Category Archives: Entrepreneurship

Announcements, Creativity, Diversification, Entrepreneurship, Peasant Agriculture, Poverty, Reflections, Rural development

Economic diversification, a way to erradicate poverty

April 24, 2015 René Mendoza Leave a comment

Economic diversification, a way to erradicate poverty

by René Mendoza Vidaurre and Edgar Fernández

The United Nations declared 2014 as the International year of Family Farming, and 2015 as the International Year of Soils. In Latin America and the Caribbean 80% of the agricultural exploitations are family farms, including more than 60 million people. Family agriculture has to do with farming, forestry, fishing, herding and aquatic production managed by families based mostly on family labor. One path that most helps family farming identity and soils is productive diversification, which provides food security and rural development, mitigates climate change and improves resilency in the face of droughts and flooding, regenerates nutrients for the soil, conserves a quarter of the biodiversity, and helps to manage water.

Historically peasant families and small producers have diversified in order to stagger their income, reduce their risks, and cultivate their autonomy in the face of usury and mechanisms for dispossessing them of their land. In this article, recognizing this legacy, we argue that in the current context we need to rethink productive diversification; we do it based on the experiences of families in Cinco Pinos, San Francisco, La Dalia, Quilalí, Jalapa, Jícaro and Palacaguina, supported by the Irish Catholic Agency for Development (TROCAIRE), the Union of Cooperatives of Farmers and Ranchers of Quilalí (UGAQ), the Orfilia Vásquez Cooperative (COACOV), the Association for Diversification and Communal Farm Development (ADDAC), the Association Commission for Rural Development (CODER) and the OCTUPAN Association. With that purpose in mind we present four types of diversification, then we highlight some points in common, and finally the challenges to promote it.

Types of diversification

Type 1: light products and products that “walk”. In dry areas like the community of Plazuela of Palacaguina, more than 10 kms from the municipal capital (the market), and without public transportation, the optimal diversification is into light products (chicory, mint, coriander, basil, oregano, etc) that the family of Natividad Matey takes out in bunches in a basket on bicycle, or products that walk, like pigs (“walking corn”). In this type of places, diversifying with dozens of avocado, citrus and mango trees results in lost resources, as can be observed in many communities with mangos littering the ground; because just the cost of transportation is more than their monetary value.

Type 2: products weighed in quintals. In zones far from the market, but blessed by rain and access to public transportation, like La Tronca of La Dalia, the optimal diversification is with cacao and coffee, basic grains and small and large livestock. The family of Ernesto Pineda sells their cacao and coffee, high value crops, through the cooperative, and the cattle they sell on their farm. Combining ranching and agriculture is a high value path.

Type 3: products weighed by the dozen. In areas with access to public transportation and close to highways, like Santa Bárbara of Jalapa, the optimal diversification is into fruit trees, citrus trees, including nancite and jocote, and foilage. In these conditions the family of Seyda Delmín sells their products in the house itself, sends them on buses to clients who order them from Ocotal, and sells them in the “Segovian Night Fair” once a month organized by the Municipal Government of Ocotal; and they do it with 1.5 mzs of land, flouting the belief that “more area you have the more income you get.” The family of Arturo Carrasco does it as well 500 mts from the principal capital in San Francisco, he takes his products to the market even carrying them in his arms.

Type 4: processed and non agricultural products. In dry zones with a history of ranching haciendas and families without access to land, particularly families led by women, optimal diversification includes commerce (buying and selling products), processing and agriculture. The family of Elia Gutiérrez in San Bartolo de Quilalí sells clothing, she is a teachers, and works in agriculture within the framework of an extended family; the family of Aurora Sarantes in El Jicaro rents land for basic grains, sells products, makes bread and ground coffee, and sells their labor; the family of Lorena Vásquez in Cinco Pinos rents land for basic grains and sells their corn as tortillas and their beans by the pound in their family storefront. These three families even overcame the exclusion of the millennium institution of inheritance.

Common patterns

Comparing the four types of diversification, we learn that diversifying, even though it varies depending on the conditions of the place and the families, is consistent in combining ecological sustainability and economic, social and political sustainability; it is not just having various crops but combining them in the logic of a system.

Even in families with more than 30 manzanas of land, their productive diversification area is less than 3 manzanas; in many cases it is half a manzana. The foundation for the four is the planting of basic grains, be that in their own area or in rented land. It is their first step on which they build the diversification – as they say in Mexico, “there is no country without corn.” The diversified areas improve the quality of their soils and avoid erosion, maintain the humidity, preserve water springs and creeks, and are spaces for intensive crop association. Families with less land area, even without land, when they diversify their economic activities, improve their income and their lives. Those who diversify generally are connected to different markets, energizing their economies, even some of these families learn to read their surroundings, to not have competition, introducing new crops on their geographies.

