Sachawasi (The House of Trees)
Communitarian Andean-Amazonian Permaculture Centre

PROJECT TO SAFEGUARD THE AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY’S POTENTIAL IN THE SOUTH AND IN THE WEST OF THE MADIDI NATIONAL PARK, BOLIVIA


INTRODUCTION

The biological diversity currently constitutes the major potential wealth in the developing countries. The prospects of her suitable and rational exploitation are related with know-how, which is an other potential wealth kept by local cultures. However, all this resources’stream (food, drugs, pigments, fibers, ornaments, fragrances, insecticides, addictives, resins, etc), is not economically exploited by local people, but only for a personal consumption. Indeed, dominant prospects of wealth’s production are centered on such a monoculture or such another one, according to market’s tendencies.

In this sense, agricultural monoculture and biodiversity’s conservation and rational exploitation are not only incompatible, but there is also a totally harmful consequence on biodiversity because of the use of external synthetical products such as pesticides.

Bolivia is a country which is in possession of a great variety of ecoregions, each one with distinctive characteristics. That is the reason why it is part of the top ten countries with major richness in biodiversity, getting first global place in avifauna, mammals, ornamental plants, etc. The La Paz Department is one of the richest one in biodiversity, with a great heterogeneity of ecosystems, which are reflected in a great potential of natural resources. This situation made this department one of the most fragile because of its strategical location, its richness in natural resources and the lack of State’s political volunty to promote in aid of local people the sustainable use and preservation of these resources.

Since few years people in Bolivia have begun to realize that the resources of primary forests –which cover more than 40% of the national territory- constitute complex and fragile ecosystems, that contain a huge delicately balanced biological biodiversity. Richness and potentialities of this balance lie in this biotical diversity’s maintenance.

In this spirit, the Bolivian Government started to create Protected Areas few years ago in order to safeguard not very damaged regions with significant value for the biodiversity’s preservation, and endowed with a great variety of habitats and an extraordinary richness of species and landscapes.

In 1997, the Bolivian Government created the Madidi National Park, which covers two million hectares, and ecological levels that are situated between an altitude of 150 m (plain savannah and plain amazonian forests) and an altitude of 6000m (Apolobamba Cordillera),between them there are ecosystems such as humid and dry forests until 4000 m, then high meadows from 4000 to 5000 m above sea level and lastly the puna and glaciers. These ecosystems conceal a unique variety of flora and fauna on the continent, according to studies carried out by the Bolivian national herbarium and biological missions from various countries.

Paradoxically, in this region endowed with an outstanding biodiversity, Indian communities leave in a great destitution, and are on a diet of distressing poverty, since they have been taken in by the commercial propaganda for denatured food from industrial origin. It is urgent –and we have begun to- to arrange dietetics lessons, based on native vegetables, cultivated or gathered, for the housewives, in order to ensure the community food security, and a well-balanced diet in every family.
Communities have also lost their dignity, changing from the status of a developed society, with the awareness and the mastery of its ancestral know-how, to the status of an underdeveloped society, because of the contempt with which the dominant society considers their traditional science –or does not even pay attention to it. The recovery of their dignity depends first on the one of their own view of their world. Communities have to value the skills that the elderly and women still have.
The dignity of the Indian Qeshwas communities also depends on the command of their territory. Unfortunately and despise concrete proposals made in the 80’s by a Bolivian ecologists’ group (SADEVER1), no power of decision about park management were given to the Indian communities who live in the national park or in the buffer zone.

The current result is that confrontations between Indian communities and park authorities
(SERNAP – National Service of Protected Areas) prevent any economical development of the province Franz Tamayo’s region. Some leaders of the communities want to develop through hydrocarbons’exploitation, roads’ building, a new park’s delimitation and wood’s exploitation. The conflict between the Bolivian State and communities for the control of the natural resources of the Natural Park natural even degenerated into violent confrontations between thousands of Indians and the Army. In order to get over this spiral of violence and to prevent park’s destruction, it is urgent to offer them more sustainable new economical income sources.

