Improve Nicaraguan Farmers Nutrition & Incomes

Darwin lives with his wife and his two children in a small community called Cruz Verde located at 14.92 miles from San Carlos head city of Rio San Juan, this young man has a low level of literacy and lives in the community for more than 20 years and has good knowledge of agriculture as he has been working the land with his father since he was 12 years old, helping him to prepared the land in a traditional way and remembered that always for each planting season they used to burn the land before planting or spread the corn in a broadcast manner and once it was planted cut down the forest, by those times they did not fertilize and used almost no chemicals to control weeds or pests, just sometimes when it was necessary to control weeds they used a hoe or machetes and the maize yields were good and not much money was spent to obtain good yield results, time has passed and the lands weakened so they have stopped these practices of preparing the land and cleaning it, stopping using tools and changed them by chemical inputs. He continued sharing: And I was always focused on that methodology of my ancestors because when I looked at changes and new planting strategies I usually said to me “the uses of these inputs are not very convenient for the soil since they damage and weaken the land, it is one of the reasons why when we currently sow the plants are thinner, the plant produces small ears or sometimes it does not produce because the soil does not have the necessary components for it due to the bad treatment that we cause using chemicals for its cleaning”.

I changed my mind once I got to know Self-Help International and the agriculture program. I learned that as time goes by it is necessary to make changes to achieve a desired yield because if not, we are just working for the daily meal.

Like any other organization that works with the rural sector, Self – Help International works with community leaders who are people who organize the population for any activity in benefit of the community. Once we received a visit from the technician Rodolfo Hernández, my father (community leader) and I organized a group of farmers to be train. In that training session we learned everything regarding the corn, planting system as well as its agronomic management to obtain higher productive yields. Unfortunately, by the time we had that training all of our community farmers had already planted their corn in a traditional way and we were not table to make the proposal experimental plots as we did not have land available to carry out the new technique. I remember that all this was for a Primera planting season (in the month of May or raining season in our region), and since I already had a notion of this double row planting system because I have saw other farmers in the area to be working with Self – Help International and I even had obtain some seed previously of the organization visit, believe me I was really exciting to learn that we will have the same chance of experience as the other farmers had in previous years.

Nearing to the sowing season of postreras (October drying season in our region) we were invited by Self – Help International to another training session, this time was with the purpose of train farmers to have special skills in which they could become a “Certified Seeds Producer”, we (my community group members) attended the training at the organization's facilities and everything was explained to us, about all the process and requirements that we needed to follow up to become seed producer, also the organization would finance to us to be able to follow all the processes. I personally did not accept the proposal since I don´t have enough land available to make this type of job, as one of the main requirements was that the corn INTA – Nutrader (High Quality Protein) variety planting should not be near to other corn varieties due to pollen contamination. And in our case we all are small farmers with a small piece of land.

The only thing I considered was appropriated for us was to become a commercial corn producer using our small piece of land in which if we applied the double row technique we would get a higher yield even if we use that small amount of land, so after having received the training session of the Certified Seed Production, I asked to the Self – Help International representatives if they could support us with a small loan to sow commercial corn instead of certified seed, of course always using the "double row technique and the QPM corn”, the organization gave a positive response and financed around $275 (two hundred and seventy-five dollars net) for each one of the 5 young farmers including myself, to make all this possible we signed an agreement with the organization where we promised to use the variety of corn and carry out the double row sowing technique establishing 1.7 acres.

Sowing with this new methodology was a new experience for me since generally when I sow in the traditional way I do the sowing work on the same day, in the case of the double row it took me 8 days to finish it, which it was a bit difficult since I haven´t had planted corn so close between them. I was a little afraid about this planting method but I did it anyway and always thought about the debt I had with the organization I kept going. The finance received from Self – Help International was not enough to buy all of the input that we were told during the training sessions, since in that year the inputs prices were higher than previous years. I worked with those inputs who managed to buy more, the support of the technician was even greater to deal with all of my concerns. His assistance was very helpful to realize when we should apply the inputs, fertilizers and herbicides to obtain a good production.

Still, I really mistrusted this planting method since I saw the corn very close between each other and I made a comment "this corn is not going to have a good yield, it is going to be burned because its to close between them" I was surprised when I saw that all the corn reached the baby corn stage and then the harvest time. I calculated that the planted area would yield approximately 1.82 tons, my surprise was when the result obtained was 2.95 tons all this without including 8.93 bushels that was stolen in the field, this yields results tells us that if we fertilize and use inputs in a timely manner in the crops and make good use of them, the result to be obtained is satisfactory. Of the 5 farmers that benefited, only 4 of us found the technique and the yields were similar. I also realized from the fact that the variety has a good weight at the time of packing the corn. But, despite having obtained a good performance on the yield, the price of corn was very low by that time since when there is a lot of corn the price gets lower imposed by buyers from other departments, mainly buyers are from the city of Masaya, which is about 160 miles from our region. At that time, the price was set at $12.33 (twelve dollars and 33/100 cents) for 2 bushels, so despite of the good harvest I got very little income, but even so I was able to pay the financing debt to Self - Help International, because I sold 2.72 out of the 2.95 tons I had harvested, and the rest of the corn I used 8.04 bushels for myself and my family's consumption and 1 bushel for seed purpose to be planted once again.