The more diversified the economic activities, the more gender equity there is; the women have more ingredients for the family table, better health in the family, yearlong income even though it be in small amounts and less indebtedness, turn the market into a space for making friends and for learning, and in their homes shared decision making tends to increase. They are families that diversify their minds, think up different forms of organization (family networks, friendship networks with their clients, community groups and cooperatives), and tend to have greater leadership in their extended families and their communities.

Toward intelligent diversification

Diversifying products is a big step, processing them (pasta combining chicory, mint, coriander, onions, garlic and tomatoes, pickles, nacatamales, roasted coffee) is like climbing Momotombito, and winning niche markets where in addition friendships are weaved is like climbing Momotombo. Nevertheless, even with these steps, you have to observe each crop and product daily, erasing the belief that “after planting it is just a matter of waiting”, resist the temptations of institutions that show up with aid before listening to the families, understand contexts of resistance to the large hacienda systems and “market integration” that are imposed, dispossessing land and degrading natural resources, and awaken the passions and energy that the families create, diversifying their farms and their economies.

It is a matter of diversifying in an intelligent way depending on the conditions in each zone, the potential of each family and their social network, building new horizons and making the markets work for families. Accompanying the families in these practices and ideas requires accepting two universal truths: to help, first you have to understand what to help with; and wherever there are good initiatives there are always people.

* René (rmvidaurre@gmail.com) has a PhD in Development Studies, is a collaborator of the Winds of Peace Foundation (http://peacewinds.org/research/), associate researcher for IOB-University of Antwerp (Belgium) and of the Nitlapan-UCA Research and Development Institute (Nicaragua). Edgar is a collaborator of the Winds of Peace Foundation.

Announcements, Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Organizational Development, Ownership, Rural development, WPF partners

Very Cooperative

March 28, 2015 Steve Sheppard Leave a comment

Winds of Peace Foundation has committed a great deal of time and resources to the study and development of cooperatives in Nicaragua. Over the past five years alone, WPF has supported more than thirty coops; underwritten the cost of a half-dozen cooperative workshops for rural participants; commissioned studies about their history, makeup, the effects of climate upon them, and the context of coffee; and now partially sponsored an entire cooperative certificate program to continue teaching and to provide a tangible marker of achievement. We’ve even pitched the idea for the creation of a “Synergy Center,” whereby WPF might partner with a North American university to share its wealth of experiences and findings and provide a destination for students and delegations wanting to know more about the realities of Central American neighbors.

We’ve had some amazing successes. We’ve also experienced some unexpected and disappointing defaults. We’ve come to know a lot about Nicaraguan coops and what makes them work. Yet, at the same time, we’ve had one organization- not even a cooperative in structure- that models the cooperative methodologies and successes as well or better than almost any other partner. Yes, I’ve had another visit with ANIDES.

ANIDES has been guiding women of the rural communities of Matagalpa in the creation of small community banks in recent years, creating financial literacy, sustainability, independence and savings accounts for its participants. The impact upon the lives of its members is palpable, not only in terms of financial strengthening, but also in quality of life and family. WPF has admired the motivations and results of this group for years. And now, ANIDES is proud to be reporting that these small community banks are becoming formally-registered cooperatives, with ten of the current thirteen banks in the registration process. The objective is to eventually form a union of cooperatives once all registrations are complete.

These coops offer strengthened opportunities for their members to establish outlets for their small enterprises: crafts, bread-baking, small services and other commercial ventures. These entrepreneurial efforts have created the financial wherewithal to “feed” the community banking enterprise. The resources generated by these small enterprises often are used to fund significant events, such as the addition of indoor plumbing to a home, a water softener for cleaner drinking and washing water, or education opportunities for members’ children, a dream that might otherwise seem very out-of-reach for these same families.

The legal cooperative status confers some technical advantages for the women members: they will have access to joint banking accounts, easier accessibility to those accounts, greater security for deposits, cooperative education to further their understanding of collaborative advantages, opportunities to learn from one another. The plan is to conduct monthly meetings among the cooperative delegates to consistently share experiences, problems, concerns, financial lessons and to celebrate what has been and promises to be a continuing success story in the rural countryside of Matagalpa.

The real value of these fledgling cooperatives, however, may not be in the technical or legal characteristics that registration will confer. The bigger impact just may be on the lives and attitudes of those who have been willing to risk moving out of their comfort zones and into positions of learning and financial responsibility. For most, it’s an act of faith. (By comparison, imagine yourself voluntarily signing up for a quantum physics class as a forty-something year-old, when you barely understand arithmetic.) But such is their determination for improving their families’ circumstances, to work in some form of solidarity. It also underscores a deepening sense of self-respect: in discussing a request for possible funding, they have specified for the first time in our work together that the funding be in the form of a loan, to be fully repaid. (I truly wish I could convey the sense of pride on the faces of the women as they specified a loan.)

