Think Creative - Issue 2

seeds of hope

“That’s what we’re looking for, for some help, because as farmers there are so many things we don’t have” – Juan Escobar, farmer

Juan Escobar has been fortunate with his cornfield. This year the corn has quickly grown well above his head, dropping tiny flowers in his hair as he walks through the rows. But the rainy season is coming to an end, and the toughest part of the year for farmers in Honduras’ Dry Corridor – when the heavy rains stop and months of drought settle in – is still to come. Escobar and his wife Juana Mercado Pine- da, who raised 10 daughters in their remote community of Siete de Mayo, have no reliable means of storing the large amount of water that falls during the rainy season for use throughout the rest of the year. The unpredictability puts both his fields and his family at risk. “How are we going to collect water? We don’t have water, because here water is scarce,” Escobar says, seated in a plastic chair on the edge of his field. “From January on, we have very little to drink, little potable water. Life, it’s very expensive. We must buy water fromwhere there are wells in order to bathe.” But next dry season should be different. With help from a new project in the region, Escobar built a water harvesting system that will allow him to save rainwater and irrigate his field.

A project known as ACS-PROSASUR, an acronym that roughly stands for “Dry Corri- dor Alliance - Promoting Food Security in the South” in Spanish – is providing Escobar with the tools to harvest water and the knowledge to sustain the system through rainy and dry seasons to come. The systemwill funnel rainwater from his roof through pipes and filters into a large geomem- brane bag. Escobar will then be able to hand pump the water into a raised tank, and from there water will trickle down into his fields and provide drip irrigation. For Escobar, the idea of irrigating his field was novel, as was the composting system the project helped him build out of plastic trash cans that allow him to fertilize his crops. But as a lifelong farmer who knows the difficulties of

the soil and weather, he was prepared to give these new practices a chance. “I knew what they were going to do, but until now we’ve never done it here,” he says, sweep- ing his hand toward the home where he’s lived for more than 40 years. “God willing, it will all work out well. In the harvesting of corn, we always get it right. But now with the water har- vesting, we will no longer have losses because we’ll have enough water. That’s what we want.” Building resiliency for the most remote Escobar and his family are not alone in their struggle for water. Only about 25 percent of families in the region have access to water at home – a problem that goes hand-in-hand with dire food insecurity. These are challenges that underlie every initia-

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