Finca Sarita

Stayed for the past 2 days at Finca Sarita, a farm in the community of Sarampión, about 40 minutes by bus and by foot from Calceta. This is in the region of Ecuador that was inundated by the heavy rains recently. At one point, the rain and floods had deposited 2 or 3 feet of water under and around the family's home at the farm. The family's vegetable garden was completely destroyed, but farmhands were preparing the space for a new garden yesterday.

Discussed many things with Servio, whose family has lived on the same land for 150 years and has always practiced organic agriculture - using no synthetic chemicals and maintaining a wide diversity of fruit trees and other crops I'd never heard of before, such as the "air potato" which grows on a vine instead of underground. Learned about the successful organic cacao and reforestation projects in the community, and a community-managed enterprise to export palm leaves for floral arrangements, as well as difficulties in obtaining credit for other potential enterprises.

It seems that by supporting just individual entrepreneurs the current trend in microcredit could be creating disruptive competition and missing the point of what is best for the life of a community as a whole. Some projects, such as a chocolate factory or a community store that would sell locally processed foods (e.g. banana chips, other dried fruits, candies) instead of mass-produced junk snack foods from the multinational companies, require larger investments of capital than are available from microcredit programs.

The organic cacao project has been successful because of the investments of an Ecuadorian NGO that has assisted in obtaining organic certification and also buys the cacao at a fair price and sells to a chocolate producer in Germany.

Although there has been little mention of it in the press, which is controlled by business interests generally against Ecuador´s current president, a new program he has promoted called "5 plus 5 plus 5", for $5000 loans at 5% for 5 years, has the potential to be of great help to campesinos struggling to survive on their land. This is in stark contrast to lending practices of private banks in the past, which have charged up to 60% interest and required a document prepared by an attorney that could cost several hundred dollars.

Another problem I heard about with the banks occurred with "dollarization" in 2000 when depositors' accounts were frozen for 3 months, then the national currency (the sucre) was converted to dollars at the rate of around 25,000:1 although the international exchange rate was actually more like 8,000:1.

Maria roasting the delicious cacao and coffee

Cacao nacional (yellow)

Calceta, Ecuador