Maya Mountain Research Farm

San Pedro Columbia, Belize

An Overview Of Our Solution

Southern Belize, like many locations, is undergoing transformations tied to increased population density. This has resulted in poor long term decision making for short term gain, decimation of habitat and loss of ecosystem services. What we propose is the creation of complex agroforestry models that mimic arboreal architecture of primary habitat yet provide food, timber, medicinals, marketable crops and fuel wood, positive streams of revenue that also provide habitat, sequester carbon, retain soil and soil moisture. Maya Mountain Research Farm has been working on designing techniques to create agroforestry systems in damaged landscapes for the last 29 years. We believe we have a very good model for creating biodiverse models of agriculture that are able to be replicated widely throughout the lowland humid tropics.

Who is this solution impacting?

Community Type

Rural

Organization type

Nonprofit

Ecosystem (select all that apply)

Forests

Population impacted

1,000

Size of agricultural area

11 hectares out of a 28 hectare property in some form of management

Production quantity

500 kilos of cacao, 3 tonnes of Artocarpus camansi, 1.5 tonnes of pineapple, 1 tonne of maize, 500 kilos of beans, 2 tonnes of pumpkin, 20 kilos of vanilla, 2 tonnes of coconut, etc.

People employed

6-10

Describe your solution

MMRF is located on what had been a damaged citrus and cattle farm in 1988. It was a severely depleted. By the conscious application of processes that mimic succession, with our end goal being a stacked polyculture that mimics primary habitat, we have repaired much of the land and have a food forest of edibles, marketable, medicinals, fuel wood and timber. We manage <500 species of plants in a “food forest”. Parts of the farm have been managed for this for the last 26 years. Other parts are relatively young. We get a lot of perennial crops, and in areas we are pioneering into, we use a mix of annual crops with perennials and long term woody species. We are primarily a working farm, but also a training facility. We host farmers from around Belize and the region. Our farm is a classroom, which enables farmers to see working examples of financially viable agroforestry. Through our work, other NGOS, such as Ya’axche Conservation Trust and Plenty Belize, have been introduced to well established working examples of inga alley cropping and cacao dominated agroforestry, and have begun to use the lessons they learned here with their target communities. Our biggest strength is our ability to translate to farmers who have botanic literacy. Our success at information transfer is because of our long relationships with the target communities.

Describe your implementation

We provide training to farmers. Most of the work we have done is through other NGOs who use us as a facility for training, like Ya’axche Conservation Trust, Plenty Belize, or local schools, like TumulKin School and the Seventh Day Adventist College, or government ministries, like Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health, or village councils. We emphasize the financial stability polycultures offer, the reduced cost of managing polycultures as they mature, and are able to put this in a context that is culturally relevant to the target communities. We have a good teaching team on the farm who speak English, Spanish, Kriol, Mopan Maya and Kekchi Maya, so we are able to teach in those languages, overcoming linguistic barriers. Because of our accomplishments and age, we are receiving offers of funding, and have been invited to present at conferences in Havana, London and at Yale University over the last five years. This has led to increased interest in what we are doing, and increased revenue from students/university groups. This has enabled us to be able to provide more training. We are especially effective at information transfer. As we have been working on this land for the last 29 years, and working with the communities adjacent to the Maya Mountains. Our biggest obstacle has been to get people interested in agroforestry. When we started this, back in the 1980s, no one was interested in agroforestry. By continuing to focus on this work, we have generated interest in Belize. By leveraging our work with the outreach and larger capacities of other NGOs, we have been able to get more information out to a wider audience.

External connections

We are a small NGO and focused almost entirely on the farm. While we work in areas of energy poverty, installing photovoltaic lighting systems in 15 schools and community centers, village level photovoltaic water systems in two communities, 12 photovoltaic lighting systems in protected areas, we do have not had much outreach in agroforestry. Where we shine is our work with other NGOs or Community Based Organizations to provide training for their staff and target communities. NGOs like Humana, Ya'axche Conservation Trust and Plenty Belize have sent many students from their staff and the target communities they work with. We are at the stage where soon we will be working on policy. We are in the process of making networks with external agencies to use our project as a pilot project to be replicated across the tropics, and our method of carbon farming is now a topic of interest from multiple sources.

What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?

Belize is a growing country, with a population doubling period of 25 years. In 1985, Belize had a population of 150,000. In 2014, the population was at 330,000 people. With growth has come unequal development.In Toledo District, %80 of indigenous people are considered to be living in poverty. In 1980, Belize had %74.4 forest cover. 30 years later, we had %62.8. Four years later, in 2014, we had lost an additional %2.5 of forest cover. The major driver has been agriculture. Much of the best soils in the country have been devoted to export crops, banana and citrus in the south, and cattle, at the expense of local food security, habitat, carbon sequestration and soil/soil moisture retention. Much of that land use has a finite time before the EnergyReturned on Energy Invested is no longer favorable. By that time, the soils are damaged and will need to be fallowed to regain fertility, or subject to active intervention, which is what we propose.

