Summer is finally coming to an end, school is about to start, the honey harvests are just about over and my life is about to get a lot busier. My major focuses of late have been on my Aquaculture and Chicken projects. As my Paraguayan counterparts have told me you have to fight to get these projects pushed through and I have definitely been fighting for both of my groups but at the same time trying to be as patient with my possible donors as possible. I have gotten a lot of practice writing grants, shopping for prices and requesting various donations from NGO’s and Government Organizations. I suppose that this is great experience for whatever the future has in store for me but it has caused a lot of headaches and required a lot of travelling and meeting with various people to get my aquaculture and chicken projects out of the planning stages.
My aquaculture project is nearly to a point where I need to sit back and wait to see what PLAN International will contribute to the entire cost of the project. It is likely that they will fund a good portion of it but that we will also need to ask the Municipality and State for additional funds to help to get the project rolling. This aquaculture project will be using a semi-intensive fish farming technique to grow two native species of fish. The first and most expensive portion of the project we will have a 2500 sq. ft. pond excavated and then lined with a plastic tarp to contain the water. The second part will be getting water pumped into the pond from the nearby stream and then add fingerlings (babies) of the two Native fish, Pacu and Carimbata. Pacu is a delicious (really good in fish soup and my next experiment will be baked in a banana leaf) medium sized fish that can grow up to 4 lbs in this type of system. It is also vegetarian so it will eat leftover bananas, melon, beans, etc. that the farmers have from their harvests. Carimbata is a bottom feeder and will eat the excess food that sinks to the bottom as well as waste produced by the Pacu. These ponds will be oxygenated by a simple yet clever method where cow manure is added to the water so that algae can thrive off of the extra nitrogen and produce oxygen. This is a relatively low maintenance system and the only inputs are once daily feedings and the occasional addition of cow manure. In about a year the fingerlings will grow to about a kilo in raw weight depending on how well and often they were fed. The current market price for these fish is about $6 per kilo and in a pond with 1,000 fish that could translate to $6,000 after the first year. Not a bad sum from a project that requires so little maintenance. However, the primary goal for this project is food security based and not income based. Fish is a much healthier source of protein than cows, pigs and chickens and it will also theoretically decrease deforestation because of the small surface area required to grow the fish compared to the amount of pasture land required to grow a cattle. The potential economic, nutrition and environmental benefits of this project make me believe it is one worth fighting for and the results will touch 10 different families that have 40 children between them.
The chicken project is an effort I am working on with my Women’s Group called ‘Madres Unidas’ (United Mothers). The ultimate goal of this project is to obtain higher productivity laying hens for 14 different families. This plan includes construction of a chicken coop where the hens will spend most of their day as opposed to the traditional chickens that spend their entire day foraging around the yard. This means that it is a more intensive chicken system that will allow the hens to put more energy into laying eggs instead of spending the whole day searching for little bits of food. Being kept in a coop will also keep the hens healthier than the normal yard chickens that pick up tons of parasites in their daily ventures. The training involved in this project will also teach the women some basic economics, how to make their own well balanced chicken feed, how to diagnose chicken diseases as well as treat them and better nutrition for their families. I have already demonstrated and practiced making a large amount of chicken feed for the women to feed their chickens and how to bake homemade bread. They especially loved the bread making where we made over 40 loaves in a tatakuaa (wood-fired oven) and are excited to start making pan casero on their own instead of going to the store to buy bread. I have been supplying the women with the baker’s yeast since several have been making the bread independently and the local store does not sell it. Eventually I will have our local despensa (store) sell the yeast so that the woman can get everything they need for the bread locally once I am gone. The status of the chicken project is a little behind the aquaculture project but has potential to jump ahead in the very near future as the total amount being requested is much smaller and the sources of the money will be easier to work with as it is a very common project. I have very high hopes for both the chicken and aquaculture projects and they are at the point where I can start to focus on other things such as my classes which will start up again in the next week or two.
After nearly 3 months without rain, San Pedro and my site have finally gotten the rainfall that they needed. Unfortunately, the rains have come too late to salvage many of the crops that have been lost due to the drought and the heat. To say the least, it has been a tough year for farmers in Paraguay after an especially cold winter that froze a lot of produce, then this terrible drought that dried up the corn, hoof and mouth disease that is wiping out cattle and the price of cotton that stood at about $1.50 per kilo last year has plummeted to $0.40 per kilo this year. I have several good friends that are seriously considering selling off their land and moving to the city where work is more stable and life is a little easier. Many people cannot afford to take this route so the government is saying that it will step up and distribute corn and beans to those that lost their food crops in addition to their cash crops. But Paraguayans are a resilient people; talking to them I have had the conversation of how hot it has been and how much we need rain a million times, they will tell me how they have lost a crop yet at the same time tell me how blessed they are that their corn crop ripened before the worst of the drought or they will simply smile and say that this is just how life works: when things are good they are great and when things are bad they are terrible, yet we will survive. The past few months in site have been tough, I have been struggling with work while also dealing with tragedies in the community and tough times in my personal life but I am taking a page from the Paraguayans book: life can be hard but I will survive.