They are taught and they understand the basic finances of their banks. They assume positions of leadership, likely for the first time in their lives. They make decisions among themselves. They establish and attend meetings of their banks, sometimes walking for miles to be present. They create celebrations of their work and themselves. In short, these women do the things that successful cooperatives- successful organizations of any sort- must do in order to endure.

As WPF imagines new ways of bringing together organizations to model best practices and to learn from one another, ANIDES might very well need to be part of the mix, even though they aren’t growing coffee, beans, rice or raising cattle. What they are raising is their quality of life, their knowledge and their self-esteem, and being very cooperative about it….

Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Interdependence, Leadership Succession, Organizational Development, Reflections, Rural development, Visioning, WPF partners

Iguanas on the Wall

March 23, 2015 Steve Sheppard Leave a comment

With the emphasis on education during my recent visit to Nicaragua, we had the pleasure of re-visiting the Association of Women Builders of Condega (AMCC). AMCC is a non – profit organization whose main purpose is to promote economic, political and ideological empowerment processes to young and adult women from Northern Nicaragua, to enhance the basic conditions for the exercise of their full citizenship. It’s quite an undertaking when one considers the context of the education, the circumstances of most of the students, the nature of a very patriarchal Nicaraguan society and cryptic attitudes about women, their roles and their capacities.

“Young women are better off staying at home.”

And, oh yes, at the same time the school is providing a very hands-on technical education for their students, teaching practical construction and building skills and demonstrating the latest technologies in use of earth materials. And their results are stunning in both attractiveness and quality. A visit to their site and walk through the grounds where the students work hands-on provides a clear picture of what these very young students can achieve.

“Women don’t do well in trades work like carpentry or electricity.”

In addition to receiving practical vocational training, these students are also immersed in the science of environmentalism. They are taught concepts in the making and use of earth building materials, installation and use of solar energy, efficient land use and building projects that are adapted into the AMCC campus after their completion. My own preconceptions about the use of adobe as a construction material have changed rather dramatically since my visits here!

“Earth materials like adobe aren’t durable enough or attractive enough for serious construction.”

But as is nearly always the case in Nicaragua, the greatest values are to be found in the people engaged in the process. In some cases, it’s the presence of students in a curriculum that they likely never dreamed about for themselves. Sometimes it’s the story of a student who excels in a field of study to the extent that she remains at AMCC as an instructor to other young participants who can identify with her easily, and from whom young women are at ease in following her lead. And there is always the guiding presence of the founding generation, those whose vision and persistence and passion have blended together in a force of determination on behalf of young people’s lives throughout the area of Esteli and city of Condega.

“Young Nicaraguans today have little ambition or drive to succeed.”

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Collaborative Work

AMCC is helping their young students to recognize who they are, what they can become, that they are a part of their environment, and that they are stewards of those surroundings. Regardless of what may be said by “others.”

Working within the education arena of Nicaragua, we find that there is much to worry about with regard to student development in the country. Student access, student retention, availability of materials and adequate teacher training are just some of the challenges facing the country, which has slipped during recent years in comparison with the other Central American nations. But there are also islands of hopefulness in this great sea of needs, and walking the grounds at the AMCC campus offers a rare glimpse of what could be….

Creativity, Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Microfinance, Ownership, Poverty, Rural development

Microcredit, the innovation of the century

March 11, 2015 René Mendoza Leave a comment

Microcredit, the innovation of the century

René Mendoza Vidaurre *

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

(Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532, The Prince)

Grameen Bank (“village bank”) emerged nearly four decades ago in Bangladesh. In 2006 its founder, Muhammad Yunus, received the Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts in creating economic and social development from below”, achieving world recognition for microcredit. Apart from the criticisms that microcredit pacifies poor families so that they do not fight for their rights, and that the US$130 average amount is not enough to buy a cow, and much less a hectar of land, its achievements are impressive: 3,000 branches, 7 million borrowers (95% are women), and 3% arrears rate; nearly 100% of Grameen children that start their studies finish them; education, health, retirement and pension programs, and services of access to new technology – cell phones in more than 2,000 villages (Grameen Telecom), solar panels (Grameen Skakti) and internet in the villages (Grameen Communications). What made posslbe this change of the century in finances in favor of the poorest of the poor?

