Compas de Nicaragua

Don Rurino José Malespin López

Don Rurino José Malespin López is 60 years-old and has lived and worked in the community of San Pedro all of his life. He plants four manzanas (about 7 acres) with rice, corn, beans, and sorghum and also keeps a small herd of milk cows. In addition, he grows coffee for the coop in the shade of precious woods and tamarind trees, which he harvests in the dry season. He began planting trees, though, even before coop introduced the concept of shade-grown coffee, and trees of various sizes skirt the planted fields and the small gorge dividing his property. The trees, he explains, serve not only to prevent erosion, but also as a type of insurance. “I plant them for my children, for the little girl,” he says, gesturing to his 6-year-old, Isamari. “Some day this sapling can build their houses, or be sold in the market for a good price.” He notes that the trees also require little investment of money or labor after planting.
Now, with the support of the coop, Don Rurino can expand his reforestation efforts. He also receives a loan of 5,000 cordobas, as well as organic fertilizer, to help him plant his crops at the beginning of the rainy season. Rurino is especially grateful to Compas Director Mike Boudreau for “his vision of planting coffee.”

Don Juan Carlos Mena

Don Juan Carlos Mena is 50 years-old and has been farming with his family in the community of Esquipulas all of his life. He grows rice, beans, corn, and sorghum on 7 manzanas (about 12 acres) overlooked by the Mombacho Volcano. He also started growing coffee for the first time in 2010 as part of the coop’s efforts to diversify its members’ crops. “I like growing coffee,” he says, “it gives me something for the long-term.” Don Juan Carlos’s coffee plot is shaded by plantain and citrus trees, many of which he has planted. “Deforestation affects us a lot,” he says, and he is pleased that the coop offers its members trees and incentives for planting them.

Don Simeon López

Don Simeon López farms 8 manzanas (about 14 acres) of the old Hacienda Santa Rosa in Esquipulas, where he has lived “Since the Front won the Revolution,” (1979) as he says. “Daniel [Ortega] gave the land to us, the poor.” As a founder of a Revolutionary-era farmer’s cooperative on Hacienda Santa Rosa, Simeon received the hacienda’s main house, owned by the former Nicaraguan dictator Antonio Somoza’s brother, Julio. The year 1947 is engraved above the veranda of Simeon and his wife Amparo’s home. At 74, Don Simeon has been a big part of monumental changes in local history and agriculture, but what hasn’t changed is his obvious love of farming. “I’m strong, because I’m still working,” he says.

Though he had never planted coffee before joining the BSR coop, Don Simeon enjoys diversifying his crops and harvests oranges, plantains, and wood from his coffee patch. He also appreciates the organic fertilizer that the coop provides. “It’s clear that it’s good for the earth,” he says. Amparo agrees and notes that their farm’s organic beans have been the heartiest.

Don Miguel Azinuga

Don Miguel Azinuga is 62 years-old and has lived and farmed near his childhood home in Esquipulas for all of his life. His family “has always planted,” he says, though now he is the only farmer left in his family.

Don Miguel is enthusiastic about the learning opportunities provided by the coop’s seminars, which include organic fertilizer preparation, natural insecticides, horticulture. He also benefits from the coop’s planting loans with low interests. He would also like to take advantage of the coop’s support to diversify his crops to include more nontraditional products such as citrus, cacao, and coffee. “If I could, I would plant coffee all over,” he says. In addition, Don Miguel would like to use more organic fertilizer such as the bocachi the coop has taught him to make. “It’s the best fertilizer,” he says.

Like most farmers in the coop Don Miguel has recently lost many of his crops to heavy rains and droughts associated with Nicaragua’s changing climate. To help alleviate crop losses, he plants many different crops. “If you don’t win in beans, you win in rice,” he says. “If you don’t win in rice, you win in sorghum. We have to plant with hope in God that we’ll get a harvest.”

