Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Groundswell International: Strengthening Rural Communities from the Bottom Up 
http://blogs.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet/groundswell-international-strengthening-rural-communities-from-the-bottom-up/
By Supriya Kumar

“We believe that in order to address our broken agricultural and food system, 
and create one that is better for human beings and the planet, family farmers 
around the world can be and need to be lead actors in that process.  We need 
to support their capacity and power to spread sustainable agricultural and 
local food systems solutions,” says Steve Brescia the International Director 
of Groundswell International. Created in August 2009, Groundswell 
International is a partnership of NGOs that is working with small scale 
farmers in seven countries –Burkina 
Faso,Ecuador,Ghana,Guatemala,Haiti,Honduras, andMali – to scale up healthy 
and agroecological farming practices from the bottom up.

“Globally we now have over 60 years of experience with industrial 
agricultural approaches, and we can see the trends in terms of hunger, 
climate change and concentration of resources and wealth.  As many studies 
are now confirming, it is time to scale up more appropriate agroecological 
farming approaches that can help create more positive trends. Groundswell 
International works with local farmers’ organizations and movements to help 
build local capacity to spread those alternatives,” said Brescia. They do 
this by encouraging farmer experimentation – for example, farmers in 
Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti experiment with soil conservation, cover crops 
and improved local seed on small sections of their land to discover what 
works without risking an entire season’s harvest. They also encourage 
farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing. InBurkina Faso, for example, Groundswell 
supports exchange visits between village women’s groups and expose them to 
successful farming practices. In this way, farmers become leaders and change 
agents for their own communities.

Groundswell International also works with partners to monitoring and 
evaluating their programs so that they can continuously be improved. Since 
the main goal is to strengthen local capacity, Groundswell partners work to 
strengthen farmers’ organizations to plan and evaluate their own development 
processes.  For example, these organizations assess their progress and 
strategies through the use of participatory tools that measure changes in 
household food security, levels of savings and seed bank reserves, and 
household economic status, to name a few. This approach to evaluation has 
helped improve various local initiatives, from promoting knowledge sharing in 
Burkina Faso to the strengthening of local peasant associations in Haiti.

According to Brescia, partners in sub-Saharan Africa are emphasizing the need 
to address the food crisis through long-term solutions to improve soil 
fertility, through conservation and recovery practices such as the use of zai 
pits, composting and contour barriers.  Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration 
(FMNR) of trees is a promising practice contributing to re-greening of the 
landscape. Already in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, FMNR is helping to 
regenerate the soil, increase crop production and animal fodder, while also 
reducing women’s workload by providing a source of firewood.  Many rural 
families have depleted their assets due to the chronic crisis, and these need 
to be rebuilt according to Brescia, for example by supporting the creation of 
local food banks and reserves managed by farmers groups.

By empowering farmers to take charge of their own prosperity, through support 
for agroecological farming practices and the creation of knowledge sharing 
networks, Groundswell International is strengthening the capacity of 
small-scale farmers to improve their food security and livelihoods, from the 
bottom up.

Do you know of other projects or organizations that are working with local 
communities to improve food security and raise incomes? Let us know in the 
comments section!

Supriya Kumar is a research fellow with Nourishing the Planet.

To read more about building local capacity, see: SEWA: A movement to 
transform women’s lives in India and beyond, Empowering the Women of India’s 
Poorest Region, Strengthening Rural Women’s Leadership in Farmer and Producer 
Organizations, and Putting Development Back into the Hands of the Community.