Describe the context in which you are operating

Southern Belize is largely agrarian and rural. Kekchi and Mopan Maya indigenous communities in the foothills of the Maya
Mountains tend to have poor and/or fragile soils. With limited access to markets and emerging expenses as communities
move to participate in the currency based economy via land use tied to shifting cultivation has accelerated the process of
habitat loss. Much of the best soils are dedicated to export crops, at the expense of food security. %80 of the population is
considered to be living in poverty. %46 are considered to be extremely impoverished. Waterborne parasites are common.
The community we are located in, San Pedro Columbia, has seen its population expand from seven hundred people in
1988, when we started work, to one thousand seven hundred in 2014. Land close to the village has been over-farmed,
with shortened fallow periods, resulting in decreased yields and a need to expand farming further afield. The land closest
to the village is tired, and the frontier of agriculture is ever further away.

How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?

By mimicking the processes of succession we have repaired a piece of damaged former citrus and cattle land. The resulting matrix of plants closely resembles the structure of primary habitat, though the species composition is entirely human centric. What was damaged land is now habitat for mammals such as jaguar, ocelet, puma, margay, jaguarundi, grey fox, tayra, white lipped and collared peccary, brocket deer, tapir, coati, kinkajou, agouti and gibnut, and hundreds of species of birds. This creation of habitat on marginal land was done over time, much of it established when there was little or no income. We are not scientists, so much of the recorded wildlife has been done by researchers.

Language(s)

English, Belizean Creole

Water

The farming techniques we are practicing result in water being retained in the soil. Water lenses in hill sides mean that springs stay flowing, and the hydrology of watersheds. Additionally, avoided soil loss means decrease in silt loads from run off in waterways and decreased siltation down stream, and organic production avoids leachate migrating downstream

Food Security/Nutrition

Complex stacked polycultures can provide a balance of oil crops, like coconut, sesame and cahune palm, staple foods like Artocarpus altilis, A. Heterophylla and A. camansi, Brossimum allicastrum and Bactris gasipaes. maize production through inga alley cropping, producing a favorable ratio of Energy Returned n Energy Invested while providing a diverse array of fruits.

Economic/Sustainable Development

By diversifying cropping systems, farmers are less vulnerable to the market vagaries of single commodities, and less likely to be affected by a plant specific pathogen. If a plague arrives and the farmer has 499 other species to draw on, they have other income streams. High value crops like cardamom, turmeric and vanilla fit well into a diversified system like we have here.

Climate

Agroforestry systems like this replicate ecosystem functions of primary habitat. Our farm sequesters significant amounts of carbon, retains soil and soil moisture. Our farm functions as analog habitat and is more resilient to fluctuating rain levels than short rooter annual crops like maize. It also stores water in the landscape.

Sustainability

Diversified cropping systems enable farmers to access multiple markets. Our turmeric has a ready local market, our vanilla has high value for export, cacao has ready international markets, and timber species offer long term “retirement finds” for later in life. Additionally, we have produced fodder in perennial cropping systems for raising animals, like pigs, poultry and rabbits for additional markets and food security. The solution is how to create agroecologies that replicate succession in damaged land, creating robust, healthy stacked polycultures that also mimic form and function of primary habitat. If well designed, on a $ value times kilogram per hectare economic model, such systems can be financially lucrative while repairing soil

Return on investment

The cost to establish these systems is spread over years, mimics succession, and improves soil biology over time Much of this can be done for the cost of labour, requiring no capital. In Year 1, pioneer species like banana, pineapple, lemongrass, pigeon pea, papaya, other species are planted. Long term tree species are also established, palms, fruit tree, tree legumes, timber, By year 2-3, sub canopy species can be established in the shade, such as cacao, coffee, turmeric and vanilla. The pioneer species are all providing income By year 3-4 the turmeric is sold By year 5 the fruit trees begin to bear fruit, provide income By year 7-8, the cacao yields, provide income At year 20 and beyond some of the timber species can be harvested

How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?

This specific successional mimicry can be replicated easily in an east-west axis throughout the lowland humid tropics in climates ranging from wet dry tropics to monsoon tropics. Looking specifically at damaged landscapes we will see many of the same challenges, how to build soil, how to retain the soil on site, how to retain moisture, how to generate income. Setting up working models of agroecology and integrated systems is a decades long process if you want to see complex stacked polycultures that are mature. Identifying damaged landscapes to do this on is a way to show hat land that has become marginal through poor practices can be rehabilitated.

Overview