Distancing themselves from conventional finance

After years of war, Bangladesh achieved its independence in 1971, a year later Yunus returned to his country as a university professor, and in 1974 the country experienced a great famine. Yunus, his colleagues and students wanted to help, and went to live – and study – in the village of Jobra. There they found usury with interest rates of up to 10%/day, and their dependence on those loans made them live as semi-slaves. In Jobra they counted 42 people under these usurious conditions, and the total loan amount was only US$27. He lent them those US$27 at 0% interest, and to his surprise they paid him back; then he discovered that they were paying interest rates higher than 60%/year to the commercial banks. So he observed something contradictory in the banking system, they were there to give loans, and acted under the principle of “the more you have, the more you get”, but they were exclusive: “when you exclude people for no fault of their own, it is apartheid.” Without the first dollar they could not get the second one, this was the situation of the poor. From there emerged his vision: end poverty.

He requested a loan from the bank to provide “small loans for the poorest.” The banks rejected the request: the poor do not receive loans because they cannot repay them, they do not know how to fill out the forms, and they do not have material collateral. After six months, and after Yunus himself offered collateral, one bank lent him US$300. Yunus and his team organized the credit and recovered up to the very last cent. The manager of the bank attributed this to luck, and when that credit experience was replicated in five, ten and fifty villages, that manager did not change, “because people can make mistakes, but the banking system does not.”

The more he lent, the more they saw the need to found an organization: Grameen Bank (1983) (GB), in order to place the first dollar in the hands of the poorest. What was the motivation for the people to pay and improve their lives?

Microcredit in groups and the social movement

GB followed a path opposed to the logic of the banks and what economics teaches. The bank waits for the client in their offices, requires material collateral, and provides individual loans, high loan amounts, and to people with more resources; it is a system built on the basis of prejudices; “Those who have more resources pay.” GB started microcredit (small amounts), without material collateral, with groups of five people as the basis to build a culture of credit, members with different businesses that mutually support one another, if one member does not pay the rest do not get a loan; the groups meet weekly to pay, save and renew their commitments to 16 norms (have a small family, build latrines, send their children to school, stop the practice of dowries, drink water from healthy sources or boil their water, grow vegetables, vote in elections…); they were mostly women because they were the poorest and those most affected by the purdah norms (conceal women from men who are not direct relatives), because they made better use of the loans and they paid on time. The GB officials stay out in the villages, explaining the microloans and accompanying those that have been disbursed, and because of the role of the groups, the credit and the savings in good measure are administered by the people themselves; the transactions are done in front of everyone. The basis is trust; without lawyers, nor taking people to court for lack of payment.

The novelty is in the learning capacity of GB and in its social movement nature. Yunus and his team immersed themselves from the beginning in order to understand the reality; so they understood the bottleneck of usury, discerned their vision and maintained it. Then they experimented, it if did not work out, they would study the banks to do “just the reverse”; trial and error forming groups with women. These circles remind us of the microfinance institution known as Bora founded by Munro and 50 beggars in Kiberia (Kenya) (“small loans, big changes”), Toyota (“if one worker makes a mistake another worker corrects him”), and Wikipedia (“one writes and others anonymously correct, improve and edit the text”). The key: combining decentralization (circles) and centralization (GB), economics (credit) and social-cultural movement (freeing women from the conservatism of Islam), and personal and social change.

Erosion of microcredit and the imperative to recover its novelty

Thousands of NGOs and microfinance institutions got involved in microcredit since 1980, they even adopted the circles called “solidarity group lending” (SGL). Most of them fell by the wayside, or turned into conventional banks, brandishing the prejudices that GB fought against: “the poor do not pay”, “credit only with material collateral”, “arrears are recovered by lawyers”, “credit is done by people who have studied it”, and “SGL only for recovering the loans.” In spite of the path shown by GB, those who followed, took it and added the microcredit discourse and SGL in the old form of making credit exclusive, and have been “scaling up” to social groups with more resources. Albert Einstein said it well that “it is easier to split an atom than it is to break a prejudice.”

How can this innovation of the century be recovered? Following the path of Yunus and his colleagues, doing immersion and creating conditions for experimenting. Recognizing that in our countries upward of 70% of the population continues to be excluded from credit, and that they constitute an enormous sector to innovate (e.g. with larger amounts for family agriculture). Rethink SGL as “pressure among themselves to pay”, to believe in themselves, improve their businesses, take on norms like erradicating domestic violence and having sustainable practices. Understanding credit (from the Latin credititus, “having trust”) as the “door” for a strategic alliance between SGL with the poorest organized into associative forms, groups with more resources and better organized, and financial institutions, around financing and social change, and scaling up in that alliance, combining technical assistance and commerce.

