Ayni, Regenerative Food Forest in the Amazon

Dear Friends and Supporters,

We sincerely hope that you and your families are well and safe, as we are slowly approaching the end of the year and holiday season. In July, when we last wrote to you, government restrictions due to the pandemic were slowly rolled back. For us at Chaikuni, this meant to go ahead with full speed, trying to recover some of the months we had “lost” to the state of emergency.

Over the last three months we went back to being out there in the communities, working with local farmers and their families. You might remember: we set ourselves the goal to implement 24 hectares of chacras integrales in four neighboring communities to our permaculture center, by the end of 2021. The aim is to recover, improve, regenerate and diversify the (often degraded) farming areas of local families, putting them under a diverse and healthy agro-forestry system, producing an abundance of food, timber, medicine, and other benefits. To get their food forests established and under way, on three occasions for each participant, we offer technical and logistical support, as well as manpower, in a so called minga. A minga refers to a day of work in the field, where the owner is joined by the extended family and friends who lend a hand.

After re-establishing contact with the local farmers in august and visiting them to speak of their plans and ambitions for their farming plots, starting in September, we facilitated and accompanied 13 mingas. This means that, with Chaikuni’s help, 13 local farmers took the first step to establishing a chacra integral on their land, with each plot being approximately 1 hectare in size, some slightly less. Many more interested individuals have signed up to our project, whom our team will attend over the next months.

We have also started to support each of the four communities to get organized and work on communal land use planning. The objective is for every community to define a communal agreement over how to sustainably use and control their territory and its resources over the next years and decades. We had a GIS specialist help us preparing special maps for each of the communities. Last week we held the first communal land use planning work shop in the San Pedro village. As you can see in the photos, the villagers got extremely engaged.

In the meantime, our own experimental agrofloresta-plot that we installed in March continues to grow wildly. What was barren earth in March, is now producing: Yucca (manioc), maize, Chaia, Katuk, beans, and the Cocona fruit have already been harvested, and much more produce is to be expected in the coming months. We prepared some new “then and now” pictures so you can get a taste of this.

While many parts of the world currently experience the feared second wave of the Corona-pandemic, we hope that the number of Covid cases remain low in our region, so that we can continue our work in the communities. We would like to genuinely thank you for all your support to our Institute and the local communities we work with in the Peruvian Amazon.

With profound gratitude,

The Chaikuni Institute Team

Dear Friends and Supporters,

On March 15th, only a few days after we wrote to you last time, Peru was put under a strict lockdown due to the corona pandemic. More than 110 days later, the lockdown was finally lifted at the beginning of July. As in most places, however, this doesn´t mean that things just go back to (the hopefully new) normal. At around 3000 new cases daily, infection rates are still
high in Peru. Rather than based on public health criteria, the discontinuation of the quarantine is the result of ordinary people and the government no longer being able to bear the socio-economic costs of “staying inside”.

Our jungle region and city of Iquitos went through a traumatic experience; the lack of a decent health care system, infrastructure, medical personal, medicines and oxygen led to the loss of unnecessarily many lives. While conspicuously exposing the weaknesses of our current “system”, it was a stark and painful reminder of all the failures and thefts committed for decades in our Loreto region. Oil royalties and public funds disappeared in the pockets of public functionaries rather than being invested in health care and education.

While the pandemic impeded us to go about our work in the field during the last months, we, fortunately, had just finished planting three food forests before we were ordered to stay at home. We were also lucky that two of our Chaikuni staff live right next to our permaculture center, and, despite the lockdown, they were able to tend to the agrofloresta throughout the quarantine, while nature was silently performing its miracles. In just a bit over three months, our agrofloresta plot went from barren earth to a lush emerging green, already gifting us with its first product, a local species of beans. The picture series at the bottom of this report - taken by our local staff Eder Baneo through his cellphone – documents the growth of the agrofloresta planted in March. We hope it conveys an idea of just how diverse and productive this system is.

While we were bound to our homes, immersed in the uncertainty of the situation, we – or shall we better say YOU – also achieved another great victory. Showing international solidarity and reciprocity at a level that has deeply touched us, you all made our Climate Action Campaign fundraiser a huge success. Thanks to your support, our project was chosen as one of
five organizations to be part of the year-long GlobalGiving Climate Action Fund, which will bring us further funding and new platforms to share our experience, hopefully inspiring many others to join the movement.

The successful campaign directly helped us as an organization to continue on through this global crisis and time of renewal. We can´t wait to go back out to the communities, put our hands in the soil, and continue the work with local families to plant food forests and regenerate soils and forests.

Thank you for all your support to our Institute and the local communities we work with in the Peruvian Amazon.

With profound gratitude,

The Chaikuni Institute Team