Olancho and Olanchito

One of my first activities after arriving to Honduras and getting the family settled was to review the work of two of the partner organizations along with the Food Security and Agriculture Technical Adviser at World Renew: Angela Boss. We traveled out to Olancho, where Katie and I had lived for two years, to visit the communities where Diaconia Nacional is working. It was great to be welcomed by a lot of familiar faces in the communities. I was also impressed by the work that Cesar is doing with the producers in that area. They had set up test plots where they are experimenting with different planting and fertilizing methods that can conserve moisture in this dry valley and greatly increase corn yields. The side-by-side comparisons showed clearly that the new practices were making a big difference.

Experimental Plot, Dos Quebradas

For me it was great to see Cesar having success in his role with Diaconia. Six years ago I got to know Cesar because he was involved in many of the youth activities that the Honduran Christian Reformed Churches were doing in the area. Even at that time it was clear that he had good potential for leadership. He is from Guacoca, one of the communities served by Diaconia in that valley. We visited Dos Quebradas, Los Charcos, and La Avispa.

Cesar, Ag Program Coordinator, Diaconia Nacional

Showing off the results of worm composting

 From there we drove back to Tegucigalpa, then took a ten hour car ride to Olanchito to visit the communities where Alfalit works. Carlos, Alfalit's coordinator, took us up into the mountains on some pretty rough roads. We saw lots of tilapia and snail production.

Tilapia and Snail Pond

We also met a farmer who uses velvet bean as a cover crop, which allows him to get good yields while buying less fertilizer while not burning the hillsides to prepare the land. Carlos is a busy man. He has 11 communities to support in a variety of programs including credit unions, plantain producer groups, conservation agriculture, agroforestry, honey production, and more.

Hillside cornfield that used velvet bean cover crop with no burning before planting

 Later, on back in our office I was compiling data from a community agriculture diagnostic and I did some conversions to compare Honduras' average corn yield to what I am used to seeing in Minnesota. The results were so surprising that I thought I had made a calculation error. The average yield of corn in Honduras is between 15 and 30 bushels per acre, the US average is around 180 according to the USDA. http://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?commodity=corn&graph=yield
Needless to say there is a lot of room for improvement. Maybe it is an unfair comparison to look at farming the flat prairies versus the rocky hillsides, but it is clear from the work being done here that a few small changes can make a big impact which can help a lot of people have a more stable food supply, and better incomes.