AGRICULTURAL WORKSHOP

This week the Social Action Ministry of the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán held a three day workshop on agricultural practices on the small farm of Moises Rodriguez, in the village of Mejocote, just outside of Gracias, Lempira.

The group was small – 13 of us in all – and I could only stay two days. But the site was fantastic. About ten years ago, Moises and his family moved to a rocky hillside and began farming there.

Through his practices, which include intensive farming, terraces, use of “frijol de abono” (fertilizer beans- also known as velvet beans, Mucuna spp.), composting, and planting of fruit trees, he has created an incredible agricultural miracle. Gary Guthrie, when he visited Moises’ farm a year ago, noted that it is more rock than soil – but Moises has done wonders, as Gary has in Nevada, Iowa, on his community supported agriculture farm, Growing Harmony Farm.

Moises has a small conference center on his land, with bunk beds for up to 20 people. And there we learned.
The first day which included a presentation on “La finca humana” (the human farm), a concept developed by an Honduran educator, that emphasizes the importance of nourishing the human person and working through one’s mind, heart, and hands to develop one self and the world around one.

One idea that Moises repeated several times struck me: “If the mind of a campesino [a small farmer’ is a desert, the world around him will be a desert.” In a society where campesinos are looked down upon, the call for integral development and nurturing of the spirit of the campesinos is a truly important labor. In a society where there is so little self-esteem among the poor, this can be quite a revolutionary method.

After this very fruitful discussion, Moises talked about soil in a most fascinating way. I’ve just read Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Both Moises and Pollen emphasize, in totally different ways, that soil is alive – it’s not simply a chemical composition. And therefore it needs to be nourished.

Besides all this theory, Moises showed us around his farm and gave us an idea of all that he does.

Tuesday was the day for practice.

In the morning we started by making bocachi, an organic fertilizer. The process is fascinating and after all is done it is only 21 days until it is transformed into fertilizer. It does cost a bit – about 48 lempiras ($2.55) if you count the materials and work hours, but you can sell it for about 100 lempiras ($5.30) a 100 pound bag . Of course, if you have some of the products on your farm, the costs go down.

After that we made a liquid fertilizer that can be added to water and sprayed on the crops.

These and other processes of producing fertilizer may be very important in the near future. One participant recalled that a government agricultural worker had said in a workshop that in three years campesinos may not be able to buy chemical fertilizer, because of the cost.

All this was very fascinating for me – non-farmer that I am, but more was to come.

In the afternoon, we worked on grafting. We grafted a branch of a productive orange tree onto another citrus that produces fruit faster. In this way it may be possible to have fruit in three years, rather than having to wait five or six. I got into it, but couldn’t quite get it right. I did get to take home the plant I worked on – but I have to wait twenty days to see if it really worked.

The last day was teaching home to make ecological ovens. Moises has an oven on his farm, the first ecological oven in Honduras! But it is five years old and he thought it would be good to take it down and rebuild it. I didn’t stay for this since I’ve seen some of this in the parish of Dulce Nombre (and I had to get back to Santa Rosa to prepare for some visitors from St. Thomas.)

I was very impressed by the workshop but sad there were so few people. The cost was a little high for people here (500 lempiras - $26.46) which is about week’s wage for some folks. Some folks had support from their parishes, but this also meant time away from their work.

The participants were also a little disappointed. One complaint from them was that there are too few people who see the importance of this type of agricultural development. They also lamented that in the church there are some who are very big on protesting government and business policies and can get people out to protest the mining policies, but there is so little support for real development efforts.

But for me it was a very fruitful two days. Not only did I get to meet some really great people but we had any number of good conversations, ranging from church issues to agricultural practices. One young man talked about his efforts to go to the US and how he never got past Nuevo Laredo in Mexico.

I also spent quite some time Tuesday night kicking around a soccer ball with them and some of Moises’ sons. I even did a few “headers.”

In the future I hope that I can find ways to support and encourage these types of educational and formation experiences.