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Greg Benchwick

Issue number 5 - September 2010

Study in contrasts - taking lessons from Guatemala, DR and Haiti

By Josefina Stubbs

In early August, I was lucky enough to travel with the President of IFAD, Kanayo F. Nwanze, through some of my favourite countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

We first visited the Dominican Republic, a place near and dear to my heart – not only was I born here, but IFAD has recently launched around US$60 million in new program funding for this little agricultural powerhouse. From there we travelled across to Haiti and on down to Guatemala.

Each of these countries comes with its unique sets of challenges and strengths when it comes to rural development, food security and marketability. And a study in the contrasts and confluences in strategies throughout the region provides an excellent opportunity to explore many of the issues that are at the core of rural development.

Many questions arose during the trip. How can we create a strategy for Middle Income Countries (MICs) like Guatemala and the Dominican Republic that at once leads to increased output and incomes all the while narrowing the poverty gap that is so substantial in these countries? What role should gender play in our operations? How do we balance food security with income-generating cash crops? And, what on earth can we do to help make Haiti a more liveable place?  

Middle-income strategies

In 2009, the World Bank classified countries with a GNI of less than US$995 as low income, countries with $996 to $3945 as lower-middle income and with $3496 to $12,195 as upper-middle income. Everywhere up from there gets put into the high-income group. Most of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean fall squarely into the middle-income category, with Haiti as the only low-income standout in the Western Hemisphere. Belize, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay fall in the lower-middle-income category, with the rest (save for a few Caribbean banking centres like the Bahamas) falling into the upper-middle-income slot.

So why should an organization like IFAD be working in Middle Income Countries at all? By looking at the Gini-coefficient map you can see the answer in bright red, yellow and pink. Much of the region has huge income gaps, where the poor keep getting poorer and the rich keep getting richer.

		The Gini Coefficient map illustrates in fine detail the income gap in Latin America.

In countries like Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, I’ve seen that by investing in rural development, we can help reduce this poverty gap. The key lies in finding the proper niches.

In the Dominican Republic, for example, small-scale producers are making high-quality organic products like coffee and cacao, but lack the tools, resources and technology to successfully bring their products to market. By giving them access to markets, tools and training, we are ensuring they can increase incomes. And the focus on niche markets – like organic cacao – means they can compete in a smaller arena, and not worry about being knocked out by highly mechanized, highly capitalized farming operations.

Take the organic cacao market for example. Latin America accounts for more than 70 percent of worldwide organic production, and the Dominican Republic is the leading organic supplier, producing around 5000 tonnes per year, according to industry reports. They are able to do this by forming producer’s federations that allow smallholders to sell on a larger scale. 

		Young men living in Haiti’s Central Plateau got together to buy some oxen with a bit of seed money from IFAD. They are now ploughing fields in the area for a fee.

In Guatemala farmers are accessing major international markets by creating quality products and engaging directly with private-sector partners. For Middle Income Countries like this, it seems that working across the value chain – from plow to refinery and on down the line to wholesalers and middleman and finally to market – is essential if we hope to help poor rural people step out of subsistence-based agriculture and into a genuine business environment where they can make extra money to send their children to school, invest in new land or new tools, and make enough to ensure there’s plenty to eat come dinnertime.

Caught your interest? Read more about our new funding to the Dominican Republic and Haiti or check out our article on market-access and food security in Guatemala.

Women taking the lead

It’s amazing what a difference a little line on a map can make, and flying over from the Dominican Republic across the Haitian countryside, you just get a sinking feeling that every drop of life from this pale white earth has been sapped by years of over-farming, poverty, corruption and broken promises.

After finishing my official visits in Port-au-Prince, where President Nwanze and I met with Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive, Agriculture Minister Joanas Gué and others, we headed out into the countryside to see if this land was really hopeless, or if there was a chance that life could still brought back to an agriculture sector that dropped from 30 percent of GDP in the early 1990s to 25 percent in 2009. 

I’m happy (more than happy actually… I’m elated) to report that there is hope for Haiti. And this nation’s hope lies in the countryside, especially in the women and youth living there.

When the President and I arrived at the Women’s Association of Laskawobas Bwapen we were greeted by the most remarkable singing. The song they were singing provides a spirited testament to the role women play in the Haitian countryside. “Women are like reeds, they bend but never break,” the women sang. “And when our root is firmly in the ground, we will grow up strong.”

