Years of struggling under woeful conditions on small farms in the Guatemalan highlands left many farmers receptive to the mission of the Ezra Taft Benson Agricultural and Food Institute.
Challenges faced by the farmers as they tried to support their families by working the land in the mountains included poor crop yields, primitive living conditions and malnutrition. They were stuck in a situation with little hope of improving their lives and the lives of their families.
The Benson Institute's mission is to enhance the lives of people in developing nations in agriculture and nutrition, and by helping them do better with the resources they already have, according to the institute's director, N. Paul Johnston.
The institute, a division of the BYU College of Biolgy and Agricluture, will wrap up a five-year program in Guatemala at the end of 1995, after making much progress in fulfilling its mission there.
Brother Johnston acknowledged there are several development agencies attempting to help poor people in emerging nations, but said their programs are often too expensive and are hard to perpetuate.
"What the people like about what we do is that it's a low-technology program," he explained during a recent Church News interview. "It's something they can grasp easily. It's not expensive."
Shortly after the Benson Institute was founded in 1975, Brother Johnston, a professor of animal science, and Laren R. Robison, a professor of agronomy and horticulture, set out to build an assistance program.
"The idea was to develop a way to take care of a family on a hectare [approximately 2 1/2 acres] of land," Brother Johnston said. The family would produce enough food on its land to feed itself and also generate a cash income.
The Benson Institute's major efforts have been in Guatemala, Ecuador and Bolivia. The institute started a program first in Ecuador, but the program there didn't have the stability it needed in order to succeed. So the next area was Guatemala where the institute aligned itself with Centro Universitario de Oriente (CUNORI) in Chiquimula because "schools have some longevity," Brother Johnston noted. "Also, the school is viable because it provides an organization that can perpetuate what is done into the future.
"We're working with 450 families that reside near [CUNORI] in 23 different communities. We're working with impoverished farmers who have very small land holdings."
Representatives from the Benson Institute have traveled to Guatemala frequently to establish the program, coordinate efforts and offer training. CUNORI faculty and students help carry out the program.
Corporate farms have taken over the best parts of the land, leaving many farmers to subsist under adverse conditions in arid, mountainous regions. They have been plagued by poverty. Their meager crops and their diet were the same - corn and beans.
"We try to help people get out of the cycle," said project coordinator Malaquias Flores. "The people are not poor because they don't know how to do things. They're poor because they don't have resources. The institute is providing some of those resources."
Help is extended through associations set up according to the institute's guidelines to include 10-20 farmers. Members of the associations elect their own president and other officers.
"We teach the farmer associations the basics of the program. They in turn help each other," Brother Johnston said.
Villages get into the Benson Institute program by first expressing an interest to CUNORI. "The school will send out a group of students and survey the village and the farms to make sure there really is interest," he explained. "Entire villages can join, but some farmers don't. The ones who don't usually end up looking over the shoulders of the ones who do. On their own now, the ones who don't join are starting to do a lot of the same things. Everywhere we go we see people who are not members of the association picking up the technology, and that's what we want to have happen."
An important resource offered by the institute besides training is financial assistance through a joint effort with Church Humanitarian Services.
Brother Johnston explained: "Church Humanitarian Services has extended to us a certain amount of money that we in turn extend to the farmer associations. They lend the money to individual farmers to help buy the seeds, the fertilizer, the animals, and other things they need in the program."
The goal for farmers participating in the program is to improve productivity, to generate an income that will allow them to pay back the loan at an interest rate set by the association. After the initial loan, usually between $100-$300, they can again borrow as much money as they have repaid.
Another function of the associations is to train specialists in skills that can benefit others in the association. Areas of specialization include such things as gardening, raising broiler chickens, making rope, fabricating storage bins and constructing stoves. These and other money-making opportunities provide services beneficial to association members in general, Brother Johnston said.
Yields of corn and beans have been increased through improved planting practices, proper fertilization and pest control. Soybeans have been introduced as another crop beneficial as a food supplement and animal feed. Crop surpluses can be sold within the association and to other villagers or in marketplaces in Chiquimula.
Some farmers raise broiler chickens, 10 at a time, in bamboo pens. "What a lot of them do is raise 10, eat two and sell eight," Brother Johnston said. "They make enough money from those eight to buy additional birds and make a little profit."
The program encourages association members to plant family gardens to add diversity - and vitamins and minerals - to their families' diets. Again, surpluses can be sold. One enterprising association member created an income through a garden nursery, selling starts for family gardens, according to Brother Johnston.
Storage of crops has improved under Benson Institute methods. Brother Johnston said farmers used to have to sell their corn and beans quickly at any price because what they tried to store in bags or bamboo containers was decimated by mice and rats. Now there are association specialists who manufacture metal containers. Farmers who buy them can store their grain until the market is favorable.
The Benson Institute program adds to the quality of life for the people in many ways including improved cooking facilities and water storage. The standard method of cooking was over an open fire on the ground. That created problems, Brother Johnston said, because dirt and other debris could be inadvertently kicked into the food and there was no venting for smoke. Adobe stoves built by association members are raised off the floor, enclosed and vented. Water, previously stored in small containers of about a gallon capacity, is now stored in 50-gallon concrete tanks.
Improving the health of the people is a goal of the Benson Institute. It is done through several methods. Families that previously had no bathroom facilities now have latrines built with training from the institute. Institute representatives teach the people the importance of cleanliness in preventing the spread of disease.
"Our nutritionists are there," Brother Johnston added. Professor Lora Beth Brown of the BYU Food Science and Nutrition Department took some graduate students with her and traveled to Guatemala to survey families and discover what some of their health challenges were.
"They found that the families' diets were corn and beans, which tend to be deficient in vitamins, minerals, calories and protein quality," Brother Johnston said.
The people are now being taught to incorporate more variety into their diets such as other vegetables, eggs, meat and cheese. High-protein soybean foods are also helpful in nutrition.
Along with its assistance to farmers and their families, the institute also is involved in community projects, Brother Johnston noted. He said: "In each community where we work we try to do something to improve the community. One of the things they really like us to work with is their schools. We do things like build benches and chairs. In some places we help them put kitchens into their schools so they can have a school lunch program. We help build storage areas onto schools or improve the grounds around the schools or build latrines near the schools.
He said the institute also helped one community build a reservoir to store water and another to dig an irrigation canal.
The Benson Institute is now looking forward to other opportunities to fulfill its mission and has initiated programs similar to the one in Guatemala on a smaller scale in Ecuador and Bolivia.
BYU students have helped the Benson Institute, but Brother Johnston would like to see increased involvement. "What I would hope is that some of our graduate students could spend some time in the country actually doing their research there." He added that BYU is going to start teaching a class this fall in Latin American nutrition and food production and the institute is developing a seminar on village agriculture.
Such new developments along with current programs are what Brother Johnston sees as the Benson Institute's path to ennhancing and improving people's lives.