This critical situation may be reversed by offering communities subsidized program of participation to the rescue of the region’s extraordinary biodiversity, among other things agricultural biodiversity, which is in great danger of erosion. Indeed, there is a total lack of interest from the State (and from many farmers too) for its preservation and scattering.

Moreover the control of the agricultural frontier’s widening is essential for the park’s protection. Some communities begin taking interest in the restoration of ancient agroforest practices. That is how, in the Virgen del Rosario community (called Tuichi), situated on the banks of the Tuichi river that crosses the park from West to East, the Center of Forest Agricology « Alto Tuichi » was founded in 2005.

Today the Center works in the Quechua communities of Santa Cruz del Valle Ameno and of Tuichi. It dedicates itself to the research on agricultural biodiversity and vegetable forest native endemic resources of the Park, that are used in the agroforest plots. This research field, until now, has not received any logistic or financial support from the Government or NGOs.

This huge richness of plants selected and grown since ancient times is now in great danger of disappearance. Indeed, agriculture at high altitudes (from 200 to 4500 m) is stopped due to exodus towards cities or tropics. Moreover, the number of cultivars dramatically goes down, year after year.
For example, in tropical and sub-tropical region, rice displaced many traditional cultures.

After years of research on the varieties of plants for food, traditional and medicinal uses, that are forest or grown, and endemic of the region, the Center Alto Tuichi aims to create prototypes of multi-level cultures, combining at each environmental level as much plants’ diversity as possible (roots, tubercle, vegetables, cereals, legumes, quenipodeas,shrubs, creepers and low, medium,high and dominant trees). These plants are combined with themselves, taking into account their needs of shade and light, their radicular systems, their branches’ width, their biological intercompatibilities (companion plants). Fodder or melliferous plants, for medicinal or traditional use, and preferably for numerous uses, are incorporated in such
agro-ecosystem.
This sort of agro-ecosystem is also called «permaculture» (cultures with permanent soil’s cover).

In a second time, the Center will offer the farmers from various environmental levels the possibility of buying and then of producing themselves the whole indigenous vegetable equipment (seeds, cuttings, seedlings, young plants, grafts) of their area, once the economic interest of these products – for the most part unknown in the country itself- in the national and international markets will have been demonstrated. This seeds’bank will ensure the economic independancy of the Center Alto Tuichi.

We show below some results of our research and experimentations, as possible examples of permaculture or agroforest systems:

- agricultural cycle in the Chaupiyungas (1) of the pre-Columbian Antisuyu (currently temperate valley of the eastern Cordillera of Peru, North and Center of Bolivia)

From Bruno de Roissart, farmer during seven years in a Quechua comunity of the Chaupiyunga of the Bolivian-Peruvian border.

The Chaupiyunga is the strip of Andean land on the Amazonien side where temperatures are between 0 and 30°C in the shade.

On the border between Bolivia and Peru, this land stretches from an altitude of 2200m to 2900 m.
This agricultural ecosystem was the more productive one of the Inca Empire.

A. In the irrigable land (qarpanayujcharjra):

1 - Chajmana: in March (end of the hell-bent on), the land being at rest (puruma) for many years, it was turned over with the chaquitajlla (Inca shovel).

2 - Qorpana: in April, lumps of earth dry in the sun. In May, their weeds are shaken with the laucana (little hoe) or are hit with the qarpana (mass of wood)

3 - Ruphana: adventitious plants are burned in heaps distant of more or less 10 meters, all along culture’terraces. Half the ashes are let on the spot. The other half is spread in the whole field.

4 - Pirqana: fallen stone walls of the terraces are rebuilt, following contour lines. The richest soil, sifted, is carried on llamas’ back, from the lowest terrace to the highest one, in order to prevent any soil’s waste during the later works.

5 - Qarpana: in June, after the cleaning of the irrigation canals, the layout and excavation of the subsidiary canals in the field itself, the earth is thoroughly watered.