Even though the government of Bangladesh has been working to take over GB since 2013, and there are growing criticisms that GB is being dragged along by the market, GB has shown that is can change the world with $27 dollars, and do it bringing the people from the base of the pyramid to a financial system open to learning and to alliances with the poorest of the poor. This can be an initiative that begins “a new order of things”.

* I thank F. Huybrechs and J. Bastiaensen for their comments on the draft of this article.

René Mendoza has a PhD in development studies, is a collaborator of the Wind of Peace Foundation (http://peacewinds.org/research/), an associate researcher for IOB-University of Antwerp (Belgium) and for the Nitlapan-UCA Research and Development Institute (Nicaragua). rmvidaurre@gmail.com

Creativity, Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Making An Impact, Peasant Agriculture, Reflections, Visioning

How Far Can You See?

February 8, 2015 Steve Sheppard Leave a comment

Spend any time around an ocean beach or any huge body of water and sooner or later someone gazing out over the water will be asked, “How far can you see?” It’s an inevitable question and one which the beachcomber invariably cannot answer. How far is that horizon, anyway? Can you see what’s there?

We humans can see about 3 miles into the distance, before the horizon disappears with the curvature of the earth. We can also detect a galaxy 2.6 million light years away, to a time when the first galaxies formed. With the barest of light, we can see in the dark. Our eyesight is a remarkable sense, indeed.

There’s another category of sightedness that begs the same sort of question, “how far can you see?” It’s the view forward, what we can see or anticipate for the future, and what that portends for our current circumstances. Understandably, we tend to be less accomplished in this effort, because what we endeavor to see is not yet physically visible. So we do our best to impute, deduce, and imagine.

Many entities try to see, with varying degrees of success. Within the communities of Nicaragua, leaders often pretend to see bright opportunity for their constituents, when the real view is only one of self-aggrandizement or patriarchal gatekeeping. For its part, the U.S. government is afflicted with a malady which prevents its elected representatives from seeing much beyond the end of the day; it virtually defines short-sightedness. Some business leaders work very hard to see into the future, though for many their acuity dims after about one quarter on the calendar. Fortune-tellers would have us believe that they can see the future with clarity, but I don’t think they do much better than the rest of us. Unfortunately, too many of us simply hope that the future will be as we might wish it, without working to shape it.

The reality is that in order to “know” the future and create a means to it, we have to be pretty clear about what is happening at present. That work is more difficult than it sounds, as we tend to fall prey to factors like misinformation, data that makes us look different than we actually are, shorter-term motives and even egos. If we start from a point of obfuscation, the chances of shaping a realistic future direction are very slim. But knowing the truth requires self-honesty and discipline, characteristics that are cultivated through courage and practice.

Unfortunately, most of us lack sufficient courage or practice to express openly those shortcomings and mistakes that have impeded our sight. Since it isn’t a comfortable or easy thing to do, we don’t practice it much. And that lack of practice, in turn, renders us less courageous, less open to understanding our truths and being able to use them as the basis for where we’d like to go. It’s a vicious circle that ever-lessens our ability to see what might be. And without such vision, we limit where we can choose to go. We simply can’t see that far.

Later this Spring, a certificate program for cooperatives will be taught in the rural reaches of Nicaragua. The program will be more than a week in duration, as rural producers will come together to learn holistically about seeing a future of their own making, to create the conditions and circumstances which can better allow those visions to become reality, to open their eyes to their own truths. Like staring into a bright light after an immersion in darkness, there will be discomfort, disorientation and maybe even even distress. But like the gradual adjustment our eyes make to that bright light, the emerging views will become clear and free from the drowsy effects of the dark. And the courage, the practice, the habit, of far-sightedness just may take root in people eager to see further than ever before. (I’ll be sure to write about the process in April, after the workshop has been completed.)

Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to keep asking the question of myself, “How far can you see?” It’s one of those introspective probes that just might help me prepare myself for the future….

Climate Change, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Making An Impact, Peasant Agriculture, Poverty, Rural development

Innovating in beekeeping makes humanity better in times of climate change

January 13, 2015 René Mendoza Leave a comment

Innovating in beekeeping makes humanity better in times of climate change

René Mendoza V., Edgar Fernández and Yeris Lanzas

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then humanity would only have four years of life left”

Albert Einstein

Recently there has been a worldwide alarm about bees. They produce honey and pollinate crops and vegetation; their reduction would affect agriculture and biodiversity. Here we ponder their impact on agriculture, review their evolution, and based on an experience in the municipality of San Juan del Río Coco (Madriz, Nicaragua) we suggest innovating in a beekeeping connected to its economic, ecological, agrarian and social surroundings.

