Felipe Tomás, director of the FUNDAMARCOS sustainable agricultural program, examines the soil which has been retained behind a rock retaining wall built on the contour.

In Guatemala, FUNDAMARCOS, through an agricultural program directed by Maya teacher Felipe Tomás, taught new sustainable agricultural practices to 415 farmers (about 2,905 family members) in 2005. FUNDAMARCOS worked in 13 Baja Verapaz communities with poor subsistence farmers who support their families on small steep hillside farms. With 2 to 3 years of program participation, these farmers have been able to triple their harvests of corn and beans, while at the same time reducing money spent for the purchase of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The soil and water management practices that make possible these great increases in yields are explained in the Agricultural Techniques section and specific strategies are described under Keys to Success.

In 2005 the program hired two new agricultural extensionists so that it could reach out to additional villages and offer participation to more farm families. The work of FUNDAMARCOS in Baja Verapaz is making essential differences that restore the earth and provide her people a sustainable life. Felipe Tomás feels his vocation is restoring God's creation and enabling farm families in Guatemala to have adequate livelihoods.

Marcelino Reymundo, one of the new agricultural extentionists, stands next to rocks dug from his corn field. He will use them to build contour walls to retain the topsoil and stop erosion.

Baja Verapaz, Guatemala, where EPIC is working is densely populated with marginally productive small farms in environmentally fragile areas. Small hillside farms play an economic role in Guatemala that is typical for small farms in developing countries. They provide employment for much of the population, and they produce most of Guatemala's food. But these are difficult places to farm and the farm families are poor.

• Farms are steep, small, and frequently rocky

• Farms are very susceptible to erosion and many already have soils that are depleted

• Prices of the agricultural inputs, upon which the farmers have recently become dependent, have increased. Often their use makes farming unprofitable.

Chemically based agriculture as practiced in the United States, with its high requirements of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides and water, does not provide an answer for these hillside farmers. An alternative sustainable agriculture is required, and it needs to have the following characteristics:

• Replenishes rather than depletes the soil so successive generations can continue to farm

• Increases farm income above subsistence so families can afford schooling, health care, clothing and other essentials

• Liberates farmers from dependence upon expensive agricultural inputs and the need to migrate as farm laborers to earn supplemental income for basic family needs

Bernardo Camaja, left, and his brother Salvador have both tripled their farms' income

The sustainable organic practices that FUNDAMARCOS program promotes are proving very successful when evaluated by the challenges of these 3 requirements. Families have increased harvests, protected their soil, preserved their way of life, ended their dependency on agrochemicals, and produced healthful foods. Farming has become an economically viable vocation.

The sustainable farming that the FUNDAMARCOS program is teaching is based on a group of new agricultural practices specifically adapted for hillside farms. Soils under this type of management increase both their moisture holding capacity and their fertility. In only 2 to 3 years farmers can triple their income and no longer need to migrate to earn money for agricultural supplies or family necessities. (See example below) This success provides a very hopeful model, both in Central America and for application in similar situations worldwide.

Rains from Hurricane Stan

The dramatic increase in production seen in the first year of using the agricultural practices taught by FUNDAMARCOS is often specifically related to water management practices that retain rainwater and increase the water-holding capacity of the soil. This has proven to be very important in years of drought or erratic rainfall. This year the soil and water management practices were as effective with torrential rain as they had been when there was too little rain.

From October 6 to 8, 2005, Hurricane Stan slowly traveled across El Salvador and Guatemala, causing massive erosion and landslides and killing more people than Hurricane Katrina. Although Baja Verapaz did not feel the brunt of the hurricane, it experienced days of soaking rains. FUNDAMARCOS program director Felipe Tomás responded with this fax to EPIC:

Informing you in regards to the phenomenon that struck Guatemala the 6th, 7th and 8th of October 2005. The strong rains didn’t cause destruction where the fields are protected with practices of Soil Conservation. The contour ditches held and filled with water. The living grass barriers captured huge amounts of topsoil, and the rock retaining walls also held back the soil, causing the terraces to grow. There were no landslides where the program’s soil and water conserva- tion practices have been implemented.

Expansion of the Sustainable Agriculture Program

Original Agricultural Goal

A great crop from beans inrterplanted within the field of corn.

