Ayni, Regenerative Food Forest in the Amazon

Dear Friends and Supporters,

As you may remember, we have set ourselves the goal to have implemented 24 hectares of chacras integrales – diverse and productive agroforestry systems - in 4 of the surrounding communities of our permaculture center by the end of this year. The end of the year is approaching quickly, and our team is moving full steam to reach this goal.

We currently have 33 individuals that participate in our agroforestry work. They all have different sizes of land; altogether we work on 26 hectares. Of course, some participants are less eager than others, and the work is in different stages with different participants. Several longer phases, during which we couldn´t access the communities due to the pandemic, interrupted our work methodology, complicating our work significantly. Nonetheless, we are positive that we will get close to our goal of 24 installed hectares by the end of the year.

To support the agroforestry work we also held a full-day training at our permaculture center for the project participants in September. The training went more into detail about our agroforestry model, but also included a very practical part of how to correctly plant and care for seedlings of different valuable local Amazonian tree species, such as Cedar and Rosewood, among others. We also handed out over 2000 seedlings to the participants, to be planted in their agroforestry site.

We furthermore continued with community assemblies in the 4 surrounding villages to speak about communal land management and sustainable land use alternatives for the future. All four communities have at least had 2 such meetings and are closing in on a vision for their future land management. San Pedro, one of the communities, has completed the process and made communal agreements on future communal land use. We also continued our environmental education session in the local schools.

Finally, with regards to our own permaculture center, we have some exciting new developments to share. Our sister organization, the Temple of the Way of Light, with whom we share the land, has handed over infrastructure that it no longer uses to our Institute. This includes a large and beautiful house with dining area, kitchen, and toilet facilities, as well as plenty of rooms and several individual huts – opening a new world of possibilities for us. We have been busy planning an educational permaculture program, that includes monthly courses on a specific permaculture topic open to anyone. We are starting now in October with a 3-day introduction to permaculture. Finally, in September we also launched a regular volunteer program for people that want to stay with us for at least one month and deepen their tropical permaculture knowledge. We already have two volunteers working with us.

All the above will help us to further develop our permaculture center, improve our demonstration sites, and contribute to strengthening our work with local communities, creating a movement to regenerate the Amazon. None of this would be possible without your continued support. Thank you for being part of the movement.

With appreciation and gratitude,

The Chaikuni Team

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Despite the menace of a third COVID wave looming over our Amazon region, our project staff and permaculture program have been running at full speed since we last wrote to you.

We continued to support local families to install their chacras integrales or food forests through mingas (communal work days), offering both technical and logistical support, including seedlings, as well as food provisions for the individuals participating in the minga. Since early march, we have assisted another 11 mingas. We are currently advancing on 22 hectares, most of them at stage 1 out of 3, but 9 families have also implemented phase 2. By the end of the year, we have set ourselves the goal to reach 24 hectares of fully installed chacras integrales.  

In May, we facilitated a training for all the participants that work on their chacra integral through our project, on how to include citrus fruit trees in their agroforestry system. The organization of this workshop is a direct response to feedback from the families we work with. Many are particularly interested in including either toronja (a local type of grape fruit) or lemon in their chacra integral. The training was led by a local expert in citrus plants, and was such a success that many participants asked for a follow up training. We also distributed 10 small citrus plants to each participant, to be planted in their chacra according to the instructions taught in the training.

Finally, there seems to be returning some normality to the schools, at least in rural areas. Normal classes have started twice a week in the communities we work. This means that we are finally able to coordinate with the teachers to organize a space for the kids, offering environmental education classes, the fun way. We don´t need to teach these kids “about” nature, or how to plant a tree. They have spent all of their young lives running around the forest, and can teach us. Making the link with our other project activities, however, we speak about the importance of sustainably managing their resources, for their future, and how they can talk to their parents about this.

We are also excited to let you know that we recently welcomed a new and very talented colleague to our team, Diego Carhuaricra, who will be in charge of coordinating our permaculture center from now on. One of his first initiatives was to organize the team to sell the produce from our own chacra integral at one of the markets on the outskirts of Iquitos, a half an hour walk and shorter boat ride away from our center. Our staff harvested ginger, anona fruit, cacao, guineo bananas, plantains, curcuma, and bijao leaves, and sold it all at the market. The bijao is a large banana-tree-leave looking leave, that is used in local cuisine, most prominently to wrap a dish that is called Juane. While Juanes are prepared throughout the year, they are the main ingredient for the festivities of San Juan, celebrated on the 24^th of June.

As we head into the second half of the year, we continue with fresh enthusiasm to work with the local communities to implement diverse and regenerative agroforestry system, which wouldn’t be possible without your continued support.

With much gratitude,

The Chaikuni Team

Links:

• A photo gallery of our street market in Santa Clara district.