6- Tarpuna: the next day, the potato milly is sowed (winter varieties of valley : potatoes imilla and runa) in khanis (groups of about ten closed furrows, with a last perpendicular furrow to contain the irrigation water); on the ashes’ heaps –rich in potash-, pumpkins are sowed.
On the pataqochu (foot of the terrace’s wall) is sowed miqulla (climbing leguminous plant) in orther that it climbs and produces nitrogen in this area, always poorer in manure. In the patajawa (outside edge of the terrace), kulli (Andean cabbages) are planted to hold back and take advantage of the finest soil’s elements that irrigation water carries along.

7 - Papa qarpana: the dry season lasting from October to November, the potato and its combined cultures are irrigated each time it is necessary.

8 - Papa llanqana: in June, first potato’s weeding. Where seeds have not germinated, edible roots are sown: arrachaca, walusa, camote, chiri, llakon.

9 - Papa quturna: at the end of June, potatoes are earthed up.

10 - Milli sara tarpuna : in August, after potatoes’ earthing up, early maize is sown in the furrows’ bottom, preferably the variety zena, because its ear withstands better the rain during the maturation. Combined with the miqulla (climbing legume) and with lacayote (calabash).

11 - Potato allana: in October potatoes are harvested : the earth moved by this harvesting falls in the furrows’ bottom, where maize already grows. Like this a first weeding and earthing up of the maize is automatically carried out.
Pumpkins, cabbages, beans, arracachas, walusas, sweet potatoes, chiris and llakons, buttés through the same operation, will reach at last their maximal growth. The pumpkin ripens better in the maize’s shade, meanwhile the calabash grows and flowers better there. Calabashes will ripen when maize’s leafs dry. In this very environmental Quechua permaculture (permanent culture), everything is calculated to get the best crop rotations and combinations, the best use of the land and its nutritious elements, and a total saving of the soil, keeping it always covered with vegetation.

12 - milli sara qûturna: in December, great earthing up of the early maize and the miqulla.

13 - allana: from November to March, everything that was sown before the maize is harvested : successively the miqulla at the terraces’ back, pumpkins, Andean cabbages and edible roots : sweet potatoes, walusas, racachas, chiris and llakons.

14 - Milli sara tipîna: in February, early maize in milky ear is harvested.

15 - Sara tarpuna: a system much more widespread for the lesser risks of ear’s rot, is to sow maize, combined with miqulla, as always, in November or at the beginning of December, after the potatoes’ harvest, in all the sites that are not occupied by the vegetables combined with potatoes. The earthing up of this maize is carried out in December or January, and it is trodden out in February or March.

16 - Sara tipîna: in May or June, maize is trodden out, miqulla is treshed and pumpkins are put away. Seeds of maize, miqulla and pumpkins come only from this winter harvest.

17 - Chajra ruq’ana: in July, the only month of the year during which the land is without cultures, packsaddle alpacas and llamas of maize’s buyers coming from the Altiplano, the Puna (high Cordillera) or high altitude valleys, graze in the field to clean out stems, debris and weeds, and at the same time fertilize the soil.

18 - Racacha mallkina: in August, in this field having irrigation at its disposal, racacha and other roots and vegetables are sowed with the chaquitajlla (Inca shovel), without any soil’s preparation, as it is already cleaned out and fertilized by the animals. Roots are irrigated before it starts to rain(November and December), and they end their growth with rainfall. A weeding and earthing up is carried out. The racacha has a vegetative cycle that varies from 9 to 18 month according to the varieties (white, yellow, purple).

If people go on fertilizing the soil each year, they can indefinitely begin the same agricultural cycle again, with little variations.
The eighteen agricultural operations mentionned above are carried out in the same field, which enables each family to have a great harvests’ variety at their disposal throughout the year, on few land, provided that they have irrigation at their disposal.

