From 2022 to 2027 ECOTOP runs a peritaje, an expert course in dynamic agroforestry and holistic leadership, for the technicians and producers of ANAFAE, the Honduran association for ecological agriculture. The course is financed by MISEREOR.
Ten modules spread over the years take the group from a diagnosis of their own farms to the installation, management and evaluation of a learning plot on each participant’s land. Between the modules the participants manage their plots; at the next module the group visits and evaluates them together.
The participants farm hillsides in the departments of La Paz and Santa Bárbara, with coffee, cocoa, fruit trees and food crops exposed to long dry spells and degraded soils. The usual organic recipes, living barriers, cover crops and compost, solve only part of the problem.
The peritaje builds a different foundation: an understanding of how living systems work, from natural succession to soil life, constructed in the group and then reconstructed by each participant on their own plot. There are no technology packages. The facilitators accompany the plots directly, and the evaluation of each plot is part of the course.
The aim is a group of agroforestry experts in Honduras who can design and manage dynamic agroforestry systems and pass the approach on to other producers, as the first replicating plots already show.
• Ten modules of three to five days: diagnosis of the participants’ farms, installation of learning plots in the rainy season, management and pruning, and virtual follow-up between modules
• Group evaluation of every plot with the traffic-light method, so the participants learn to read the state of a system themselves
• Practical work on the successional model, soil life and the design of the next steps on each plot
• Visits to new plots started by producers outside the course, the first replications of the approach
The fourth module in May 2024 took place in Chinacla, La Paz, with the local association APASOLEN, and included the visit to a new plot in Santa Bárbara.
ANAFAE – Asociación Nacional de Fomento a la Agricultura Ecológica, the Honduran association whose members take part in the course.
APASOLEN – local producers’ association in Chinacla, La Paz, host of the fourth module.
