Bolivia Diaries: Day 10, Part 3 - A Quechua Community in Cochabamba

On our tenth day in Bolivia, Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba (AGRUCO), who we had met the day before, brought us to visit a Quechua (Incan) village they work with to learn about their agriculture. This was perhaps the best day of the trip. Part one covers our stop at a market in the town of Sipe Sipe, and part two covers an ancient Incan site we visited that was nearby.

Now we go to the Quechua community itself. It is called Linku or Linko - our group could never figure out how it was spelled. Be warned, this diary includes some very cute pictures of children.



When we arrived, we were invited into a large, open building. We sat down in seats, and the people of Linku sat on the floor. I must say, this is quite common in Bolivia from my experience, that the Bolivian indigenous will invite us gringos into their communities and then sit separate from us, usually offering us the better places to sit. It's not something I like very much.

Someone from Linku spread woven clothes on the table in the middle of the room and then poured a snack on it made from roasted corn, peanuts, and cheese. The corn was soft enough to eat but not fully popped. Perhaps this is what author Carol Deppe means when she talks about "parched corn." Everyone - both us and our hosts - dug in with our hands and soon made the huge pile disappear.


Our yummy snack



As we munched, our guide Gilberto (from AGRUCO) addressed the group in Quechua and Spanish, welcoming us briefly.


Gilberto, speaking to the group.

We then went to the fields. Before we reached them, we saw the irrigation channel, which the people of the community dug by hand.


Irrigation channel.


Running water for irrigation.

They also grow onions to sell. They showed us alfalfa, grapes, pacay (ice cream bean), sugar cane, cassava, lettuce, and loquat, cherimoya, mandarin, orange, and lemon trees. "Todo natural," they said. They also grow prickly pear cacti for the fruit (tunas) and the cactus itself (nopales).


Onions, to sell.


A big squash growing on the side of the field.


Cassava

Almost immediately, this experience became different from our previous visits. It was an exchange, not just a one-way presentation of their community to us. Someone from Linku asked us if alfalfa exists in the U.S. We replied that it does, and told them about the new problem of GE alfalfa. They replied that they had a problem with an attempt to introduce GE potatoes. Beginning in the late 1990s, they said, biotech companies wanted to start field trials of GE potatoes in Bolivia. They protested and fought this and won, because they knew that the introduction of GE potatoes would result in the loss of native varieties. There's been companies coming in and promoting and selling hybrids. They've been doing their own experiments, realizing they can't save their seeds. And they don't like that chemicals are required to use with the hybrids.


Alfalfa, with a big pacay tree among it and smaller lemon trees.


Alfalfa


A loquat tree.


Lettuce and onions.


Cañawa

Among the lettuce, the darker leaves are a medicinal radish. It is good for the kidneys, they told us. You fast and then you drink the juice of the radish.


Medicinal radish growing among the lettuce

I asked why the trees are grown among the plants. They replied that it was for the efficient use of water. They irrigate everything at the same time and don't lose water. They also add soil amendments to everything at the same time this way too.

Then I asked if they grow trees from seed or if they use other propagation methods like growing trees from cuttings. They replied that they do both.


Onions, lettuce, and a loquat tree.


Intercropping. Onions and either fava beans or peas, I can't tell which.


Lettuce and radish intercropped.


Onions and fava beans, I think.


A view of the field below with the village above.


A citrus tree, I think.


Christina with the radish.

At this time, Christina and I began chatting with some folks from Linku, a mother named Faustina and her daughter, Liliana, age 10. They wanted to know how I got so many bug bites. I told them it was the "bichos" (pests) in Yungas. Then they wanted to know if we saw the coca in Yungas. We spoke about how steep it was there in the coca fields, how it was difficult to walk there. They told me they had visited Yungas before.

I asked what the alfalfa was for. They said it was for the cows. Cochabamba is full of dairy cows, almost all Holsteins. Linku didn't have so many. One of the people talking to me said she had 11 cows. As we walked, they pointed out an avocado tree. I asked about another crop and they told us it was barley.