A study of Klein and his colleagues (“Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops”), with FAOSTAT-2005 data, found that out of 115 crops, 87 increase their production with pollination (39 of 57 crops and 48 of 67 products derived from crops); 20% of total production is by crops that increase the production of seed with animal pollination. They confirm the effect on production in 92 of 108 crops: without pollination in 13 crops (atemoya or custard apple, Brazil nut, cantelope, cacao, kiwi, macadamian nuts, passion fruit, papaya, rowanberry, sapote, pumpkin, vanilla and watermelon) production drops by 90% or more, in 30 crops it drops from 40-90%, and in 27 it drops from 10-40%, and in 21 crops it drops by less than 10%. For Central America, Roubik (2002, “The value of bees to the coffee harvest”) writing on Arabica coffee in Panama, concludes that the pollination of non-native bees increases its production by up to 50%. From this we see that if the pollination services decline, our diet will become nutritionally and culturally impoverished.

Bees are important, but are they being reduced in number? In England the Bumblebee Conservation Fund states that 2 species of bees have become extinct in the last 70 years, and that 6 are in danger of extinction; in the United States the Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that they have been reduced from 6 million in 1940 and 1950 to 2.5 million in 1990. Nevertheless, the United Nations Development Program (2010) states that the data on the worldwide level on their reduction is not conclusive; Aizen (2009, “The Global Stock of Domesticated Honey Bees Is Growing Slower Than Agricultural Demand for Pollination”) states that in the last 50 years the amount of beehives has increased close to 45%, while the growth in crops has been 400% in that same period (Manzano, 2014, “Beeodiversidad”). The alarm finds meaning in the growing deforestation and agricultural intensification – mechanized and dependent on chemical inputs; from there comes the reduction of bees in Europe and the United States so far, the “death” of bees in zones of intensive agriculture in Latin America, and the “migration” of bees in extensive agriculture zones because of drought (no flowers) or rainy season (flowers unsuitable for bees). The more deforestation happens and intensive agriculture is promoted, the less bees there are, the less pollination there is, the more agriculture stagnates.

Beekeeping needs to increase. Its innovations began when the human being perceived that (s)he can harvest honey and wax regularly from the same colony, and built hives with clay vessels and conical baskets (5000AC). In the XVI century Francois Huber innovated the mobile frames, Lorenzo Lorrain Langstroth the standardized use beehive (1851), the carpenter Juan Mehring an apparatus for stamping wax (1857), Franceso de Hruschka the extractor or centrifuge for removing the honey from the honeycomb without breaking it (1865), Abbé Collin perfected the queen excluder (1865), the farmer George Layens the horizontal beehive appropriate for transhumance (seasonal migration, 1874). Correspondingly worldwide production of honey grew from 678,759 tones in 1961 to 1,592,701 in 2012, the year in which all the countries of Central America provided 0.46% of world production. Nicaragua went from 20 tons in 1961 to 100 in 1979, to 200 in 1995, to 300 in 1996, and to 400 since 2000. According to CETREX in the period from 2007-13 Nicaragua exported an average of 211 Metric Tons/year.

In 50 years of beekeeping Nicaragua, according to data from the 2006 National Beekeeping Census, has 733 beekeepers and 24,903 hives. Beekeeping in the municipality of San Juan del Rio Coco illustrates something about what is happening in the country and in the world; between 1963 and 2014 investments have been made of over 3,000 beehives in more than 300 beekeepers, but the Census shows that there are 85 beekeepers with 619 beehives. What is happening? In the decade between 1960-70 beekeeping emerged as an initiative of the large estate owners and with technical assistance from the state, under the logic of pollinating coffee and extracting honey; the hives lasted more than 10 years, and transhumance was not practiced because there was a forest, in the rainy season they would complement the forest flowers with blocks of sugar and they did not regulate the shade of the trees close to the beehives. In the decade of the 1980s the initiative came from the CORCASAN cooperative with farmers seeking to extract honey and pollinate, the hives lasted up to 5 years, they did not practice transhumance and they would give sugar to the bees during the rainy season. Since 2002 the initiative has been coming from international aid and from the market, they seek to extract honey and in isolated cases pollinate, the rotation of hives is almost annual, they do transhumance in the rainy season because there are no suitable flowers, they provide sugar to the bees and are not investing in the flower supply.

This stagnation in beekeeping is due to a vision where the context in which the innovations emerged is ignored, in a Europe that went through the Renaissance, a humanity that sought to control bees in an environment of flowers, and from there, the innovations focused on the biology of the bees and the physical conditions that made them more productive. Current beekeeping is based on the belief that its greatest challenge is “physical work” of receiving-providing resources, technologies and trainings from outside, and on that “everything has already been invented.” It is an economic vision that is dependent on the bees and separates them from their agrarian, ecological and social surroundings.

