Work Begins On Our New Project Centre

A lot has been happening on the ground with our Cuero Valley project and there’s a real buzz about the place as we start work on our new Project Centre. Having finalised the deal and signed the deeds to the land in March, we have now drawn up a detailed plan for the 7ha that will house our project and education centre, areas for cash crop propagation and processing and our Inga seed bank. The picture on the left shows the first seedlings to be grown on our new land.

As well as all this, we now have almost 50 families who have chosen to make the switch from slash and burn to Inga alley cropping, and this number is growing fast. So fast in fact that we are struggling to produce all of the Inga seed we need to supply the families, as each needs around 5000 seeds to get started. Luckily though we have had some Inga trees seeding lately, plus we have just managed to  purchase 20,000 seeds from our sister NGO Mopawi. We are delighted to be seeing so much interest and enthusiasm from local farmers, though it does emphasise the urgent need to get our planned Inga seed bank up and running. Planting for the seed bank, which we intend to cover 5.5ha of our new site, has already started and any spare seed from that we have just purchased will go towards this effort.