Barley

They told us they begin growing their crops in the winter each year. They begin growing corn in September and harvest it in March. The rains start in December. And they wanted to know when our rains come. Are there strong rains in our country? Do I live in the city or the country? she asked. (As I'm listening to my recording of our conversation, I'm horrified at my answers. I understood very few of the questions and gave answers that were entirely off topic. When she asked if I lived in the campo or the pueblo, I heard "abuelo" and told her about my grandparents.)

We asked how many varieties of corn they have and they began a list: big white corn, big yellow corn, little yellow corn, corn for toasting, black corn... all in all, I couldn't keep up with the varieties he named, but they were different colors, sizes, and for different purposes. Some grew early and some matured later. Later, someone told me there were 25 varieties of corn grown here.

By then I had begun chatting with another man from the community with the help of another member of our group. We tried to explain what we grew in California. The Quechua man wanted to know if we grew coca in the U.S. He asked many questions about the U.S. and also about where we had visited in Bolivia.


Sugarcane

We asked about the climate crisis. He said that it was now warmer than before. Sugar cane, cassava, citrus, and even bananas now grow well here. The rain here has changed too. In the past, it would start in September or October, but now it comes in December. This causes problems for them. He said they have to plant their seeds later. They now have problems with hail, which ruins some crops. It's too warm here for freezes or snow, and here they haven't had floods either. He told me elsewhere in Bolivia there have been floods.

I asked how much they sold their onions for. He said a kilo would cost 2 Bolivianos (less than $.30) when they sold them.


Onions

I asked about soil preparation. Did they use animal traction or tractors or neither? He said they use ox teams (yuntas) for soil preparation here.

We talked a bit about the use of agroechemicals. He said "We don't want them." In our country, I said, we have lots of cancer. We are rich, with lots of money, but sick with cancer and diabetes. We spoke about climate deniers in the U.S. and how the oil companies have paid off scientists.

The conversation then went into what kinds of animals we raised on farms in our respective countries. The man we were speaking with said he was a vegetarian. I'm not sure I believe that, but I think that's what he said.

He said that Bolivia is a backwards country. I said no, I think in many ways the U.S. is backwards. He said, "A lot of money, factories..." We told him that we don't have many more factories. Now, we have lots of unemployment because the factories have moved to countries that treat their workers poorly. He said he had heard of the financial crisis.

Tanya (our guide) told him that in the U.S. we have growing poverty and very few rich people who are getting richer. He said the same is true in Bolivia. Here, he said 60% are poor. They have a small middle class. I replied that I don't want to minimize Bolivia's problem with poverty, but I wish the U.S. had more people who could grow their food using traditional methods like Bolivia. He said, "You should take some wisdom and tradition from here."

I said, "I think it's backwards that my city doesn't allow keeping chickens, forcing people to buy their eggs, mostly from factory operations." He said here, in the city, you can't have hogs or chickens. In the past, you could have them, but not now. Now, you can only keep cows in the city. Another member of our group (an American) brought up the woman in Michigan who got in trouble for gardening in her front yard. I told him about the illegal raw goat's milk some people buy in the U.S. He said that here people like donkey's milk. This was not the first time we heard that in Bolivia, and previously, we were told it is medicinal. He said they used to have lots of goats here, but now they don't have many.

After a while in the fields, we returned to the building where we had first come. I played with children and a puppy and gave them some of the chocolate I brought with me. The adults did not want their pictures taken, but the kids couldn't get enough of having their pictures taken.


A puppy


A little girl with her baby sister.

Next, they served us lunch. They passed out Coca-Cola to everyone. I declined. Gilberto knocked his back and said "Ahhh, la leche del capitalismo" (the milk of capitalism).

I had brought rolls from breakfast in my purse but didn't want to eat them in front of the community because I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I snuck outside with the kids and gave my bowl of meat - a traditional style meal - away to one of them. Then I sat outside with the kids while eating my bread. The baby sister in the picture above really wanted my bread, and not the food her sister was trying to feed her, so I gave her some.


Lunch

Along with the meal, they served an enormous bowl of potatoes and sweet potatoes. I tried to eat what I could, but the potatoes were crusted in dirt, and it just wasn't very appealing. It was not until later, when I was hanging out with the children, that I noticed that the children peeled their potatoes - which is common in Bolivia for many types of potatoes - and then I went back to get a sweet potato, peeling off the dirty skin before eating it.