In the face of this reality, from one experience in SanJuan del Río Coco, we are suggesting innovating with a holistic vision, recognizing and managing the tension inherent in the connections between bees, beekeeping and biodiversity, and between the improvement of the common good and individual appropriation, disputes that are transforming the territories with flowers, crops, bees and organized families (See Diagram). In this vision, technology, credit and commerce respond to the connections in tension; thus, productivity is not “getting more hives and mechanizing them”, but investing in the connections that result in honey, wax, propolis, coffee, cacao, passion fruit, air, water, land…Part of this process is the crop rotation providing flowers at different times of the year, “sharecropping” between large producers that need to pollinate their plantations and small beekeepers, pollination services, flower inventory as a collective good, and cooperatives facilitating these connections. Seen in this way, beekeeping breaks out of the shell of its “little box” and re-emerges from the connections.

If this innovation in process has the potential of responding to the 50 years of stagnated beekeeping and agricultural productivity, how can we improve it and replicate it in the wet tropics of the country and in Latin America?

* René (rmvidaurre@gmail.com) has a PhD in development studies, is a collaborator of the Winds of Peace Foundation (http://peacewinds.org/research/), associate researcher of the IOB-University of Antwerp (Belgium) and of the Nitlapan-UCA Research and Development Institute (Nicaragua). Edgar i a collaborator of the Winds of Peace Foundation. Yeris is a beekeeper and innovator in the municipality of San Juan del Rio Coco.

Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Making An Impact, Poverty

Innovation in a providential society

January 3, 2015 René Mendoza Leave a comment

Innovation in a providential society

René Mendoza Vidaurre and Edgar Fernández[1]

A teacher invited his disciple to drink some tea. They spoke for awhile. The teacher served the tea, and even when the cup was full, continued pouring it; the tea spilled onto the floor. His disciple, surprised, said to him, “Teacher! The tea is spilling, nothing is going into the cup! The teacher responded, “good observation! The same is happening with you, if you want to learn, first you have to empty what you have in your mental cup.”

The beliefs of a community or society are expressed as truths that make up the cosmovision of a people. They are codes, rules or assumptions that mold our minds about how to produce, govern, or live; they trap and limit movement. In the work of innovation with youth and rural leaders we found dozens of beliefs, among them religious ones, that have an immense power to block innovative initiatives. How can these myths be overcome, and have instead God as a support to the people who innovate? This article deals with this issue.

The potency of beliefs

In accordance with the attached Table, people believe that “God” made them poor and stupid- like the families with material riches believe that God made them rich and “clever” (not “stupid”); they conceive of a God who creates inequality, and that the life of each person is already predestined. Under this mentality that produces victims and external culprits, the spaces are closed for innovating. These codes in the minds of people appear as sacred truths, which is why daring to innovate could be understood as a sin, because “only God can create”.

The Pew Research Center in an extensive study (Religion in Latin America: widespread change in a historically Catholic region), included the question about what can Christians do in favor of the needy. The Catholics responded that a way of helping the poor is through charity, while the Protestants emphasized that you have to bring the poor to Christ (2014:87). In a number of works, J.L. Rocha (2012, Los jinetes del desarrollo en tiempos neoliberales, tercer jinete: los neopentecostales), studied neo-Pentecostalism, which expresses a theology of prosperity: “The preachers insist on love for children, the time dedicated to them, the need for a positive attitude, the paternal image of God, the duties with the family, the entrepreneurial spirit, the proper administration of money, personal prosperity…The neo-Pentecostal preachers provide practical advice so that the middle class family man might know how to deal with the challenges of the 21st century.”

Both studies reveal different perspectives about two types of religions, at the same time that they show common points coherent with the above mentality “written down” through the beliefs. We observe no awareness about inequality, the realities appear to be generated by natural (divine) causes and by individual attitudes – charity and closeness to Christ – and the change (innovation) is determined externally. Note that this perspective is similar to neoliberal fundamentalism: let the market (“the invisible hand”, like the Holy Spirit) guide society in a reality where inequality does not appear and where there are only individuals seeking profit. It is a logic that affects above all the majority of the population, while the “middle class” and the rich families assume a God (“the market” the large capital enterprises would say) that gives them prosperity, “an entrepreneurial spirit” and the capacity to give “charity”.

The “mental cup” of our societies is full of this providential framework, incrusted in institutions and cemented into the depth of the soul, whose questioning is prohibited, which is why the possibilities for societal innovation spill out like the “tea”. How can we work on them?