B. In the non-irrigable land

After having carried out the work of chajmana, qorpana, ruphana and pirqana (see above), a seedbed per year during five years or so is carried out, until the soil is too poor.

Year 1: hanqa sara (maize to roast), combined with miqulla. Seedbed in November. Harvesting in June.

Year 2: maize to eat picked off, in bread, crushed, in huminta (maize’s cake), in chicha (maize’s beer), etc, combined with the miqulla and lupin.Seedbed in November or in early December.
Harvesting in May or June.

Year 3: potato pureja (produced in three months), alone. Seedbed in February, harvesting in May. Can be combined with the misillu (early legume, with a non-climbing stiff stem).

Year 4 : quinoa or amaranthus(quenipodeas), combined with lupine.

Year 5 : lupine alone, misillu alone, quinoa or amaranth combined with lupine. The land was then left fallow a few years.

There are marginal cultures

1: in vegetable gardens, as the uchu (pepper), the high altitudes pawpaw, the arborescent tomato and the pre-Columbian vegetables (yuyus) (cf the study from the same author about the High Andes’ diet).

2: along Inca paths, medicinal, carpentry, fruit trees, etc were planted to salvage the manure of packsaddle animals’ excrement and give travelers shade.

4 kinds of manure :

1: for the more demanding cultures : guano of Pacific coast birds and fishes’head (a grain of maize is buried in a head of sardine or sushi)
2: for standard cultures (except quinoa, amaranth and lupine, which do not need manure) : excrement of llamas and alpacas.
3: for the potatoes’ seedbed : ginea-pigs’ excrement.
4: for the family kitchen garden : a compost made from household refuse, ashes, hairs, bones, feathers, blood, old leathers and clothes, human excrement, etc.

The agricultural innovations imported by the Spanish were:

The Egyptian scratch-plough, dragged by oxes, displaced the Inca shovel.

New cultivars, that were intergrated into the former agricultural cycle:
- The broad bean and the petit pois, that displaced the miqulla and the lupine.
- The wheat, that displaced the quinoa and the amaranth.
- The peach tree and other fruit trees of European origin.

New and ancient tools and plants continue co-existing.
The main improvement of the pre-Columbian system that I could test out is the seedbed of fodder legumes, such as vetches, the lucerne or the clover, when leaving the land fallow. This permits to feed the animals better, while fertilizing the soil by nitrogen content, and thus shortening the rest time of the land.
The technical terms in italic are in the Quechua of Charazani

- TREE PERMACULTURE BETWEEN AN ALTITUDE OF 500 AND 2000 METERS IN THE HIGH AMAZONIA AT THE LATITUDE OF THE TITICACA LAKE (Yungas of the La Paz Department)

Beginning with primary and secondary forests, without ax nor matches (neither cutting down nor burn). Necessary tools: a machete.

Year 1 :
- Bark ringing (peel a bark ring at the base of the tree) of all trees except those useful for the construction, for their fruits or their medicinal properties.
- Cut down all bamboos and use them for the first buildings.
- Clear little clearings to sow the fruit trees at the beginning of the rainfall.

Year 2:
- The ringed trees die slowly but are still useful a few years as support of the fruit creepers that are sown at their foot. The luminosity increases at ground level as ringed trees lose their leaves, which permits the germination of the seeds of trees or fruit creepers.
- In November, all the low-stature vegetation is cut and mucuna is sown, except where grow young fruit trees. This fodder legume, with a phenomenal growth, will cover everything, speeding up the decomposition of the organic matter (branches and weeds on the ground). Papaw trees and banana trees begin producing.

Year 3:
- In June, seeds of mucuna are harvested ; the mucuna then dies, leaving a land cleared of all its weeds, with an important composted organic matter, and a soil enriched in nitrogen.
- In September or October, maize, manioc or other yearly cultures can already be sown ; the fruit trees go on growing.
- In November other trees are planted to create cultures with several levels.