We recently launched a quick-acting irrigation and job-creation project in the West and Nippes Departments of Haiti. The program is being implemented by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA). During my visit, I got the chance to talk with the IICA Representative in Haiti, Alfredo Mena Pantaleón.

“If you invest in women and youth, you are investing in development,” Mena told me. “The only way to break the cycle of poverty is by putting your money toward these groups.”
 
Throughout Latin America I’ve seen that direct investment in women yields dividends. In Haiti women are using our project funds to create long-term investment opportunities. The women of Laskawobas are doing this by investing in goats – they invest in pigs, too, but I’ve been calling it the Goatie Bank nonetheless. Enterprising women are also creating value-added products like juices and peanut butter from locally farmed ingredients. And in Guatemala, women are flipping machista values on their head by finding new jobs in recently opened packing plants, by adding new colours and designs to their traditional textiles, which are now being exported to the US and Europe, and by learning to read.

And the young people?

		On their recent mission to the Dominican Republic, the IFAD delegation met up with Vice President Rafael Albuquerque to discuss US$60 million in new program funding.

Youth are also key. After all, these are the farmers who will feed nations like Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and maybe even Italy 15 years from now. In Guatemala, we are funding a high school that provides agricultural education to the farmers of tomorrow, and the new revenues coming from our market-access programs are allowing families to send their children to school.

For a country like Haiti, where over half the population is under 18 years old, the idea of youth is of paramount importance. Some of the enterprising youth we met on our trip are investing in oxen and renting out their labour to plow fields in the area. Others are using irrigation infrastructure to grow intensive crops like peanuts.

While my hope is that these young entrepreneurs will remain in the countryside, the only real way to keep them there is by providing a wide array of opportunities that extend beyond traditional farming. In Guatemala, we are funding an indigenous-run rafting company, and our new programs in the Dominican Republic will look toward the tourism industry to create new jobs in the countryside.

All in all, it’s a good start, but institutions like IFAD need to continue to place an emphasis on youth. With this in mind we are funding the First Meeting on Youth Entrepreneurship and Rural Micro Enterprising in Cartagena, Colombia. The meeting will run from November 15 to 19, 2010, with young people from throughout the region sharing their experiences.
 
While these comparisons and workshops can provide lasting synergies that will aid us in our efforts to combat rural poverty, actively engaging in this debate is essential if we are to find the best solutions. Looking to build a more robust dialogue, we’re happy to invite you to join the conversation in our new google forum, where you can feedback on articles, post interesting topics worth debating or simply hear what our colleagues from around the world are saying about rural development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Saludos,

Josefina

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Prioritizing indigenous peoples rights in Latin America -
New policies needed to improve the lives of these forgotten protectors of our Earth

By Kanayo F. Nwanze

		A husband and wife tend their sheep outside of the village of Acopia, Peru. IFAD funding throughout the Americas has helped indigenous peoples gain better access to markets and services (photo ©IFAD/David Alan Harvey).

The world’s indigenous peoples are the custodians of our Earth, the keepers of our history, the very navel from which our modern civilization emerged.

With this in mind, I call on the decision makers of our world – including organizations like my own, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – to make indigenous peoples’ rights and self-determination a priority.

On a recent visit to IFAD-funded projects in the Guatemalan countryside, I had the unique opportunity of witnessing first-hand how economic and environmental issues are affecting the Quiché Maya and other poor rural communities across Latin America.

I’ve spent a lifetime working with indigenous peoples across the globe – there are over 370 million in some 70 countries worldwide. And while indigenous peoples account for just 5 percent of the world’s population, they constitute around 15 percent of its poor. More frighteningly, while other poor groups are starting to get a leg up and move slowly – but steadily – out of poverty, recent analysis indicates that indigenous peoples tend to stay poor.  

		IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze takes a picture break after visiting a remote village benefiting from the IFAD-funded SCAMPIS program in Guatemala’s Verapaces region.

So how do we address these challenges and create new policies that at once respect the culture and identity of the world’s indigenous peoples all the while embracing them into the socio-economic engine of progress?

One of the first steps from my organization’s point of view is to acknowledge their cultural diversity as a genuine asset.

In Latin America alone there are over 400 distinct indigenous groups, each with its own language and culture. The traditional practices of the Quiché Maya in Guatemala, the Emberá of Panama, the Quechua of Peru, and every diverse group in between, offer us new lessons not only on a spiritual level (we, too, should learn to honor Mother Earth and respect her), but also on a practical one. Traditional know-how long embraced by indigenous peoples is now being integrated with modern technology and is providing us with new agricultural practices that will help ensure long-term sustainability for our stay here on this little blue planet.

