Campesino.16

The “parcelas gamelas” (twin fields for paired observations) of the Hurricane Mitch study

Agronomists, technicians, promoters, researchers, and over 2,000 campesinos carried out a massive study in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua that compared hurricane damage on MCAC’s sustainable farms to damage on the conventionally farmed neighboring plots.

The research gave MCAC’s farmers a chance to test their own practices for sustainable agriculture against the conventional model. It was also an opportunity to begin the task of reconstruction by reaching out and assessing each other’s damage. In the face of widespread ruin, campesinos, promotores, and technicians formed teams to gather measurements. They found they also needed to work to pull stunned communities out of shock.

By an overwhelming margin, and with irrefutable statistical certainty, MCAC farms were found to suffer less damage, conserve more soil and biodiversity, and experience less economic losses than their conventional neighbors. The study had a profound impact on the participants and the villages where the research was conducted.

The campesino a campesino movement saw the need for campesinos to reconstruct the countryside, sustainably. So they called for “participatory, sustainable reconstruction.” But, we had to prove the sustainability of our agriculture. We said that the agriculture that resisted the hurricane the best had to be the one that was most sustainable. This was the kind of agriculture we had to reconstruct.

We did a study of the parcelas gemelas—twin farms—where we compared the agroecological resistance of neighboring farms, one sustainable, the other conventional, because we didn’t really know, scientifically, if the sustainable farms really were sustainable. We did paired observations to make sure everything was fair: the sustainable twin and the conventional twin had to be on the same hillside and had to have received the hurricane’s impact under the same conditions of slope and orientation.

—Anasonia Recinos Montes

We farmers go for months without seeing any money. The best
thing that happened to us was to learn to value the soil that we do
have. There were farms with conservation practices where our picks just
sunk into the topsoil [it was so deep]. It was beautiful! By doing the study
we saw the benefits of conservation—the conserved farms resisted more.
We also saw that the sustainable practices protected neighboring farms
from damage. The study helped me because we were able to calculate costs
and clearly prove the need for sustainable agriculture. These rural experiences are the best because we are able to link theory and practice.

—Sustainable farmer, Nicaragua