In the year 2000, Ruben Mendoza took his first maize crop for many years from a site, near his village, which had previously been incapable of any agricultural use.  The site had been slashed-and-burned years before and had become dominated by bunch-grasses and scrub vegetation.  In 1997, Ruben planted the Inga tree rows with seedlings from our project nursery.  The trees required over 2 years to achieve site "capture", but eventually underwent a successful pruning to enable the crop to be sown. 

Ruben is a member of the Pech Maya tribal community in Carbon, Olancho, and, as such, is a descendant of one of the major corn cultures of Pre-Columbian Middle America.  His trial area was initially small, 1/10^th ha., and his only inputs were his own labour and a half-bag of rock-phosphate donated by the project.  These very affordable inputs resulted in a maize crop equivalent to over 2 tonnes per ha.  Moreover, the first prunings yielded Inga branch and stem firewood equivalent, he says, to 3-months' use in the kitchen stove.

It is very typical of shifting agriculture in hilly regions that farmers might walk daily 2-3 hours each way to their current "milpa", ( swidden used for maize) which usually has to be changed each year.  The major statement made by Ruben was that he could see his maize crop merely by opening the back door of his house.  This may sound a somewhat trivial and local comment, but, multiplied over perhaps 300 million families who subsist by shifting cultivation, it assumes revolutionary importance. Ruben's yields of both essential foodstuff and firewood, coupled with a massive reduction in the labours of walking and weeding, have impressed him deeply.  At the time of writing (May 2004), he has taken his third successive maize crop and is expanding his planting of Inga alleys.

Recounted to MRH.  2002