Potatoes


The spicy pepper, locoto





At the very end, before leaving, we gave them a gift of some shovels. From what I understand, they would not have been eager to let us into their community without some sort of compensation like that. This was AGRUCO's first time bringing outsiders like us into one of their communities, so it was a first for everyone. And from our perspective, we were thrilled to leave them with a gift they would find useful.


Shovels we gave the community.

Last, I cornered Gilberto to ask him a few questions about the agriculture there. I asked him about the crop rotations used here. Here, in the valley, they have individual plots of land and they do crop rotations to maintain soil fertility but don't leave the soil fallow. In the highlands, they have a system called ayanoka in which they have communal land. For three years, they grow oca, potatoes, and barley or oats. After that cycle they move somewhere else and leave that land fallow for 10 years.

Next, I asked about soil amendments. He said the land under the ayanoka system does not need much added to the soil. In the valley, they use sheep dung, chicken bedding, and molle tree leaves. The manure and chicken bedding come from their own animals. They will bring the sheep to a certain parcel for a while, then move the sheep out and plant the crops there.

Then I asked how they deal with pests and diseases. He said they have traditional methods to deal with pests. For example, they plant tarwi as a hedge crop to serve as a physical barrier. They also make herbal pesticides from wild or medicinal plants they grind up and mix with water. I asked if they use any biological controls with predatory species that prey on pests. He said they don't know of many beneficial bugs around here. But he has heard of beneficial wasps used elsewhere in Bolivia but not so much here.

Bolivia Diaries: Day 9, Part 4 - Agroecology in Cochabamba, Part 3

On our ninth day in Bolivia, we visited Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba (AGRUCO). This section is on AGRUCO's chuño project. It is the third diary on AGRUCO. The first provides just a basic introduction to them and their work and the second tells about their continuing education program.

The talk below is somewhat poorly translated because the speaker sounded like he had a mouth full of marbles. However, please at least check out the bolded sentence toward the bottom and the paragraph below it. This is probably the most important thing he said - and it is VITALLY important!

On our 10th day, AGRUCO took us to one of the communities they work in, a Quechua community in Cochabamba. It was FANTASTIC. So please read this with the knowledge that a very fun application of what you learn about AGRUCO is on its way.

The final presentation was on the chuño project of AGRUCO. It was led by one of the people in charge of the project, which is devoted to improving the value chain for potatoes, quinoa, and cañawa. The project takes place with five communities in a specific Aymara-speaking ayllu in the department of Cochabamba. There are 311 beneficiary campesino families in the project.

AGRUCO is focused on improving the value chain of these products from production, harvest, post-harvest, processing, storage, and marketing.

Their work is promoting sustainable production of potatoes, quinoa, and cañawa using locally available resources. For example, to make natural pesticides. After improving the production part of the potato, then they work on the process of turning the potato into chuño. They are also working with producers to improve storage methods. For example, the campesinos will often keep the chuño in a big plastic bag in the corner of the house where it is subject to destruction from rats or humidity.

It's been really important in the project to discuss gastronomy and the food and the food production, and incorporating women into the projects. They see it's really important to work with and to strengthen the social organizations. So they don't work with individual families, they work with producer organizations. This is an integral project that works with the cultural spiritual components. They don't just go in as technicians and leave, they live together with the peasants to experience all aspects of life. The final step of the participatory research is monitoring. They do this as they go along and then every 6 months they do an evaluation.

A beginning step in the project is informing everyone about the project and doing an exchange trip (farmer to farmer) - taking campesinos to another community so they can see it first hand before they start the project. For example, the campesinos might visit a community that uses a different method to make chuño.

The next step is to do social learning workshops. These are horizontal. Everyone talks about interests, priorities, and problems they are having. This helps identify key themes, like how to develop organic fertilizers, developing an agroecological calendar, or working on seed potato propagation.

They also generate discussion and reflection. AGRUCO brings materials and videos on organic agriculture, the use of toxic chemicals and their impact on the environment, so they can all discuss those issues.

They also promote agroecological production of Andean grains in order to improve agrobiodiversity and to promote those crops. They also work on potato production, which is having issues with a loss of biodiversity. This is a result of the introduction of commercial potato varieties. In the communities the families were managing five or six varieties of potatoes, and they've increased this to 21 varieties of potatoes. Before, families used manage 40-50 varieties of potatoes and now that's been greatly reduced. (Santiago de Okola, for comparison, grows 45 varieties of potatoes, and of that, they consider 15 to be staples.)

