Continued from Page 1: The Growing Edge: Biointensive Thriving in Nicaragua
John with the next generation of Nicaragua's farmers. PHOTO CREDIT: Ecology Action
Artistas Para La Sopa (artistsforsoup.org) is a nonprofit organization "…dedicated to reducing hunger, malnutrition and poverty by empowering women and secondary school students with community bio-intensive garden development, solar oven/nutrition classes, science and technology program support to secondary schools, human rights training for women, arts cooperative development and more." It was started several years ago by group of women artists who created and sold paintings, to enable the project to begin. It started by "growing veggies for soup" and continues to expand. They have taught 2,000 people in and around La Paz Centro, Leon, Nicaragua the GB method. Read the article Artists for Soup in this issue.
One of the best GB gardens visited is maintained by children—who also expose their parents to the method in this way. Enjoy this fantastic video of their beautiful garden and the next generation of sustainable farmers:
Local Nicaraguans have fabricated a strong garden spade, which is successfully used with the method.
Seeing the energy and drive exhibited at the conference, John realized that if the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method could be seen globally—and activated!—through the lens of what is being done in Nicaragua, it might save 10 years in the ongoing process to change the world from a depleting agriculture to a living, environmentally sound and productive biologically intensive agriculture. We are hoping that some key practitioners from Nicaragua will be able to secure funding to join the 8-month Internship Program at Victory Gardens for Peace, Ecology Action's training site near Mendocino, California. This could produce farm leaders to strengthen Nicaragua's Biointensive advance and their understanding and skills more rapidly—including the intuitive feeling and GB philosophy gained from working with Ecology Action directly—to share with others
At the Celebration Dinner, on the final night of the conference, Ecology Action's Director was asked what he thought might be good initiatives to address some of Nicaragua's environmental and food sovereignty challenges. He suggested the following:
Work on reforestation throughout the county and re-population of the agricultural areas. (45% of the people currently live in cities.).
Research the percentage of calories that are now imported and, because of the world situation, may not be available to import in three years' time—to take initiatives to produce all their nutrition within the county.
Encourage expansion of the GB program through localization, embedding it in many areas through demonstration and teaching centers run by certified GB practitioners.
There are skilled people at the "top", including at the university level, and there are also skilled people at the project and program levels, all accomplished at teaching and coordinating programs and actions. At the same time, many of the mini-farmers in the field have not been able to spend sufficient time in the garden and/or spend time working with an expert GB practitioner to gain enough experience to get a complete "feel" for the whole process of closed-loop, sustainable farming as a way of life. More time growing the soil and food, plus some more via watering the gardens, taking note of the subtle changes in the growing beds that indicate imbalances needing correction, would smooth out the rough spots and yield the best results. To address this need, a group of thoroughly experienced specialists should be developed to "circuit ride"— regularly travel through the regions of the country checking in with newly emerging farmers, working with them to spread the in-depth and in-breadth "feel" and understanding of the biologically intensive process
The Nicaraguan conference and workshops were an incredible experience and a humbling inspiration for us. We are so grateful for the work ECOPOL, CCID BioNica, the UNA, and many others put into our collaboration, and we are excited to continue working with the GB practitioners of Nicaragua, and the whole of Mexico, Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and beyond! We hope you are inspired to join us. If you are interested in helping Nicaraguan interns travel to Ecology Action for the 2019 internship season, you can make a donation here (select Sponsor a Nicaraguan Intern from the dropdown list, and donate whatever you can!)