Now, that I had this experience I urge other farmers to use this sowing and the variety of corn since it is a very good variety and has characteristics that other types of corn do not have, such as protein, medium size, very good flavor and the main thing for us is that it does not present a peeled tip, it has very good coverage. Adding to this and speaking as a farmer, I tell others that we do not have to leave our country to improve our quality of life, but rather that we work our land and experiment with new techniques and technologies, being open minder farmers.

Currently I don´t want to change this new method of planting and I have been making several experience with this seed, right now I am carry out another activity in which I sow a smaller area where I give better care to the INTA NUTRADER maize to attend it in a better way and obtain seed to keep sowing  my own seed in the next sowing cycle, in this small area I do thinning, eliminating plants that has different characteristics from the others, such as plants that are small, bent, with a greater height, etc, I am eliminating the spike to avoid that in the next sowing the plants present that height, always with the advice of the technician and help of the organization SELF HELP INTERNATIONAL.

In this Primera cycle of this year 2023 I sowed in mid-June and worked giving a different sowing framework, since Winter is not as good as it´s supposed to, then, I sowed my small land in a distance of 30cm and put two grains of corn per blow in a row of 70 cm and with this planting frame I yielded 1.82 tons, in this new experiment I also included the bean crop stubble on my land to help it to improve the soil and therefore there is greater availability of nutrients, in addition to this I applied at the 10 days of planting the corn 35 pounds of urea and then at 25 days I applied a combination of 35 pounds of urea again plus 35 pounds of NPK 5-15-15 (N=Nitrogen, P= Phosphorus, K= Potassiumand the results were excellent.

I will explain a little about the activities that I carry out for the sowing that I see that have given me a good result for my plantation.

Well, once the beans are harvested, I carry out the plowing activity in the field, clean it, pack it and transfer it to my small house. But from this I use all the remaining brushwood and begin to spread it all over the field that I will use for the corn planting. This practice has given me good results and I have used it two sowings already, in the postrera cycle and now in the Primera cycle, this has helped me a lot to lower production costs, to improve the soils that I use and to improve the quality of my corn, obtaining a better quality product, healthier ears, better size and very good weight.

In this primera season I have only planted 0.85 acres of corn in the month of June waiting for the rains to fall since winter in the area should be for the month of May and this year it was not like regular Winter conditions. Now, on these days we have to play with the weather and times to avoid losing our crops. We are currently experiencing a different climatic situation than what we are normally used to, so I recommend being curious about the weather and pests to avoid havoc with our crops.

I am grateful for the organization and the support provided through the training, credits, planting materials and technical follow-up given during all this time, and I hope that it continues to support the rural sector in the same way, providing new technologies and useful techniques for the common good of the our communities improving productive yields and food security. Thank you.

Self Help International with the aim of improving and guaranteeing daily nutrition, it works hand to hand with farmers, providing them with basic grains rich in protein as corn with lysine and tryptophan, biofortified beans and rice with a high iron and zinc content; giving priority to them so that they could have high quality products on hand for their daily consumption.

In addition to this technology, Self - Help International provides planting techniques through training and demonstrations for the farmers to obtain higher yields and improve the product using existing sources on their farms.

This time we want to share with all of you the experience of Medardo who is responsible of a small community seed bank in the community of San Isidro in the municipality of San Carlos - Rio San Juan.

Medardo told us that he is originally from the city of Matagalpa which is 179.23 miles away from San Carlos, Rio San Juan, and that from a very young age he works in the agriculture helping his parents with field work, he commented that they were a family that used to emigrated frequently to the neighboring country of Costa Rica, looking for jobs opportunities, in that country they were hired on sugarcane and coffee farms and worked only for the season that the harvest of these crops lasted, then they returned to their native country Nicaragua.

He continued saying; in one of the many trips that my parents and I did to Costa Rica my father found out that the government of Nicaragua by that time was granting land to build houses, so my father made a request to obtain one and it was approved, receiving a plot of land and since then we settled in this place called San Isidro, being one of the founding families of this community. After having settled in the community years later my father decided to sell the house which was in the village because he wanted a bigger piece of land and with the money that he received from that selling he was able to purchased a lot of 3.40 acre in which we builded out home and the rest of the land we use it to work in agriculture.

Medardo keep going with his story saying: I live in the San Isidro Community located about 17.40 miles from San Carlos city head of Rio San Juan, married with two children who depend on me, I am passionate about what I do as a farmer and I also love music and I am part of a Mariachi group in my community.