Another nearby region, a little higher in altitude, AGRUCO discovered an ayllu managing 70 potato varieties. The different varieties of potato can be used to take advantage of all of the different micro-climates of Bolivia. If you lose one, it's gone. It's really important, for example, only certain varieties are used for chuño, which are an important food security necessity. If those are lost, they cannot make chuño.

They have other varieties of potatoes that are for direct consumption (unlike chuño). And then there are other varieties that cannot be eaten directly or made into chuño. A fourth category of potatoes are the commercial varieties eaten in the cities.

In Bolivia, there are many varieties of potato, and the idea of the project is to develop a germ plasm bank. But the bank will be in situ, on the farms, with the campesinos themselves, and not ex situ, in a building somewhere. This is why they are very concerned about the issue of GMOs as a threat to diversity of germplasm in Bolivia and they are trying to see how to prevent or mitigate it.

They see the issue of agrobiodiversity as intertwined with the issue of food security. These practices that are helping to promote and recover are not new practices; they are ancient. They are revaluing native seeds and seed exchange networks.

They also work in the production of organic fertilizers and pesticides, like producing foliar spray. They always use local, endogenous resources like alpaca milk or ashes. They are promoting reconversion to organic agriculture, but sometimes they face doubt by the campesinos that their yields will drop if they convert. So they must help them do a gradual, slow conversion to organic. You could see that with the introduction of the Green Revolution, especially 20 years ago, with the heavy, heavy introduction of agrochemicals. They themselves have more consciousness about the harms of agrochemicals because they have seen the degradation of their soil and biodiversity.

They grow potato seeds by sprouting a potato, then removing the sprout and planting them in a bed in a nursery. It then takes 3 years to produce seed potatoes for the campesinos. They remove any potatoes with diseases. This is done to reduce the incidence of diseased potatoes used by campesinos. (Here in the U.S. it's also the common recommendation to purchase certified seed potatoes that are certified disease-free.)

They also work on improving the storage system for campesinos. As noted before, potatoes are often stored in sacks of plastic bags and they have problems like humidity, pests, or mold. This is not a good system. There is an ancient system that they used to use to store potatoes, since Incan times. They are bringing this back. In the old system, the chuño can keep for 15 to 20 years. When you have a bad harvest, you can eat your old stored chuño. This old system uses a structure of adobe with a straw roof. Now they are trying to improve that. Now they use a tile roof and cement. Thus, they are reducing the incidence of pest outbreaks.

They are also building seed silos for potatoes. The potatoes will sit for a month or so in the silo and they get a little light. Then when you plant them, they are more productive. These are some of the simple techniques that they are recovering for the campesinos so they don't have to buy things to improve the quality of their seeds. They showed us a photo of a structure that could hold 800 lbs of potatoes. Each family would keep its own storage facilities. The family also stores its quinoa, canawa, barley, and maize. (Maize would be purchased from another region because the region in question is at too high an altitude to grow corn.)

They have done some evaluations for what the best materials are for the quinoa. They said clay mixed with mud is the best material to build these storage facilities. Plaster could crack and contaminate the chuño, but mud and clay will not crack. This kind of information comes out of dialogue with the community. They use locally available materials.

He concluded by saying that all of these actions are toward the goal of improving food security.

In the Q&A section, we learned the following:
AGRUCO has seen very little if any support of production in these communities (beside the support they provide). Small producers have never had any support because they were seen as being unimportant to the economy. But AGRUCO thinks they are of critical importance, and fortunately the new constitution includes language saying that the state must support smallholder production and the building of these storage facilities.

They are still in a process, in which this is in the constitution, but making it happen requires more work. As an institution, AGRUCO has worked with several other institutions to implement the laws and to pressure the government to do so as well. They have the hope that young people and the young technicians will be able to push forward this mission and to replicate the successes they are achieving now. This is a longterm projects. They are also working on other projects like creating value added products from Andean crops, like flour, cookies.