 

CULTURES WITH SEVERAL LEVELS IN THE YUNGAS OF LA PAZ (humid subtropical forest between an altitude of 700 and 1800 meters)

A. Higher stratum (15 to 25 m or more)

- Forest trees : mahogany, cerebo, laurel, cedro, tropical walnut tree.
- Fruit trees:
*Ako-ako (or paquiu) : (under 1500 m) fructifies in September, October or November. Very tall.
*Manete : above 1000 m. Leaves similar to the ones of the coffee tree ; orangey fruit of the height of a strawberry or a medlar, rough skin, tastes like the arbutus-berrye, creamy and fragrant, fructifies at end of January, tall and majestic.
*Chima: (below 1800 m) thorny palm tree, green and red fruit, to make it boil a quarter of an hour, ripe in January, February and March.
* Tropical «apple», tropical «pear»
*Thola: big tree with small fruits, ripens all year.

Medium stratum (from 5 to 15 m)

- Avocado tree.
- Wild carambola tree: in mountain dry forest; shiny yellow fruit, in the shape of a star of 3 cm in diameter, with or without pit, juicy and fragrant, ripe from October to December. Tree that grows in the shade, with a beautiful bark.
- Majo (or sayal, or chari): palm tree ; fruit ripe from January to April, to eat dissolved in lukewarm water, tastes of very fine chocolate.
- Taruma: from 1200 to 1800 m ; majestic tree ; green fruit, then red, then black at maturity (in March), sweet, similar to a big olive.
- Achachairu (or camururo, or p’otoï): grows in half-shade.
3 varieties (one green and two yellow). Ripens in February and March. The variety p’otoï is green outside, with a white and creamy flesh, and a pit of the height of a olive. The two other varieties have a yellow peel with a white flesh, one is small, the other one is big.
- Palm tree with an edible heart.
- Lujma: ripe from January to March ; fruit bigger than the lujmillo variety, fruit’s peel also thicker.
- Papayillo: fruit similar to a small papaya, ripe in February.
- Cashew nut.
- Tamarind: legume, sweet and slightly acid pod, very fragrant.
- Mango tree: ripe in February and March.
- Pujllay kaspi (native type of cassia) : legume, laxative fruit, ripens in the dry season.

- Citrus trees: orange tree and grapefruit tree.
- Pacay (or k’ipopacay): two forest wild varieties (one on the mountain slopes, the other one near river banks and several cultivated varieties. Legumes : pods with a sweet and downy flesh. Fruits ripe from January to March.
- Papaya tree: needs light, fructifies all year.

C. Low stratum (till 5 m)

- Banana trees: in the sun or in half-shade, fructifies all year. Two types :
° To cook: turco, bellaco, ubito, barbaro, etc.
° To eat raw: isla, seda, guineo, brasil (red peel and reddish flesh), enano, mataborracho (or manzano), enano real and juchui enano.
- Mandarin tree : needs light, ripe from April to June.
- Lemon tree: needs light; ripens all year.
- Lime: in half-shade ; ripens from March to October.
Cherimoya tree: in half-shade.
- Wild guava : yellow peel, flesh pinkish or white (sweeter and rarer). Ripens from March to May,
and at high altitude.
- Wild vanilla.
- Motacu (or ubito): palm tree whose fruit’s kernel is to ea ; produces a hair oi; ripens all year.
Spaghetti gourd: creeper, in the shade or half-shade.

At the ground’s level:

-Pineapple :
° Wild variety: in half-shade (ripe in January and February).
° Cultivated barieties: in the sun. Ripens all year long.
- Sweet potato : in half-shade of manioc or banana tree ;
- Under the pacays and wild guava trees : sow coffee trees, beans, chirwi (a type of beans),
cherry tomatoes, cotton, pepper and passion fruit (and its wild variety called hopoqolo: purple peel,
grows above 2000 m).
- Under the manioc : the coca at its growth’s beginning ;
- Other combinations (from the high stratum to the low stratum) : manete, avocado tree, papaya tree (fructifies in nine months and lasts few years), pacay (grows quickly), tamarind, citrus trees (grow slowly, great longevity), cherimoya tree and coffee tree.