I got to know Self Help International through an invitation from Mr. Benito (a member of the Agriculture Program) who organized a group to be trained on a new corn planting technique and the INTA – Nutrader maize variety with high protein content. Once the training was held the sowing implementation was carried out, and each farmer must implement a domonstration plot with 4 pounds of corn INTA – Nutrader donated by the Organization. In my case I did not do the planting as the agriculture program indicated us, because I didn´t have land available as the small plot I have was already planted the beans, even so I sowed the corn in between the beans to take advantage of the seed in some way, knowing that I was not going to have a good yield I still wanted to planted it to at least preserve the variety. From this planting of corn I obtained 2.67 bushels, managing to save seed for planting in the following planting season and the rest of the corn we (my family and I) used it for our consumption and we realized that this is a very tasty corn on the palate and my wife told me to plant more of this corn in the following planting season because she liked a lot.

After this benefit that we awarded with the corn, the group of farmers from the San Isidro community was benefited with Biofortified beans of the INTA Bioapante variety, we received a call from the technician Rodolfo Hernández who explained the purpose of these beans that basically was donated in a reasonable amount to obtain the necessary food for the family and in addition to saving seed for future plantings, the technician also gave us urged to form a small seed bank (a specific place where we can save part of our seed but together as a group to be used as sowing seed in next sowing seasons). The Agriculture Program Technician explained to us that 0.18 bushels of bean seeds would be given to each Farmer to implement a demonstration plot using the double row technique in order to save land and get higher yields from it plus save some seed in the place we recognized as Seed Bank storage place. The technician told us that we (the group) would not need to pay back anything to the organization, but that it would be great if we considered from now on to think and work as a group. We all agreed that it was such a great idea and that the only thing we had to take into consideration was to return back as payment the double amount of beans which at the end would be around 0.36 bushels to start the seed bank. At that moment we left in charge of the project to one person but unfortunately he got sick and had to leave the community to see his health, by the time the crop was ready to be storage there was noone to take care of it, then I assumed the responsibility of saving and caring for the seed to start shaping the seed bank, this seed was saved in a traditional way with debris from the same crop to protect the seed and avoid damage by pests, it was stored on plastic bags and sacks containers which are our common containers to protect seed in small quantities.

I took this big step because it is the first time I have seen a project of this nature in my community and I also saw that the people really wanted to work on something like this, since they saw it will benefit both themselves and other neighboring farmers families in the community.

The Seed Bank started with 3.93 bushels which was the Biofortified beans seed donated by Self – Help International to the 22 farmers members of the group, now the small bank has 7.86 bushels of biofortified beans in our inventory.

As part of our Seed Bank growth and agricultural extension policy, we agreed a cooperation and mutual aid between regions with a group of farmers from the North side of Nicaragua in where Self -Help International has also presence, as the San Isidro seed bank, formed by the Self-Help International, we have cooperated with a loan request for 3.04 bushels of INTA Bioapante seed beans, because those farmers were lack of good quality seed, which could be more resilience to extreme climate (dry region) and pests, therefore the La Herencia seed bank of the Las Marías community from Palacagüina, Madriz and two producers from the communities of La montañita and San José del Coyol from Condega,Estelí took the responsibility of manage and keep good track of our seed to later on pay us back in kind and with a double amount because the beans that we sent covered the needs of 11 farmers who established 4 acres of beans.

To ensure that we will receive our seed from the group of farmers from the North both groups made a Commitment that consists in the following.

We, the small Seed Bank of San Isidro is providing 3.04 bushels of biofortified beans seed to the La Herencia Seed Bank, which was delivered at the best time for them to sow in the month of May (because it is the time when they receive the most rainfall), and they will return the seed back to us with interest (double amount) in kind in the month of September (time when we are receiving less rain in our region of humid tropics in Rio San Juan), to benefit more families in our region and in this way strengthen our seed bank and continue establishing relationships with other communities in the country to guarantee better nutrition for Nicaraguan families. By everyone being in agreement, I just wanted to thank to Self – Help International on behalf of the San Isidro group for having supported us with high quality seed, knowledge and skills that we can apply in our daily planting process to improve the production and quality of the grains which is essential for our consumption, in addition to urging us to form the seed bank, which is a resource of high-quality variable seeds to support other small producers like us, and I want to tell you that we are willing to continue working with the organization to continue supporting the different communities in any part of the country so that they get to know the variety and keep the seed, hoping that they will keep it and continue to maintain this seed, since it is a beans with a good yield that is resistant to pests and diseases.

I am sure that by making this seed bank bigger with more varieties such as: rice, beans, corn, etc. we can grow and we would also like to have a space with better conditions to store our seed to prevent it from being contaminated, destroyed by pests or animals, for this I know that we must work hard, but for the moment I am very happy to know that we are already making our seed bank grow in some way since we are going to receive more from the producers in the North of the country who I am sure would be grateful for the new variety that they are receiving as well as we do.

So We are expecting good results from them up north and we hope to continue maintaining ties with them for the exchange of knowledge and seeds between the South Atlantic and North Zone regions of the country through Self-Help International, which has a presence in both territories. For my part and the group from the small seed bank of San Isidro, I appreciate all the support that Self – Help International have given us and we are going to grow in production and support other farmers like us.