For example, canawa is such a small grain. It's smaller and more nutritious than quinoa. For example, they are trying to introduce some of those products to state supported school breakfast program, like chuño, cañawa, etc. What AGRUCO most wants to do is to raise the self esteem of campesinos. (emphasis added)

[The following bit is somewhat rambling but of utmost importance!!!]

If they can be in charge of their own lives and their own production and really achieve the goal of Living Well... because we see over time, campesinos have a different kind of rationality especially from those who live in the city. We are seeing so many policies time and time again, trying to transform campesinos into capitalists or small entrepreneurs, but that goes against their rationality. To force them to go into the markets to sell their products so they can also be buyers. We try to respect their specific rationality, which is what we've outlined, and that's all part of a system that is often more important to them than increasing their profit margin.

About climate change, he answered, that the campesinos live so close to nature that they see all of the little changes and adapt incrementally. As the climate changes, some people are just abandoning the land because it's too difficult. The use of agrochemicals has also rendered the land less fertile.

Day 9, Part 3 - Agroecology in Cochabamba, Part 2

On our ninth day in Bolivia, we visited Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba (AGRUCO). The diary below tells about their fascinating and wonderful continuing education program. It is the second diary on AGRUCO. The first provides just a basic introduction to them and their work.

On our 10th day, AGRUCO took us to one of the communities they work in, a Quechua community in Cochabamba. It was FANTASTIC. So please read this with the knowledge that a very fun application of what you learn about AGRUCO is on its way.

The director of AGRUCO's undergraduate program did the next presentation. This was on the continuous training program, in which they go into communities and provide education to adults who were unable to attend universities earlier in their lives. What follows is a rough transcription of her words.

AGRUCO is a center of training and education, providing training for professionals throughout the university. They have undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs. They call the latter "Intercultural and Decolonizing Continuing Education." She went on to explain what that meant.

The continuing education program comes out of AGRUCO's 25 years of experience in the community working with indigenous and campesino communities and their demand for such a training program. It began in 2008, and it was also prompted by their analysis of the new political situation in Bolivia (i.e. Evo Morales).

The first level of training is a technical level in which a student does not need a bachelor's degree. There are different levels. At the technical level, there are three levels (basic, intermediate, and high). And then they offer undergraduate and graduate degrees up to a PhD. They work with an accrediting organization to give out the technician degree to campesinos. This gives young people as well as adults from indigenous communities to enter school and train to the level they wish.

They provide the same six program areas as the rest of AGRUCO: Revaluing local knowledge; Agroecology and food sovereignty; Managing biodiversity; State and local policies; Territorial management and autonomies; and Plural diverse economies. Those are the bases for the endogenous development work they do. In each areas, they think about the subject matter from two different lenses: First from the community based, indigenous, ancestral culture, and second from the modern, western, individualist culture.

At the basic technical level, they focus more on agroecology and food sovereignty, and they get into the other, more theoretical areas in graduate studies. It's a model of continuous education, because they can continue advancing throughout their lives and their previously completed hours are always recognized. It's intercultural because they use both lenses and always talk about a dialogue between the two. And it's decolonizing because it's revaluing the traditional and local knowledge that they have and that is being lost.

They have an agreement with the lowland indigenous people and another with the Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu Bolivia (CONAMAC), the association of highland indigenous people, to carry out this training. This is similar to the philosophy to the UAC at Carmen Pampa in Yungas. That is, when rural young people must leave to go to the city for their educations, they often do not return. Also, rural Bolivians take on community leadership roles and get married very young, making it difficult for them to leave for several years to study at a university in the city. So AGRUCO's idea is that the university should go to the community.

Through the two indigenous associations, they have students all over the country. They have students in seven of Bolivia's nine departments. These students have been chosen by the indigenous associations. They have a wide diversity of students, including Aymara, Quechua, Chiquitania, etc.

They group the themes together in four different modules. Each module is 15 days. Ten days of discussion, reflection, and work in the field and five days of exchanges and visits to other communities and projects that reflect the work of the previous ten days. During the 15 day module, the students are together in a place identified by the indigenous organizations. Between each of the four modules, they go back to their communities for about 3 1/2 months to put what they learned in practice. During the 3 1/2 months, they have contact with and evaluations by AGRUCO to evaluate how they are doing. Through this method of learning, they can visit communities of many cultures in both the highlands and the lowlands and engage in intercultural dialogue.