		This graph from the 2005 National Human Development Report for Guatemala gives a good look at the indigenous poverty gap.

I’ve seen these practices at work in places like Peru, where new irrigation techniques are being integrated with age-old agricultural practices like terrace farming, and are creating higher-yields for smallholder farmers in the region and lasting mechanisms to ensure environmental sustainability.

Make no mistake about it, our planet is in peril. And despite having contributed the least to climate change, indigenous peoples are often among the most vulnerable to its impacts, because of their dependence upon the environment and its resources. Moreover, roughly 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity is housed in areas predominantly inhabited by these groups.

With this in mind, we need to look to them, these protectors of the Earth, as we work in consultation to create new energy- and natural-resource-management policies that balance out the need to create profitable businesses in the countryside with the global imperative of ensuring sustainable environmental practices. 

But this fundamental change is not up to international organizations and government alone… nor should it be. Indigenous leaders – and the community members they represent – must be the principal drivers in our efforts to end rural poverty and adapt to the effects of climate change. They must also inform our collective dialogue as we work together to create more robust policies and practices that embrace the value and remarkable diversity that adds so much to our society as a whole.

As an organization, we’ve seen this community-driven approach at work in places like Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Peru, where we are engaging directly with local communities to decide the scope and direction of the projects we fund. Working in consultation with these groups, we are finding new ways to adapt to environmental challenges and create profitable rural enterprises, all the while preserving the rich heritage these unique cultures have to offer.

From this perspective we can truly say the people in these project areas are no longer beneficiaries of our funding, rather they are the principal actors and protagonists, taking charge of their own destiny as they continue to look for a better life. It’s a new approach to development and to indigenous peoples’ issues, but one that works. We think Mother Earth would approve.

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‘Development is peace’ - IFAD President looks toward gender issues, food security, green development and income generation in Guatemala

During his recent visit to Guatemala, the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo F. Nwanze, changed the white peace rose in the National Palace. Since the 1996 peace accords, the rose has been changed everyday. Sometimes school children do it, other times visiting heads of state and high-level officials like Dr. Nwanze get the honor. On August 5, 2010, it was Nwanze’s turn.

IFAD’s role in the ongoing Guatemalan peace process extends well beyond the exquisite symbology of the peace rose. After all, as Nwanze said in his address in the national palace, “development is peace.”

Looking back at the 24-year history of IFAD-funded operations in Guatemala, it’s easy to see where Nwanze is coming from. When the Civil War ended in Guatemala in 1996 – leaving more than 100,000 widows and 250,000 orphans – IFAD supported organizations like the National Peace Fund (FONAPAZ) to help re-integrate these victims of war into mainstream society.

And while the Guatemala of today is quite possibly even more dangerous than the Guatemala of 1996 (thanks mainly to narco-trafficking and gang violence), it does seem that in the countryside a quiet sort of peace is starting to take hold. The reasons are quite simple. The poor rural people of Guatemala have more options to make money, send their children to school, access markets and improve their lot in life than they have ever had.

Notes from the field

		President Nwanze was bestowed the honour of changing the peace rose in Guatemala’s National Palace.

After his official visits with Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom, the President of the Congress Roberto Alejos and the Director of FONAPAZ Jairo Flores, Nwanze and the rest of the IFAD delegation headed out by helicopter on August 6 to the remote El Quiché region. Traveling along with the president was Latin America and the Caribbean Director Josefina Stubbs, Country Program Manager Enrique Murguia, plus the support staff and government counterparts that form the backbone of IFAD’s operations in countries like Guatemala.

The first stop brought the IFAD delegation to the small municipality of Magdalena La Abundancia, where Pedro Tun, a venerable community leader that was forced to flee the region during the civil war, welcomed the President and IFAD with open arms.

Tun has seen his community transformed by the market-access projects funded by IFAD. These programs are allowing small-scale producers like him to increase revenues by upwards of 50 percent and access large international markets, including Wal-Mart.

But security and peace do not simply come from making more money. In an area where intensive and often-times misguided use of the land has degraded soils and seen large stands of forests chopped down for fuelwood, protecting Mother Earth is also key to ensuring lasting sustainability and security. To this end, IFAD-funded projects throughout Guatemala are taking giant green steps forward to lower their carbon output, reforest areas, and integrate better farming practices. 

