Working at last

As many of you know, I spent several weeks worrying that I wouldn't find interesting work here, that nothing was going to come through etc. etc. I had contacted several organizations in mid-December and heard back from just a few before departing for my visit stateside, all of which said, "great, we're on vacation until January, let's talk then." And the great thing is that they actually meant it! All of a sudden, the second week of January, everything seemed to come together at once and I had three Xela-based NGOs thinking I was going to start working for them. After almost committing to one organization, ECAO, the source of our weekly delivered bag of semi-organic vegetables, I chose to settle in to a position with the Union de Agricultures Minifundistas (essentailly Union of Small Farmers).

UAM is based in Xela but works with farmer associations throughout the country, promoting organic and sustainable agriculture techniques, as well as alternative trade networks. I've been really impressed by the politics to date-definitely a bit more progressive than I had expected. They're part of a network of organizations working on food sovereignty in Guatemala, the Redssag (Red de Seguridad y Soberanma Alimentaria de Guatemala). Additionally their two major projects at the moment are partnerships with Heifer International and Veterinarios sin Fronteras promoting a variety of sustainable agriculture techniques, including "etnoveterinaria" which is animal raising with entirely herbal medicines instead of traditional chemical vaccines.

I'm largely working on a project related to commercialization of value-added farm products--helping promote the sales and exchanges of products like dried fruits, coffee, jams, nuts etc. I'm working on collecting data about the production potential of different communities partially to pursue new sales chanels for products but also to facilitate product exchanges (without $) between different communities. Last week I had the opportunity to visit several farmers associations and have a much better idea about the challenges they face. While the drive was long and bumpy, a had the chance to see parts of the country I've never seen before, including very arid pasture at 4000 meters and the garlic producing capital of the country. Anyway, pretty interesting stuff so far and my spanish is improving. It's great to feel like I can work in Spanish--reading reports, doing research, interviewing people etc. and hopefully will learn a lot about international sustainable agricultural movements in the process.