Farmers in focus: Sustaining our families and our landscape

By
15 September 2014

Doña Cristina Osegura and the community around her in the mountains of Honduras show how they are using agroecological practices to sustain their families and their landscape.

“My name is Doña Cristina Osegura and my community is called El Guano. It can be found in the mountains about an hour outside the city of Danli in Honduras. It is a very beautiful region. Most of us farmers cultivate coffee, as you can see there are many monoculture coffee plantations around here.

I wanted to bring more diversity to our farms and landscape because only cultivating one type of plant depletes the soil and makes us dependent on pesticides. It is also economically risky and puts our biodiversity and ecosystem in danger.

So I started to grow various peppers, yucca, papaya, and different plants with medicinal value in addition to coffee. I also built caracoles, snailshaped rock formations around different plants, which allow me to plant several different types of herbs in the same space. I no longer have to buy vegetables. With my 14 children we grow and eat our own vegetables and sell the rest, earning additional income.

I am very proud and excited to share these practices with others in my community. In fact, I work with other women and families to try similar practices of keeping a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. In this way, we can sustain our families, the earth and our beautiful landscape.”

Interview by Kaitlin Porter, intern at Groundswell International and at Vecinos Honduras.