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