneficiaries are very grateful. The group has worked together in everything. We help each other so that we will all make progress. A nice group has formed. From the beginning we were asked to become well organized, and I think we have done that. But, it has been difficult. At first we had a community group, and after the flooding the Lutheran Church told us they were going to help us get materials, and then Gabriela, Fabio, Enrique and Marcos came. It was little by little that we understood how they wanted to help us, and here we are. From that time on, the community organization has grown a lot. Before we didn’t meet very often, but now we do. Everyone gets together, and after the meeting we eat together and play soccer. We meet with Gabriela every two weeks. You should see the meetings we have. The coordinators of the project have gotten to know us, and we have gotten to know them. The process has helped us a great deal as a community. Also, being organized has made it possible for us to do new things. For example, we get together more often. Before, each person stayed in his own house and no one went to visit other people. Now, we are united and we can talk with our coordinator, Don Hildebrando, about anything. Although we do not feel completely prepared to face another flood, we believe that the training we are receiving will help us because we are learning how to deal with disasters in the future. We hope that when we receive training, God will help us learn a lot and put into practice what we have learned. I have never been in workshops or trainings or anything, so I want to know what they can teach us. -- Ana Xiomara Páez López, 22 years old |
The Agricultural Reactivation Project for the Upper Talamanca Zone of the Lutheran Church of Costa Rica (ILCO), a member of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, supports the revival of farming and provides the area’s residents with more information about disasters. It also revives and reinforces organic agricultural techniques, which are age-old indigenous traditions.
Gabriela Mora, a member of the project coordinating team, explained that the project assists the families that were affected by floods in December 2004 and January 2005 by providing them plantain and banana shoots, which will permit them to revive their farms. The project also involves a training program that makes it possible for affected families to increase their productivity and earnings, to organize communities and to prepare for possible future flooding. “The idea is to reactivate one hectare per family,” said Mora.
Floods
In December 2004 and January 2005, the Caribbean coast of Costa Rican was affected by the worst flooding since 1970. This was due to heavy rainfall that caused rivers such as La Estrella, Chirripó, Bananito and Sixaola to overflow their banks.
During those months, residents’ homes and crops were destroyed, and people were without drinking water and food for an even longer time. During that time, the assistance the National Emergency Commission and other government organizations provided was insufficient.
However, after the rain stopped, other concerns began to surface as a result of the severe damage the heavy rains caused to crops, homes, community infrastructure and roads. At that time, the biggest need of the people was to help them get back on their feet after being knocked down by the forces of nature.
Stages of the project
Assistance for the residents of Upper Talamanca was organized in three stages:
The first stage was carried out in January and February, after the flooding of December and January. The National Emergency Commission, together with other organizations such as ILCO, distributed emergency food relief in the area.
The agricultural reactivation project was proposed for the second stage, in which some of the community members and the Lutheran Church worked together with indigenous organizations to take a census and distribute banana and plantain shoots to families that had lost their crops in the flooding.
This assistance was complemented by donations from other organizations that provided the tools needed for farming. In this stage, farmers have returned to working their land and have revived their organic banana plantations.
The need to assist more families made a third stage of the project necessary. For this stage, another purchase of banana shoots was proposed along with a training cycle in order to support farmers in the area of organic banana cultivation.
The other part of the project, holding disaster-preparedness training, teaches people how to better protect themselves in possible future flooding and how to reduce the damage caused by flooding.
It is hoped that 200 families in the communities of Orochico, Sepekue 1 and 2, Mojoncito, Sibodi and Cachabri will be helped so that they can reactivate a total of 200 hectares of organic banana crops.
“To date, we have helped 168 families, so there are still people who need assistance. We intend to reach the goal of 200 families before beginning the training stage, so that in that stage everyone will be totally integrated,” said Mora.
Growing and selling bananas
The farmers involved in the project are using a system of indigenous garden crops, in which banana plants are planted with other plants, such as native trees, fruit trees, cacao and tubers.
“We do not use chemicals on the seeds we plant. We plant in the shade of trees and leave four or five meters between plants,” said Misael Escalante, one of the farmers in the project.
Once the bananas are harvested, they are taken to the side of roads in the hope that an intermediary will come by to purchase the fruit. Bananas are loaded on the intermediaries’ trucks, and payment is calculated by the weight of the fruit. The intermediary goes from one farm to another, buying bananas until the truck is full.
A truck full of bananas then travels to a riverbank where the bananas are off-loaded onto boats that take the bananas to Suretka. From there, the fruit is loaded onto another truck and taken to the packing and distribution plant.
“We sell through intermediaries and to the Probanano and Probanza companies. Gerber also buys from us,” explained Escalante, “because they don’t have their own plantations yet.”
Community organizing
All of this assistance, combined with the ongoing accompaniment that ILCO has been giving to the agrilculture project’s coordinating team, has promoted enthusiasm in the community and a feeling of responsibility to continue the work and to become more organized.
In this environment, many other topics can be addressed, such as better marketing of the community’s products, a topic that has begun to come up in their conversations.
“Our idea is to work with the people to support community organization, and to give the community better instruments to face the emergencies that have always existed and that will continue in the future, most certainly,” said Marco Rodríguez during one of the project meetings held in Sibodi.
Enrique De la O, also a member of the coordinating team, explained to the beneficiaries that there are other issues that could come up, such as where to distribute their products.
“I believe that if we are better organized and trained, then we will be able to address common issues so that the matter of marketing will not be an obstacle. That could become an emergency in the future if we are not organized, if we are not trained. We know that there are certain problems in selling our products, and when we produce all our fruit we wonder where we are going to sell it and how are we going to sell it. These are questions that should be resolved together in the future,” said De la O.
Those involved in the project also see the importance of organizing the community. For example, Ana Xiomara Páez believes that the community where she lives in Cachabri has become more organized since the project began.
“Being organized has allowed us to do new things. For example, we get together more often. Before, everyone stayed in their own house, and no one went to the home of another. But now we are united, and we talk about everything with our coordinator, don Hildebrando,” she explained.
According to Rodríguez, the next stage of the project is to form a kind of council, made up of the project promoters in the area, in order to discuss specific topics, such as selling their products. Likewise, this will allow the members of the project to provide better solutions to the problems that arise from day to day.
Dennia Pereira is a free-lance writer working for Lutheran World Federation-Central America, a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.
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