Women walking tall

If historic figures are any indicator, around 500 Guatemalan women will be murdered this year. Even more will be the victims of domestic violence. And throughout his mission to this Central American country, President Nwanze and the rest of the IFAD delegation kept their eyes open for gender-related issues.

“In the end, only by stemming domestic violence can this nation hope to achieve an active and participatory peace that includes everybody – women, children, peasants and indigenous peoples,”  said Murguia. “Our programs in Guatemala are doing just that by helping women find new markets for their handicrafts and teaching them to read so they can play an active part in the national dialogue.”

The US$26 million Rural Development Program for Las Verapaces (PRODEVER) program started in 2001 with $15 million in financing from IFAD.

While PRODEVER focuses on market access for rural farmers – which is working in a big way – it has also helped some 1600 women learn to read and generated over 300 new jobs for the region.

PRODEVER has also supported the Cotton Flower Development Association (ADIFA). This innovative program has helped open new markets and create new business models for the traditional production of Maya textiles.

By holding capacity-building seminars, and building new facilities, the project has opened new markets in Belgium and the United States.

The project’s success has also had a unique push-on effect on gender roles in the region. “Because of the demand for the products and the new revenue streams the women have seen, the husbands of these artisans are now taking part in the weaving,” according to PRODEVER reports. “This activity is helping to promote increased family integration, and providing an alternative to seasonal migration for men in the region.”

Dinner on the table

While women are playing an expanding role in the decision-making bodies of the communities the IFAD delegation visited in early August – across the board IFAD projects in Guatemala are reporting exponential increases in the number of women attending meetings – their primary role remains in the home, working as a mother, accountant, seamstress,  teacher, cook, custodian and caregiver.

“One thing we are really thrilled to see throughout our project areas in Guatemala is that the ability of mothers to feed their families has gone up,” said Murguia. “They’ve done this by diversifying crops and by adding greens and vegetables to a diet that has been based on corn and beans for the past 1000 years. Increased revenues from exported crops like French beans and onions have allowed families to buy food staples from the market.”

On the second-day of his field trip, Nwanze headed out to see what was for dinner in small communities like Laguna Itzacoba in the verdant rolling hill country of Las Verapaces, where the IFAD-funded Scaling up Micro-Irrigation Systems Project in India, Madagascar and Guatemala (SCAMPIS) has helped the community create an intensive organic garden where they are farming everything from radishes to peaches to create more variety in their diets, and hopefully, one day, sell their extra produce in the local markets. 

“Now that we have the option of irrigating, we will be able to plant year round,” said the President of the SCAMPIS program in Itzacoba, Arminda Cruz.

After spending the morning in Laguna Itzacoba, the President and the rest of the delegation headed downhill to another SCAMPIS site, Laguna los Achiotes, where IFAD funding has helped area residents transform an illegal dump into a lush organic garden.

 “This is an area where food security is key. By working together with the World Food Program, who are providing staples such as wheat and rice that cannot be easily grown in this region, we are helping make healthier homes,” said Josefina Stubbs, Director of IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division. “A healthy home means a healthy future, a healthy home means peace.”

Watch videos

• Interview with AGRISEM participant Juana Pinula Lux in Spanish
• Interview with AGRISEM producer Felipe Cotoja in Spanish
• Interview with Marta Santos Carrillo on gender in Guatemala in Spanish
• President’s address in Guatemala

Read more

• Adapting to climate change in Central America
• President Nwanze begins official visit to Guatemala
• Trash to treasure: illegal dump becomes organic garden
• Bye-Bye King Corn: Market access projects yield results
• Guatemala Exporters Association
• AIDES Producers Association
• AGRISEM Producers Association
• Rural poverty in Guatemala
• IFAD operations in Guatemala

What do you think of this article? Join the debate in our Spanish-language forum

		Felipe Cotoja is a genius farmer. Behind his neat little house in the Guatemalan highlands, Cotoja has an experimental garden where he plants medicinal herbs – he even has a grape vine that he’s trying out. Cotoja’s farming exploits have benefited from the micro-irrigation system provided by the IFAD-funded AGRISEM project. With his new revenues, Cotoja was able to send his children to school, and even bought a cow, ‘Negrita.’ A cow costs upwards of US$400 in Guatemala, and this significant investment has helped Cotoja provide milk and cheese for his large family. AGRISEM specializes in the commercialization and shipment of fresh vegetables (French green beans, Chinese peas, mini-vegetables, radicchio, among others), and has allowed for increased revenues, and a notable jump in quality of life for project beneficiaries.