Food Production and Income Generation for Rural Families in Southwest Colombia

Family gardens--even grown in small places--help to improve diets. Photo: Samuel Lobato/CWS

Church World Service-Andean Regional Office (CWSARO)

Four-hundred-and-fifteen poor rural families in 11 Afro-Colombian communities are gaining greater access to food through a CWS-supported program. The 415 families, which include 300 households headed by women, live in villages near the towns of El Charco, Nariño department, and Buenos Aires, Cauca department.

The government's aerial fumigations to get rid of coca leaf and other illegal crops are negatively affecting many communities. The fumigations destroy vegetables and other legal crops, along with the illegal crops, which leads to less food on family tables. And fumigation contaminates the soil.

Many other problems also affect the region. Valuable land has been taken away from food growing and devoted to raising cash crops. Deforestation. Pollution of water from runoff of fumigation chemicals.

Since 2004, Church World Service, with the support of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, has worked in the region and supported food security and women’s programs

--specifically with the local grassroots network Asociaciόn de Mujeres Afro Colombianas por la Vida.

family and chickens
Many families in the project are raising chickens. Photo: Samuel Lobato/CWS

The families in the project typically work long hours seven days a week in the fields, in the nearby mines, and at home. Despite all their efforts, the families barely earn a weekly income of US$25--enough for two meals a day with a diet of excess carbohydrates, few vitamins and minerals, and almost no protein.

Through it all, the families continue to strive to improve their lives. With the help of the food security project, they have planted 104 family vegetable gardens, four community-operated orchards with 14 species of fruit trees, and four medicinal plant beds. The families are also raising poultry as a source of protein.

Women miners who are part of the food security project. Photo: Samuel Lobato/CWS

The families are also working to “cure” the contaminated soil, using organic fertilizers and transporting soil from places that have not been fumigated.

In addition, they are learning about growing vegetables in greenhouses to protect them from the fumigations. They have created three nurseries to serve as incubators for the protection and raising of the chickens, and are steadily increasing the numbers of chickens they have. In addition, 60 young women are learning from the elders the traditional management and use of medicinal plants.

Support for Church World Service, along with a special gift from the United Methodist Committee on Relief, helps make this program possible.

Updated 4/25/2007

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