From Vision to Action!
In May of each year we host a field day for all the producers from the Carazo region. It’s a great event to start off a new growing season and get farmers together to share ideas. This year it was our privilege to host motivational speaker Rudy Alvarez from Costa Rica. Rudy brings an impactful message about not just having a vision for our future, but really putting that vision into action. It was good for producers to hear this message and think about the decisions they are making daily that either put into play, or hold back vision. Rudy has stories from a lifetime of experiences to make his presentation entertaining and easy to listen to. Thanks Rudy! We also shared some agronomy pointers for both bean and sorghum production, as well as held a workshop on proper nozzle selection and application for pesticides. All in all, a…
Building Relationships
One thing we’ve learned over the years of working here in Nicaragua in ag-development is that we can only relate to people from a position of trust. We’ve worked hard at the actual programs that we deliver for the betterment of rural families, but we’ve worked even harder at building relaionships. This has been as diverse as potable water improvement programs to involvement in community sports. Lately we’ve been keeping ourselves active in communities by sharing a movie night in each of the 20 some communities where we work. This accomplishes 3 things: Sharing an event like this is unique in these communities. We always have our portable power plant along, since some villages don’t yet have electricity. Sitting together watching a movie is something that in most cases, has never happened before in their community. A juice box and little pack of cookies goes a long way to put a…
Successful Harvest begins with Quality Seed
A main objective of La Semilla Ministries has been to make available quality seed to producers of all levels of production. Since we work with small producers (less than 8 acres), a constant struggle that we’ve seen is availability of clean, vigorous seed that carries genetics appropriate for the specific climate zone to be seeded. We have a good working relationship with INTA (Nicaraguan Institute of Technical Agriculture) who do most of the plant breeding in Nicaragua and maintain various lines of genetics. Using them as source of high generation seed, La Semilla works with a group of 6 producers who propagate that seed into a commercial seed that we provide to our producers. Much care is taken through this entire process to ensure quality is maintained. Beans are then dried to 13%, machine processed, hand-selected, then maintained free from humidity, insects, and rodents until the next planting season. A…
The move to Jinotepe
The year 2016 has brought many changes again to La Semilla Ministries and a big one was a change in the location of our office and main place of operations. After having rented a grain processing plant in Jinotepe for the past 2 years and running operations out of the 2 facilities it was apparent that we should move to the processing plant with our offices as well. It was difficult to leave the farm where the ministry was started, where many good memories were made with many locals, many experiments were done as we tried to find ways to help and improve agriculture. So the offices at the processing plant were renovated with new windows, new paint and a good cleaning. We are still making ourselves at home here where there is a bit more traffic noise and the commute for me is now 1 hr to get to…
Suiting Up For Safety
Suiting up for Safety In July of 2016, La Semilla Ministries signed a memorandum of agreement with TECHNOSERVE, an American non-profit focused on agriculture development. Our mutual goal is to see an improved level of production of sorghum in the Carazo, Managua, and Rivas departments, basically the Pacific southwest region of the country. The reasoning is multi faceted: This geographic zone is subject to periodic drought. Sorghum is fairly drought tolerant, therefore a reduced risk for our producers. Reduced risk for our producers mans reduced risk for the credit that the ministry extends for purchase of seed and crop protection products. Sorghum is a crop rotation option, separate from beans, which will, in the long run, lead to more sustainable agriculture income. A more consistent supply of sorghum for industrial use will lead to less reliance on imported feed grains and a stronger national ag sector. As we’ve rolled…
What is La Semilla Ministries all about anyway?
La Semilla Ministries, Carazo, Nicaragua It’s always a joy to share in depth how we define Agriculture Development in Nicaragua. In 2007 La Semilla Ministries was born in the minds of Wally and Esther Wiebe while they were working in construction at a local orphanage. The Wiebe’s had a burden for the poverty stricken families they saw and interacted with in rural Nicaragua. An initiative in economic development seemed appropriate, and since it was rural Nicaragua, the focus quickly became agriculture. In 2009 property was purchased for construction of office space, warehouse, workshop, and also land for research & demonstration. Rob and Leslee Oudman joined the ministry in 2010 to add their agriculture perspective, as they began to exit from their potato growing farm operation in Alberta, Canada. The first years were full of investigations and establishing networks of contacts as the ministry slowly took shape. Community development projects such…
Rob & Leslee Oudman’s August2016 news
Rob & Leslee’s news: Development work: the long road. Saludos de Nicaragua!Each day I awake, enjoying the energy that God gives us to serve Him in practical ways in the rural province of Carazo. La Semilla Ministries is focused on development work, which is often taxing on our energy reserves. The people here are quite accustomed to NGO’s working in communities in various ways to relieve the effects of poverty. Because of this frequent interaction, there is a strong «entitlement» mentality that as development workers we need to overcome. Our stated goal as a mission is to see rural families develop economically stable and sustainable households. So many of the families we know are in survival mode, and that’s a tough position for a family to operate from. So we’re here for the long road, committed to working step by difficult step to help bring stability to these rural…
The Third World
Did you know the term Third World was coined during the Cold War of the 1950’s to define allegiance of the world’s nations in respect to the world super powers – The United States and The USSR? If a country was capitalist, industrialized, and generally followed the policies of the US, it was First World. If a country was communist/socialist, industrialized, and generally followed the policies of the USSR, it was Second World. Third world countries were mainly former colonial nations, or tribal nations without particular political alignments with either the US or the USSR. But today, our understanding of the term is often very different than that. So what’s your definition of a third world nation? Despite ever evolving definitions, the concept of the third world serves to identify countries that suffer from high infant mortality, low economic development, high levels of poverty, low utilization of natural resources,…
Bean Marketing and Sales
A visit to the planta procesadora UNAG (UNAG processing plant) in Jinotepe, Carazo gives one a much closer look at the frijoles, or beans, that we work with here at La Semilla Ministries. The cool breeze—keep in mind, high twenties is cool for us—of Jinotepe rattle the sheet metal on the walls and roof of our warehouse that protects our 55,000 pounds of red beans from heat, wind, and theft. This week the classifying machine rumbles as our beans tumble down the belt while physics and good engineering weed out the grains that are damaged or too small for sale. Magdiel, Franklin, Marcelo, and others haul sack upon sack into the feeder and bag up the sorted beans as they pour out the other end. A couple of members of our team run the bagging operation—weighing out the beans into one or five pound bags,…
Reflections from Postrera 2015
This February the Carazo province of Nicaragua is hot and getting hotter. Strong winds lift dust off of fallow summer fields and bring it into our houses and blow it against our dry and watering eyes. The scalding sun is seldom blocked out by clouds. We are fast approaching the dog days of summer, when water is so scarce that many of the trees lose their leaves. Yet, it is in this context that our ministry and the people we work with plan for and converse excitedly about the coming growing season. Indeed, we now are well into 2016, and as we consider what this still new year will hold we draw on our experiences from 2015 for guidance. The second growing cycle of 2015 has now come to a close, although we continue to buy beans from producers even into this month. Despite high hopes as long-awaited rains finally…