Guatemalan Farmers Working Double to Cope with the Drought
HAVANA TIMES – The scarcity of water hangs incessantly over the rural communities in eastern Guatemala, part of the area called the Central American Dry Corridor. The constant threat of drought is felt throughout the region, with the resulting difficulties in growing food, year after year. But it’s also an incentive in some ways, forcing them to overcome their adversities.
The rural families that live in this region struggle to avoid despair; now, with the help of international aid they are succeeding in facing up to the water shortage. With great effort, they continue producing food, conscious of the importance of caring for and protecting the micro-watersheds of the zone.
“We’re in the Dry Corridor and it’s hard to cultivar the plants here. Even though we attempt to farm, the lack of water prevents the [fruits] from reaching full weight,” Merlyn Sandoval explained to IPS. She is the head of one of the families benefited by a project that seeks to share the tools and knowledge needed for people to overcome hydric insecurity and produce enough food for themselves and their families.
Sandoval is a native of San Jose Las Pilas, a village in the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque, in the Jalapa department in the eastern part of Guatemala. His community has been included in a program financed by Sweden and implemented by several organizations, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Program (FAO) as well as the Guatemalan government.
The initiative, which had its start in 2022 and is set to end in December 2025, extended to 7.000 families living around the micro-watersheds of seven municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jalapa, in east Guatemala. The towns included are Jocotan, Camotan, Olopa, San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula, San Luis Jilotepeque and San Pedro Pinula.
The project’s focus is on creating the conditions to promote food and nutrition security, as well as the population’s resilience, prioritizing the hydric security that allows food production.
“The strength of the [project’s] objectives lies in training and action around the concept of micro-watersheds. People were trained in accordance with whether they were upstream, downstream, or right in the middle of the watershed,” Rafael Zavala, Guatemala’s FAO representative, told IPS.
He added: “The zone has a high rate of farm labor exodus, due to migration. That leaves the women to head the households.”
Drought and poverty
A report from the United Nations Development Program notes that the region included in the program has seen a major deterioration in living standards and a dearth of economic opportunities. In the department of Chiquimula, it’s been reported that 70.6% of the population classified as poor, while in Jalapa the statistic is 67.2%.
The Central American Dry Corridor, approximately 1,000 miles long (1,600 kms), covers 35% of Central America. Within this strip over 10.5 million people live. In this arid belt, which stretches from southern Mexico to northern Costa Rica, over 73% of the rural population live in poverty, and 7.1 million residents suffer severe food insecurity, according to data from the FAO.
The Central American region is made up of seven nations with a total population of 50 million people, including 18.5 million from Guatemala, the most populous country. Guatemala has a high rate of income inequality, and a large part of the impoverished families are indigenous.
Learning to harvest rainwater
As part of the project, Merlyn Sandoval has learned the key points of micro-watershed management and has carried out actions to collect, or “harvest,” rainwater on the plot of land just behind her house. She has set up a circular tank there with a capacity of 16 cubic meters, whose base is covered with a waterproof geomembrane – a synthetic and extremely impermeable polyethylene lining.
When it rains, the water runs off the roof and through a PVC pipe to the tank, which they call a “harvester.” This tank collects the water to irrigate the small vegetable garden and fruit trees, providing enough water for this during the dry season, from November to May.
In the garden, Sandoval and her family of 10 grow celery, cucumbers, cilantro, green onions, tomatoes, and green chilies. They also grow fruits such as bananas, mangoes, and jocotes, among others.
Next to the harvester is the fish pond where 500 young tilapia are raised. The structure, also with a polyethylene geomembrane at the base, is eight meters long, six meters wide, and one meter deep.
When the fish’s weight surpasses one pound, they can be sold in the community.
“The harvesters are filled with rainwater, which helps to replace the water for the tilapia and also to water the fruit trees,” said Sandoval, 27.
The young woman also grows corn and beans on another nearby plot of land, just under a half hectare in size. There’s not enough water in the tank to use for irrigating these crops, which are more extensive than the vegetable gardens and fruit trees. As a result, in this Dry Corridor region those crops remain vulnerable to climatic fluctuations: they can be lost due to lack of rainfall, or too much rain, during the rainy season, from May to November.
Merlyn Sandoval has already lost 50% of this season’s harvest due to excessive rainfall, she affirmed with a touch of sadness.
The same thing has happened to Ricardo Ramirez, another resident of San Jose Las Pilas. He has also seen the effect of these shifts from lack of water to too much water on his corn and bean crops, the pillars of Central Americans’ diets.
“Unfortunately, last year, once again, the rainy season stopped in September, and we barely harvested anything. There was no real rainy season, no rainfall, so it’s difficult for us here. That’s why it’s called the dry corridor, because we don’t have water,” Ricardo Ramirez, 59, told us. He was referring to the bean crop that he plants in two small plots that, together, total about a half hectare. He currently estimates that he’s lost about half the potential harvest.
Green hope
However, the support of the program funded by Swedish cooperation has been vital for Ramirez, not only to stay afloat economically as a farmer, but also to continue placing his bets, with hope and enthusiasm, on the land where he was born.
Through this international initiative, Ramirez was able to set up a rainwater collection tank with a capacity of 16 cubic meters, as well as an agricultural macro-tunnel: a kind of small greenhouse with a modular structure covered with a mesh that protects the crops from pests and other insects.
Inside this structure, he planted cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chilies, among other crops, and watered them using a drip irrigation system connected to a hose that carried water from the tank, just three meters away.
“I got 950 cucumbers from one row, 450 pounds (204 kilos) of tomatoes, and the chili peppers, well, they just keep on giving. But that was because there was water in the harvester. I just turned on the little tap, kept it dripping for only half an hour, and the soil got wet enough,” Ramirez declared to IPS, while looking over a cluster of bananas, or guineos, as they’re known in Central America.
All of this generated enough income for him to save 2,000 quetzals (about US$160), which he used to install electricity on his plot and buy an electric generator to pump water from a spring on the property, for when the collection tank runs out, likely in about two months. This will allow Ramirez to maintain irrigation and production.
San Jose Las Pilas has a community water system, supplied by a spring located nearby. The tank is installed in the upper part of the village so that the water flows down by gravity, but the resource is rationed to only a few hours a day, given the scarcity.
Long walks to get water
Not everyone is as fortunate as Ramirez, who has a spring on his property and can irrigate his gardens when the collection tank runs out.
Nicolas Gomez has to walk almost two hours when that happens, to the nearest river, the San Jose, and carry water from there in containers on his shoulder, to meet basic hygiene and cooking needs.
“Now, during the rainy season, we have water stored in this tank. But in summer we have nothing, we have to go to the river to fetch water, to a spring that’s really far away, about two hours’ walk. That’s what it takes for us to get it,” said Gomez, a 66-year-old farmer who has also suffered the effects of drought and/or excess water on his corn crops.
Gomez lives in Los Magueyes, a rural settlement also within the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque. Poverty here is more acute and visible than in San Jose Las Pilas. There’s no community water or electricity system, and families rely on candles to light their homes at night.
“Life is hard here,” said Gomez, when IPS visited him on October 21, standing amid the smoke from the wood stove he was using to cook some food on.
First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.