For example, for one cycle, they did the first module in Cochabamba, the second in Oruro, the third in Chiquitania in Santa Cruz, and the fourth in Sucre in Chuquisaca department. That way, the students saw a lot of the country. They define the location of the module with the indigenous groups and with the students, and the indigenous groups must guarantee that wherever they do the module, they have the support they need locally to carry it out.

The majority of the training occurs in the communities themselves, and the faculty from AGRUCO goes there, but it also has participation from local experts and elders. These courses are focused on practical work, like how to make organic fertilizers, how to make a community development plan, etc. They find that the intercultural exchange allows them to identify and promote and thus revalue agroecological practices that the indigenous already do.

The practices are all developed based on local resources. AGRUCO learns a lot during the workshops because the students bring their knowledge to the table too. This is why they call them "Spaces of social learning" because the teachers learn from the students and the students learn from one another, making it a different model from only the teacher doing the teaching.

All of the content of the programs are developed after working with communities to determine their priorities. Then faculty in four different disciplines - agronomy, sociology, economics, and forestry - diagnose the problems that should be solved in the communities. They review the programmatic content with the indigenous organizations. The two main priorities of both groups is managing their territories and promoting endogenous sustainable development.

AGRUCO does field trips and check out the students work and answer questions through a number of meetings during the 3 1/2 month interim period between modules.

Part of the training is given directly by professors and faculty of the university, either in classrooms or in the field. But the training also comes directly from the community and from the indigenous associations. For example, a local healer in Chiquitania taught the class about local healing plants. In another example, the two authorities from the lowland indigenous group gave a talk about managing autonomous indigenous territories. In a last example, a mayor from a town in Oruro who is recognized in his innovation in policy, and he gave a talk to authorities from around Bolivia. So AGRUCO brings its own academic knowledge to the table, but most of the knowledge comes from the intercultural sharing with communities and elders.

There are usually about 30 students at a time, and because they are all members of indigenous organizations and have a lot of local support, there is a very low drop out rate. Usually 28 or 29 students will complete an entire program. In order to get their title, each student must complete a final program. However, their project is decided at a community meeting in an assembly with their entire community. The indigenous groups have requested that there is a formal graduation ceremony, so they had their first ceremony in 2009. The students all dressed in traditional dress from their home communities for the ceremony. (What I wouldn't give for a photo of that!!!)

The intercultural element of the program also includes music and dance. They share their customs, rituals, foods, chicha, etc.

Q & A
That completed the presentation. However, we were fortunate to have a few adult education teachers in our group, who asked very smart questions. Here are the answers:

During the modules, the funding for this program (which I was unclear on its source) provides the students' transportation, materials, and food. The classrooms and space is provided by the municipality where the module is held. The university provides the faculty that teaches the program. The municipality provides the students' housing.

Also, they told us that some 70% of students were placed in careers after their studies. It takes about three and a half years to complete a bachelors degree in this program.

To qualify for the basic technical level, the students have to be able to read and write and to be able to do the four basic math functions (add, subtract, multiply, and divide). In completing the first technical level, the students get the equivalent of a GED, thus allowing them to move on to the intermediate level.

In order to qualify for the intermediate technical program, the students must be able to read and write, must have graduated high school, and must exhibit leadership skills and commitment to their community.

There is support for students who have difficulty with reading and writing. But because the program involves field work in addition to just writing, students can still gain a lot from the program even if they have difficulty writing.

They have a large number - the majority of students - from ages 18 to 25 years old, but they have a number of students ages 30-40, and often those students play an important role because they have lots of experience and leadership in their communities.

She added that she wanted to say how unique and special the experience this is for the teachers who get to go to the communities to see where people live and who they are in a personal way that they don't get to do in the typical classroom setting. Additionally, she said, the students gain so much confidence and identity from this program.

There is very little but growing numbers of participation of women in the program. They are trying to work on this, to promote and increase participation of women. Toward that they are working with Bartolina Sisa, the National Confederation of Indigenous Peasant Women of Bolivia.