 

TRADITIONAL VEGETABLES

A. ROOTS

Llankuma (llakon) : to eat raw ; pale yellow heart surrounded with purple;
straight and branched stem 1,50 m high.
Chuki oca: to eat in the form of p’uti (boiled). Shrub 60 cm high, long leaves similar to the ones
of the bamboo.
Motosiu: roots 5 cm diameter, stems 1 m high, leaves similar to the chiri.
Muk’ulo: tall height purple and white roots ; creeper strong as a cable; wild plant.
Achira: purple flowers and leaves.
Amaspeque: roots containing a starch used among other things in medicine for illnesses of the liver and of stomach. High price.
Camote (sweet potato): yellow, purple, red or orangey roots
Walusa: very large dark green leaves
Japon (called uncucha in Cusco): dark green leaves
Runtu maya: big yellow root plate-shaped, dark green leaves. Grown as the walusa.
Maya: roots from 10 to 20 cm diameter, big strong green leaves.
Kanka maya: similar to the maya. The base of the stem (30 cm) is eaten roasted. Multiplies by offshoots.
Palillo: its root is used to dye foods yellow. High price.

B. LEAVES

Kulis: forest cabbage with big leaves (5 cm wide, 50 cm long). In the rainy season, its young leaves are consumed to prepare tortillas.
Llutu yuyu: subtropical purslane with big strong green leaves.
True purslane: with small leaves, that turn yellow in the rainy season.
Qoimi (amaranth): leaves are eaten before flowering.


C. FRUIT

Chillitotomate: cherry tomato. The only tomato that goes not rotten in the rainy saison. Repellent plant. Other red or yellow wild varieties, some of them very sweet, can be found in the woods.
Papa mocona (or papa al aire) : big fruit of a creeper, is cooked as the potato.
Inca inchis (or mani al aire) : creeper whose fruits are eaten as the groundnut (in a sauce or roasted). Very fine taste.
Two shrubs (1,20 m and 1,50 m high) whose fruits (5 mm diameter) in bunches, black or turquoise, ripen at All Saints’Day.

D. CEREALS
Qoimi (amaranth) : stem 2,50 m high, very loaded with tiny golden yellow grains.
Maize :
- cubano blanco and cubano amarillo (ripen in 3 months) for hens and human beings.
- chullpi maize (4 months). Above an altitude of 500 m.
- pasangalla (4 months)
- watasara (5 months)
- amarillo maize (5 mois), to drink in chicha (maize beer) and to eat in humintas (maize cake)
- perla maize : 5 to 6 m high ; fructifies as the sorghum, tiny grains especially suggested for chicks.

E. BEANS
Noventon or cubano : (produced in 3 months) small purple, black or white grain; does not climb nor branch.
Cochabamba poroto: (4 months) purple.
Huacaporoto: (4 months) grain similar to the one of the cocoa, round ; white, yellow or black flecked with white or red.
Moraporoto : (4 to 5 months) creeper, grains in several colors.
Misillu: ( 5 months) small erected plant. Small white or yellow grain.
Chirwi: ( 5 months) long pod, very small white, black or brown grains.
Palomañawi*: (7 to 8 months) tall, round and pinkish.
Curpusporoto*: (7 to 8 months) white.
Pallaris*: (7 to 8 months) big grains.
Wataporoto : (10 months) white, black or yellow.
Chicharilla (or pitipoa in Cusco) : shrub, long-term ; can last 20 years if it is pruned every year at 10 or 20 cm from the ground.
Chiliporoto *

* Beans fructifying in the dry season

 

The project

Duration:
5 years to prepare the plots and start up the agro-ecosystems at various altitudes.