In February of 2005, the FUNDAMARCOS agricultural program in Baja Verapaz hired Marcelino Reymundo and Leonardo Calo, both experienced and knowledgeable local students of Felipe Tomás. They are farmers who had very successfully used the agricultural techniques taught by the program on their own farms and had worked as agricultural volunteers with the FUNDAMARCOS program. To enable them to continue farming, they were hired to do agricultural extension work 13 days per month, including their participation in the training for health promoters. Marcelino and Leonardo hit the ground running and the results from hiring these students of Felipe have certainly met expectations.

Marcelino and Leonardo have surpassed their first year’s goal of working in 4 new villages and have started work in 6 new villages. During 2005 they worked in:

To reclaim this very eroded rocky field, Marcelino has worked with the farmer to build a series of contour rock retaining walls using rocks cleared from the land.

There is now so much opportunity for increasing the work in agriculture that at the end of February, 2006, another agricultural extensionist was hired. Like Marcelino Reymundo and Leonardo Calo, new extensionist Bernardo Camaja will work 13 days a month. He is taking over the very new work in the villages of Xibalba and Sacaquej, and he will start organizing farmers in an additional new village.

Increasing yields of corn and beans

Marcelino and Leonardo’s work in the new villages first focused on organizing a small group of farmers and teaching these new program participants the basic practices of soil and water conservation, along with soil preparation including manuring for planting. In late May the rains began and the extensionists followed up their classes with visits to farms to insure that the new program participants understood the practice of planting on the contour.

When FUNDAMARCOS begins work in a village, baseline information on past yields of corn and beans is gathered from the local farmers who have been using conventional farming practices, including chemical fertilizer and herbicide. Marcelino and Leonardo did this in the villages where they began new work. Then after the harvest, they worked with the participants who had used the new sustainable practices to help them weigh their crops of corn and beans. They compared these yields with the baseline information on yields from previous years. Although there were only a few farmers per village who planted fields of corn or beans following most of the program’s many recommendations, the yields on these fields were very impressive!

Conventional versus new agricultural practices yield improvement

The ear on the left was produced using the conventional farming practices of the Baja Verapaz area. In the adjoining field, new sustainable organic agricultural practices produced the ear on the right. On the field producing the ear on the right, the farmer also used less purchased fertilizer and no herbicide. Obviously, farmers are delighted with what this means for their farm income!

If you average the number of quintales of corn harvested using conventional agricultural practices, including chemical fertilizer and herbicides, the new program participants had been getting about 14.85 quintales of corn per manzana. After implementing the new sustainable practices, the average yield was 33.85 quintales per manzana. Where it was possible to weigh bean harvests that had used the new sustainable practices, average yields went from 4.8 quintales per manzana to 15.17 quintales per manzana. In the FUNDAMARCOS agricultural program, corn and bean production generally doubles in the first year and triples by the second or third year. This year the harvests of corn and beans met and surpassed the goal of doubling production.

Field Trips

On a field trip taking farmers from a new village to see the farm of a past program participant, farmers admire a well composted pile of horse manure and crop residues which is ready for use on vegetable gardens.

By July or August, when the crops of the more experienced program participants started to look impressive, Marcelino and Leonardo began taking farmers from the new villages to see the farms of past program participants. Farmer-to-farmer exchanges are always part of agricul-tural instruction for FUNDAMARCOS. They are very valuable for motivating program participants, especially new participants, to try new sustainable practices on their own farms. This year the program did not take groups of farmers from Baja Verapaz to visit past work in San Martin as originally planned, because there was plenty of good work in sustainable agriculture to see nearby in other villages of Baja Verapaz.

Rains from Hurricane Stan

The dramatic increase in production seen in the first year of using the agricultural practices taught by FUNDAMARCOS is often specifically related to water management practices that retain rainwater and increase the water-holding capacity of the soil. This has proven to be very important in years of drought or erratic rainfall. This year the soil and water management practices were as effective with torrential rain as they had been when there was too little rain.

From October 6 to 8, 2005, Hurricane Stan slowly traveled across El Salvador and Guatemala, causing massive erosion and landslides and killing more people than Hurricane Katrina. Although Baja Verapaz did not feel the brunt of the hurricane, it experienced days of soaking rains. FUNDAMARCOS program director Felipe Tomás responded with this fax to EPIC:

Informing you in regards to the phenomenon that struck Guatemala the 6th, 7th and 8th of October 2005. The strong rains didn’t cause destruction where the fields are protected with practices of Soil Conservation. The contour ditches held and filled with water. The living grass barriers captured huge amounts of topsoil, and the rock retaining walls also held back the soil, causing the terraces to grow. There were no landslides where the program’s soil and water conservation practices have been implemented.

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