Don José Ramon Muñoz Vasquez

Don José Ramon Muñoz Vasquez is 40 years-old and farms three manzanas of land (5.22 acres) in the community of San Pedro. In addition to corn, beans, rice, and sorghum, Don Ramon grows coffee, fruit trees, tomatoes, peppers, avocados, and yucca. After saving part of his crops for future seeds and feeding his family, he sells as much as he can. But unfortunately, when the harvest is good, the prices he gets for his crops are low. “The money doesn’t come to the poor farmer,” Don Ramon says.

According to Don Ramon, the coop supports local farmers in many ways. First, he appreciates the cross-cultural exchange that Compas facilitates between coop members and visiting groups from the United States. “The brigades that come are well-received in the community,” he says. “It’s really beautiful to relate to people from somewhere else.”

The BSR coop itself has also provided Don Ramon with fruit trees and shade trees. With these, he is reforesting the highest parts of his property to help prevent erosion and restore the soil. The trees will also provide firewood and income. “If we cut one tree, we have to plant another,” he says. He explains that the recently reforested hilltop was once virgin forest, until his parents needed to sell the trees. They left the field exposed and now the soil is “spent from years of grain production.” As Ramon and his brother began the reforestation process, his parents were skeptical of simply planting and leaving the trees to grow, instead of continually cutting them to sell. Additionally, they insisted on digging ruts through the planted trees to channel the water down the hill during heavy rains. “We kept telling them to leave the trees and leave the water, and that the trees would take up the water.” He smiles. “They’re getting used to it.”

Don Guillermo Sunia Calero

Guillermo Sunia Calero is 56 years-old and lives in the community of San Pedro. He has been hospitalized on and off for the last few years due to a back injury, so his older son, Melvin, has returned from Costa Rica to assist his mother, Ierma, with the family’s extensive property. With the coop’s support, the family has expanded their production over the last few years to include coffee production and fruit trees. They currently dedicate 3.5 acres to basic grains, .75 acres to 700 young coffee trees and their corresponding shade and fruit trees, 2.6 acres to grazing, and almost two entire acres just to reforestation. Like many fellow coop members, the Calero family receives a loan every year for planting and organic fertilizer at a reduced price when their own personal supply is exhausted. They have especially enjoyed the availability of orange and avocado trees, which feeds the seven family members sharing the house.

Despite Guillermo’s health complications, Ierma and Melvin insist that the family’s overall situation has improved over the last few years through their involvement with the BSR coop. They already notice changes since they began reforesting their land; now the area’s cooler, maintains more moisture, and offers shade for their livestock. The loans have helped tremendously with planting, and they’re anxiously awaiting the maturity of their coffee crop. The family, though, echoes the requests of other farmers for a steadier supply of water that may permit irrigation during the summer months. They would also like to further diversify their crops to possibly include cacao, and maybe even soy: higher grossing products that, like coffee, may be less of a gamble than beans. Farming, as Ierma remarks “is always a lottery game,” but the financial surplus offered by more lucrative crops—instead of simply maintaining themselves with basic grains— would help buffer unforeseen medical costs, as they have realized in recent years.

Don Evenor Malespin

Don Evenor Malespin is 61 years-old and has lived and farmed in the community of San Pedro all of his life. He currently cultivates 5 manzanas of land (8.7 acres). In addition to the Nicaraguan staple crops of corn, beans, rice, and sorghum, Don Evenor produces shade-grown coffee for the cooperative and a small green tree fruit called jocote.

“I like working with coffee because it means I work with trees, too. Like plantain, cedro, roble. With the trees, I improve the environment, too.”

Don Evenor is keenly aware of deforestation in the area and states that the lack of water is the biggest impact of deforestation. “No water in summer is what impedes us from developing further,” he says.

In addition to receiving coffee plants and tree seedlings from the coop, Evenor receives loans to help him plant his crops. Evenor described the state of local agriculture as “running on a low battery” before the coop emerged, and with “the push” the coop provides and the solidarity of visiting Compas delegations, local farmers are “gathering the pieces” and moving forward.