Alfonso and Olga Juma could not produce enough to feed their family on their 1.5 acre farm in the semi-arid region where they live in Ecuador. The Chota Valley receives only about 24 inches of intense rainfall during three months of the year, followed by nine months of drought. Alfonso had to migrate to the city to earn money as a menial laborer, while Olga took care of their children.
Then, after visiting farmers who had innovated with water harvesting and micro-irrigation under similar conditions, Alfonso proposed to two neighbors that they tap a water source high up in the mountainside, more than a mile from their farms. A year later, people from all over Ecuador and even neighboring Bolivia and Peru started visiting Alfonso’s and Olgas’ farm to learn about their experience – they had turned the desert landscape of the Chota Valley into a green oasis.
Alfonso usually starts telling his story to visitors by pointing to the surrounding barren hillside and a neighbor’s dry, sun-baked fields. “Our farm was just like that. I was so poor,” he confides, “that I was embarrassed when my children looked at me.” He goes on to explain how several neighbors and he worked endless weekends, how they invested their savings in hoses and assorted materials, dug 2,500-gallon storage ponds that they lined with clay, and eventually installed micro-irrigation systems. Alfonso then explains how these efforts transformed his farm and his life:
- Guinea pig pens at Alfonso’s and Olga’s farm.
“Once I had water, I could grow a small plot of alfalfa. With the alfalfa, I could have cuy (guinea pig). The cuy produced manure for my soil. We still have a long way to go, but with just the cuyes, we paid back our $200 investment in materials. When I started we had no cuy. Today we have 300 cuyes, that are worth about $5.00 each or $1,500 in all. That is much more than I used to earn in the city. Now I can stay home with my family. With the manure, I’ve planted 75 mango and avocado trees. My farm has become an oasis. Every year it will grow greener and greener. My farm used to be barren of plants. My biggest problem today is that I’ve run out of land to plant.”
The first time he told this story, tears filled Alfonso’s eyes as he disappeared into his house. A minute later he emerged with an accordion in his hands. He said, “Primero me vino las lagrimas, pero despues me llegó la alegria” (First came the tears, but later I found happiness).
- Visitors looking out over the semi-arid valley several miles from Alfonso’s and Olga’s farm.
It has now been several years since Alfonso and Olga first started experimenting with water harvesting, and now their farm abounds with small animals, crops, mango and avocado trees. They have extended their wet season so that they now can produce throughout the year, which has more than doubled their family income, which means Alfonso no longer needs to migrate to look for work, and he can stay at home with his family. Once impoverished and downtrodden farmers, Alfonso and Olga have become an inspiration for others and are helping spread their innovations farmer-to-farmer.
Highly innovative families are often social “outliers”. Their examples do not automatically lead to diffusion of broader change. For this reason, Ekorural and Groundswell arrange exchange visits to these farms and help provide farmer heroes like Alfonso and Olga with opportunities to link to broader processes of change.