Places:
- Santa Cruz del Valle Ameno (5 hectares) at an altitude of 1800 m
- Tuichi (3 hectares) at an altitude of 950 m

Objectives:
- in the short term: search of the vegetal material and setting up of the agro-ecosystems
- in the medium term: dissemination (sale) of the vegetal material ; workshops and lessons on the spot or in the interested communities.
- in the medium and long terms : search of markets and marketing

Logic of intervention:

- Main objective: safeguard the agricultural biodiversity of the North of the La Paz Department

- Specific objective: set up agro-ecosystems in Santa Cruz del V. A. and Tuichi

Results

Search of the vegetal material
Setting up of the cultures with several levels
Form representatives of the communities of the Franz Tamayo and Bautista Saavedra provinces
Follow the cultures’growth
Compilation of the learned lessons (traces of the experiments)
Spreading the results using pages, book and video publication, etc.

Activities

Year 1 and 2: Expeditions to the inter-Andean and tropical valleys of the North of the La Paz Department to study native crop plants in order to list all them and to describe the agricultural traditions.

Human resources: Bruno de Roissart and Ahieser Patty Mejia

Material resources : all-terrain motor bike (US $ 6000), fuel (US $ 3000), bus tickets, accomodation and food (US $ 1000), laptop (US $ 2000), printer, photocopier, scanner: (US $500), digital camera(US $100), sound recorder (US $100), video camera (US $500).

Year 1: Two-month trip to the Southern Peru where the climat and soil are similar to those in North of Bolivia. There is high agricultural biodiversity in department of Cuzco, especially in the « sacred valley » (temperate climat) and in the Quillabamba Valley (climats from subpolar to tropical). US $ 3000

4.2.1 Year 1: Preparation of contents and equiment for workshops, this year only in Santa Cruz del V. A. and Tuichi, before the beginning of growing. US $1000 and US $500. Total : 1500 US $.

4.2.2 Invitation for trainings after achieving good results in our experimental field to spread them in other communities of the region.

4.2.3Workshops and lessons. Each workshop lasts 3 days in each community and will be repeated in different seasons.
- Evaluation of agronomial posssibilities
- Clearing and preparation of the fields
- Sowing and planting
- Weeding and maintaining
- Harvesting, storing, transformation

4.2.4 Assessment of the trainings and follow-up of the experiments in the communities from which the trainees of the workshops originally come from:
Buying of the land in Santa Cruz del V.A.: 14 hectares of relatively flat ground at the river from two private owners. The ground will become community's property : US $14000. Railing in some parts of the ground wall around the land (500m x 2.5US $/m, total 1250 US $.

The land of Tuichi (5 hectares) is the property of the community so it is not necessary to buy it. Railing in costs 2.5 US $/m x 900m so the total cost is 2250 US $

4.3.2 Preparation of the pieces of land in Santa Cruz del V.A. and Tuichi: selective clearing, composting, preparation of « terra preta » (ancient amazonic techique which uses wood carbon to keep and grow soil's fertility. After that we will sow mucuna (leguminous) to increase fertility even more: 40 men and 20 women in the period of 20 days x 5 US $/day, total: 6000 US $

4.3.3 Sowing and planting of 19 hectares: the whole agroforestry system has to be planted, sowed, maintained and protected from the numerous wild predators the same year: highest trees, high trees, medium trees, low trees, bushes, annual plants, fruit creepers will be sowed below the forest trees kept for their properties (medicine, fruits, building) : 900 US $/ hectare x 19 hectares = 17100 US $ (working force: 500US $/hectare ; seeds and tree nursery plants: 400 US $/hectare.

