The Betania Project

On Friday I went to Betania (aka Bataña, I have seen it spelled both ways) for the first time since my arrival in Puerto Cabezas.  Betania is a small Miskito village (around 300 people) about 45 minutes outside of Puerto Cabezas on the road that goes to Managua (when the roads are fixed the trip takes less than 20 minutes).  The goal of the trip to Betania was to meet the leaders of the community, and evaluate their current crop production system.  Unfortunately the leader was not there when we arrived, but a man who had a very good understanding of what goes on in the town was able to show us around.

They have a very large portion of land; the way they described the size was, “it takes an hour to walk to the end of it.”  The problem they have is that the free range cattle will eat the crops if they plant near the village, so they travel by canoe down the river until they get to a portion of land that the cows cannot reach.  The fertility in this portion of land is better, because it is near the flood plain of the river, so this is an added benefit to farming where they do.  The trip to the “finca” or farm, takes about 40 minutes, so every day when they go to work on the farm, they leave at 5:00 am.  They typically spend all day there, so of course they bring fishing poles, in order to pass the down time.

The cropping system, at least as far as I understand it at this moment, goes something like this: First, beans are planted in November, and then harvested in April; then cassava or some other root crop is planted; after they harvest this crop they put in banana trees.  The other rotation uses rice instead of beans, but basically follows the same strategy.  The banana trees are obviously a long term crop, so every year they are moving to a new plot of land to start the process over again.  They are subsistence cropping with the rice, beans, cassava, and for the time being bananas; long term, however, they plan on selling their bananas to Puerto Cabezas, which currently imports the majority of its bananas from Managua.

The first problem with their plan is that they don’t currently produce enough staple food crops to be sustainable.  They make an effort to set aside seed for next year’s planting, but usually the set aside seed gets eaten, due to the insufficient amount of food.  I hope to help them with this problem by getting improved lines of corn, beans, and rive from CIAT, a non-profit organization that does plant breeding in an effort to reduce global poverty and hunger.  I am still in the process of contacting this group, but they are part of the same organization as CIMMYT, so I have a few different potential contacts.

The next problem that they have with their plan is that the bananas they are planting are not a good variety, and most people will not eat them.  They say that they can buy banana trees from a nursery that sells good varieties, but they do not have the money to do so.

Today (Sunday the 19^th) I will be meeting with the leaders from Betania after church, because Pastor Earl sends a bus to Betania every Sunday so they have an opportunity to attend a service.  I hope to learn more about the details of their system, so I can fully grasp the situation.  I have decided that Betania will be perfect for me to do my thesis research on, so that will save me the time and money of having to travel up the Rio Coco to visit the Miskito farmers in Krin Krin.