Day 9, Part 2 - Agroecology in Cochabamba, Part 1

Day 9 was simultaneously the worst day and perhaps the best day of my trip to Bolivia. How is that so? We began our day at a dairy and then skipped lunch to hurry to Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba (AGRUCO) for a several hours long presentation that I mostly skipped because it gave me a migraine. By the time we made it to dinner at a traditional "Cochabambino" (Cochabamba-style) restaurant that served nothing vegetarian except french fries where I ate almost nothing and watched the guy across from me eat an entire guinea pig, I was cranky, hungry, and in a lot of pain.

On the other hand, I could tell almost immediately that AGRUCO is AMAZING. What an exciting organization to meet up with and to learn about. And - what's better - today was just the prelude because tomorrow AGRUCO was taking us to meet a Quechua indigenous community they work with. For me, AGRUCO is where ideas I've only read about in textbooks come to life. Since it's a long presentation, I've broken it up into more than one post.

What follows is more or less a word for word translation of the presentation AGRUCO gave, with a few parts left out if I felt they were irrelevant or uninteresting.

The first presenter gave us the following introduction:
AGRUCO was founded in 1985. It began in the agronomy department with an agrobiology project with ecological technology transfer from Switzerland to Bolivia. They were the first such project in the Cochabamba area. Their first work was with vegetable crops. They were still a very small project, doing an analysis of whether or not campesinos in this region need this kind of support. They realized there were poor populations in Cochabamba that really did need this kind of support. So they did a diagnosis of the kind of problems campesinos faced and what kind of technical support they needed. From that first site, which was about 2000-2300 meters in altitude in the valley region of Bolivia, they moved up into high altitude communities, all the way to the border of Cochabamba and Oruro, where there was an altitude of 4000m. They were working with smallholder agriculture. During this first period, mostly agronomists worked on the project. They were working with potatoes, tubers, Andean roots, Andean grains, and forages.

To gain access to communities, they had to bring something. When you go to a community in Bolivia to work with them, the first question is "What did you bring us?" So they began by providing an organic fertilizer. They would talk to the people about problems with their soil and then would provide soil amendments made from cow horns. They got the cow horns from slaughterhouses and then they mixed them with chicken litter, ashes, and other materials to produce the fertilizer. This got them into the communities they hoped to work with. They also studied a phosphoric rock found locally as a potential alternative fertilizer.

They realized working with these communities, they worked in the harshest conditions, but they were maintaining massive varieties of crops. The began working to conserve and increase the biodiversity of crops, such as potatoes. In this way, they have been able to help support production, increase production, and even disperse varieties among the communities where they work. They began to work with students to study agriculture in the area, and they also began including students and faculty from areas outside of agronomy (sociology, economy, accounting, communications). That helped grow the program and provide it a more holistic approach. An interesting note about their work is that they changed the name from "Extension" (i.e. agricultural extension services) to "Social Interaction."

Recovering Traditional and Local Knowledge
The next presenter, who studied agroecology in Cordoba, Spain, told us he would tell us about their work recovering traditional and local knowledge.

Over the last 25 years, AGRUCO's work can be separated into about 8 different phases. They started in the first phase that they would transfer the idea of organic agriculture from the Global North to the campesinos in Bolivia - basically teach them how to do organic agriculture. Then they were financed by the Swiss development agency and this is their philosophy of technology transfer. What they realized quickly in working with the communities is that they were already using agroecological methods and "we really had nothing to teach them." To this day, Andean farmers manage all kinds of agroecological methods in production.

They then moved into another phase, where they realized they needed to focus on recovering the local knowledge and valuing it. From there, they moved into really having a clearer idea of certain concepts, such as agroecology.

They began using the word agroecology a lot, not only referring to local production and food systems, but as a scientific discipline with various components: a technical component, a socio-cultural component, and a socio-political component. This approach is in contrast with other kinds of agriculture approaches that follow a more technical approach that's less integrated. They see that as one part of the whole. Especially in Andean agriculture in Bolivia, they see it as critical to address all of these components. This way of thinking allows them to move from seeing agriculture just as a system of production to seeing it as a development model, which they call Endogenous Development.

The technical element is pretty clear. It involves producing food sustainably. But the other two elements allow them to focus on social situations and political elements that need to be dealt with and also allows them to work on learning about and respecting local knowledge and the local worldview. They look at how local cultures see the relationship between humans and nature, which is a very particular worldview. It's very different from the Western worldview.