4.3.4 Agricultural works of the Year 3: sowing annual plants, cleaning seedbeds and all plantations, crops and stocking.

4.3.5 Classification and stock of the seeds for next year, making eleven cupboards from repellent wood to store the seeds: 11 x 150US $= 1650 US $. Scale and other materials to store the seeds: 350US $

4.3.6 General assessment of Year 3, annual raport

Complete cycle of general maintenance of the agro-ecosystems of Years 3,4 and 5: balanced budget between incomes(selling crops and seeds) and outcomes(workers' salary and renewing the materials)

Salaries of project's director, other people in charge of project and permanent secretary (administration, website, communication etc. during five years: 12000US $+ 6000US $+6000US $/ year in the period of five years =60000US $/ 5 years

Budget for 5 years: 180300 US $

Origin of the financing

Source of financing nº 1: A foundation,to found.50 percent
Source of financing nº 2: Diocese of Coroico,North Yungas,La Paz departement.38%
Source of financing n° 3: Accion Productiva 7 %
Participation of the city councils: 5 %

Self-financing:
- by sale of vegetal material
- by workshops and lessons in Bolivia and in other Andean-Amazonian countries

Staff :

Bruno de Roissart: (Belgian, 55 years old) farmer specialist in pre-Columbian permaculture in the Andean and Amazonian environmental levels between an altitude of 500 m and 5000 m. Resident in Bolivia since 1974. Speak Quechua. Ex-councillor in pre-Columbian agroecology for the Tupac Katari departmental federation of the Indian farmers of the La Paz Department in 1984 and 1985. In 1980 participated in the foundation of two schools of kallahuaya famous herbalist medecine, and the Bolivian Company of Traditional Traditional Medecine (SOBOMETRA). In 2007 participated in the Agriculture and Environment Commissions of the Constituent Assembly of Bolivia. Member of the Quechua communities of Santa Cruz del V. A. and Tuichi.

Casiano Ahiezar Patty Mejia: (Bolivian Quechua, 24 years old) agroforest technician specialized in bioindicators of the cultures of the Chaupiyunga and Uraiyunga environmental levels, and in biological agriculture in the subtropical La Paz Department.

Farmers of the Tuichi and Santa Cruz del V.A. communities, for the search of vegetal material and experimentation in their own plots.

Justification of the project:

Contribution to the local problematics of development:

The North of the La Paz Department feels abandoned by the policies of development of the State. In vue of the difficulties of communication by clay trail, we have to envisage the agricultural self-sufficiency, with export of light products, not very voluminous, « concentrated », with a great economic value.
For example: dried fruits, medicinal plants, etc.

Increasing the status of elders' knowledge:

Until today a source of traditional knowledge survived among the old farmers and herbalists of the province Franz Tamayo, which is urgent to save from the oblivion. That is a good way of reinstate them in the economic and social life.

Increasing the status of women's knowledge:

Traditionally women are the guardians of specific knowledge about plants growth, wild, food, medicinal or with traditional use.

Contribution to the self-suficiency and the food security:

Saving native agricultural plants and endemic of the region of the Madidi National Park from the disappearance and the oblivion is the key to a dignified life for its local people, avoiding dependency towards imported products.

Improvement of the income and living conditions of the population:

Products that can be sold on the national and international markets are:
* honey of apis melipona (small native bee without sting);
* medicinal plants (pharmacopeia of more than one thousand plants);
* incense, copal;
* grown and wild, dried, organic fruits;
*flour of roasted amaranth, organic;
*cane sugar, organic and unrefined.

Possible (strongly wished) multiplications of the project:

Usufruct of the land is property of the community that is the recipient of the subsidization. After the recipient community will be obligated to help other communities to set up the same experimental fields. These communities will have to find a communitary land in the extention chosen by them (recommended extention: 0.5 ha per family). The communities which recived the first financial help will have to give plants and seeds and supervise all the works during the first three years in another community of the same ecological level. Each subsidized hectare in the first community creates an obligation to help new communities on three hectares because the last ones will make all the other works. We hope to obtain a multiplicated effect of he first subsidization.

1 *SADEVER was founded in 1984 -following a proposal by the person who made the present project- in order to support the Madidi park’s creation, and corollarily to recruite Indian forest wardens appointed by their communities and to create a network of tambos (fortified « markets-inns ») around the park, where ecoproducts harvested in the park would have been sold. Tambos would also have been used as checkpoints at park’s entrances.

Written by Bruno de Roissart