This is their current goal - to contribute to well being, to the idea of living well (Vivir Bien) through education, research, extension, endogenous development that values local knowledge and the local spirituality of the people.

Living Well
Living Well is different than the idea of Living Better. Living Well is a development paradigm proposed by the Morales government, as opposed to Living Better. This vision of Living Well has to do with the Andean worldview. Living Well doesn't have to do just with living better as humans, but living well among all the plants and animals in nature. It has to do with living in harmony not just with plants, and animals, and life, but with inanimate beings, like mountains, which have a life in the Andean cosmovision. This idea put forward by the government as a paradigm, AGRUCO is trying to adopt it and contribute to it. AGRUCO's overarching policy is advancing Living Well through education, food production, innovation, and an alternative development that comes from the grassroots and from the campesinos.

Participatory Research
In their extension work, they work with both Aymara and Quechua communities, recovering local knowledge and agroecological practices. They've discovered some really interesting techniques. There's also a nearby valley where they work with 4 Quechua communities. We went there with AGRUCO the next day. There, they focus especially on agroecological vegetable production. They work mostly in the Andes but they are also working with other indigenous groups in the lowlands of Bolivia. One of their projects focuses on saving local varieties and agrobiodiversity.

Their methodology focuses on the idea of a dialogue between knowledges. The dialogue is between scientific knowledge and non-scientific or local knowledge. To do this, you need to recognize that there is more than one single way of generating knowledge and scientific understanding. There are other ways to generate science, such as the traditional ways the local communities do it. They see this as a type of "cross-pollination" between academic and indigenous communities, to build new understanding through dialogue. Then they try to apply all of the results that come out of the dialogue.

They've developed a unique methodology for how to work with the campesino communities, both for research and for extension. This focus on 3 different elements: material life, social life, and spiritual life. Therefore, they have people from different disciplines (agronomists, sociologists, economists, political economists) allows them to take a more integrated point of view. An agronomist might only be interested in the material part of production but having other kinds of disciplines helps diversify the focus. Especially in the Andes it is important to take into consideration spiritual life. They have to respect the spiritual customs, practices, beliefs, because that's how the indigenous will relate to agriculture. If AGRUCO doesn't understand the spiritual life of the people, then they won't understand how the indigenous relate to the material world either.

From this focus they have developed a methodology of participatory "revaluing local knowledge" research. "Participatory research" can mean a lot of different things in Latin America. In addition to just participatory research, they add the word "revaluing" to differentiate themselves from other practices.

They do a lot of qualitative research, complemented by quantitative research. They prioritize qualitative over quantitative research. That means they look at social interaction, interviewing research, reviewing how they interact, over and above looking at the numbers (econometrics, soil analyses, etc). In order to understand the spiritual life of campesinos, it's necessary to have this qualitative research. However, it always falls into the risk of having too much subjectivity and seeming to not have enough scientific rigor.

He then showed a list of the qualitative methods they use, including: Semi-structured interviews, participatory observation, discussion groups, open-ended interviews, and case studies.

Their research program is very complicated but interesting. Using this research approach, they have programs, projects, and sub-projects. The three parts they look at (material, social, and spiritual) relate to three different programs. For example, they have one project that is agroecology, food security, and food sovereignty. Another project is biodiversity. Others are state policies; territorial management and autonomies; plural diverse economies; new paradigms of science; and alternative development. When a researcher at AGRUCO wants to carry out research, it must fall into one of those categories. Therefore, an agronomist might propose a project on Andean agrobiodiversity under the agroecology category, whereas an economist might look at the plural economies project. But if someone wanted to do research using GMOs or agrochemicals, they could not do it because it wouldn't fall in any of their project categories.

After the presentation, I asked for reading recommendations. Here is what they recommended:
1. Agroecology and Sustainable Peasant Agriculture in the Andes by Nelson Tapia Ponce (in Spanish)
2. Si Estamos de Buen Corazon, Siempre Hay Produccion by Stephen Rist (in Spanish)
3. Gobernabilidad social de las áreas protegidas y biodiversidad en Bolivia y Latinoamerica by Freddy Delgado B. and Juan Carlos Mariscal C.
4. Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems by Stephen R. Gliessman (in English)