Un-learning and cultivating a contingent awareness

The advice of the teacher was, “if you want to learn, first you must empty what you have in your mental cup.” In other words, un-learning in order to learn, which assumes that each person and society is co-responsible for their realities, including the beliefs. The key is to have an effect from within on two complementary manners, through religion itself, and the other way is by making the beliefs controversial. The former involves analyzing the Bible in a shared fashion with the potential innovators, with the support of educators that theologically do discernment on the scriptures, providing a different (critical) vision to that expressed by the 11 beliefs, with a proactive Gospel passage like the Sermon on the Mount, even taking up M. Weber again (“The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism”), that it is the orderly, meticulous and thrifty life that provides the reasoning for methodically managing and organizing a business or an organization. In the latter, understanding innovation as a cognitive process, of making the reality controversial: “Juancho says I am fine, while he is in the jaws of an alligator”; the need to improve emerges in mentally producing the crisis that he is not doing “so good”, and that this improvement is a collective process (of groups, networks). Correspondingly we look into the origins of the 11 beliefs, and we clarify in dialogue what underlies those beliefs: a God of inequality and of injustice, with human beings as puppets whose destiny was defined before they were born, passive people, victims and servile people, and a God who dispossesses them of their capacity to innovate; in the case of the ants, we find that they are not kept by anyone, they live through organized effort and work.

Through this process the “mental cup” is emptied a bit, with the challenge being to provide criteria with which to cultivate a contingent awareness: that situations are generated by human actions, they are changeable, people write their own lives (“free will”), and that at the same time humanity does not control everything, as T. Namiki says, believing in God is necessary…in an unpredictable world we all need to depend on something. This is when the innovation begins.

Innovating is questioning and …

This path, nevertheless, is full of obstacles. Old Marx said that ideas are materialized; the 10 beliefs paralyze innovative actions, making people believe that innovating is divine work or the work of the market.

Innovating is “swimming against that current”; in fact, that is how humanity advances. Socrates 2400 years ago was condemned to death by the system that did not put up with being questioned – the question is more important than the answers. Cardinal De Cusa in the XV Century questioned the geocentric model of the universe and with that the idea that God was in the center of the universe. J Fichte in the XVIII Century questioned the universities for being “secondary schools” where the professors would repeat what the books said instead of introducing innovative ideas, for which he was fired from the University. The list continues up to our times.

The priest Ignacio Ellacuría envisioned a change for humanity 25 years ago, “take down the crucified people from the cross”, and he was murdered. In our case the “cross” are these beliefs maintained by religious and neoliberal fundamentalism. Innovating starts from within people in a dialectical relationship with social change; it is un-learning, cultivating a contingent awareness, questioning, coming down from the cross and believing in a God of justice.

René Mendoza has a PhD in development studies, is a collaborator of the Winds of Peace Foundation (http://peacewinds.org/research/), an associate researcher of IOB-University of Antwerp (Belgium) and of the Research and Development Institute, Nitlapan-UCA (Nicaragua). rmvidaurre@gmail.com Edgar Fernández is also a collaborator of the Winds of Peace Foundation.

[1] We are grateful to the theologian J. Arguello and Jorge Wills, a Methodist pastor, for their comments on the draft of this article.

Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Making An Impact, Peasant Agriculture, Poverty, Reflections, Rural development

Innovation in Latin America: worldvisions and the force of markets

January 3, 2015 René Mendoza Leave a comment

Discovering consists in looking at the same thing as everyone sees it, and thinking something different

Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel in Physics

“It is not ideas, but interests, material and ideal, that immediately govern the conduct of men. But the “images of the world” created by the “ideas”have with great frequency determined, like switchmen, the rails on which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interests.” (Max Weber, 1946, Essays in Sociology, 280). World visions, like switchmen, have given form to the “rails” (interests) that move human action like innovations. In this article we review close to a dozen innovative experiences systematized by the Latin American Center for Rural Development (RIMISP) between 2011 and 2014, experiencies referring to fruit of the forest, raw sugar, fresh vegetables, crafts, local currency, infusions, coffee and environmental services, implemented by cooperatives, associations, NGOs, donors, financial institutions and businesses. As we review them we ask ourselves what worldvisions made them emerge – and read them – as innovations?

World visions

RIMISP says that the objective of these experiences is to “obtain economic success through the conquest of broader markets” and “increasing income through an improvement of prices and the increase of quantities produced and sold” (Cheaz e Isa, 2012, Empoderamiento económico en América Latina, 5). The leaders of these experiences say: “we grew to have a greater impact”, “we are 25% of exports”, “we are in supermarkets with organic products”, “we invested US$600,000 in infrastructure”, “we are empowering them so that they might be rural enterprises”, “we are the first Small and Medium Enterprise in the stock market”… The desire of a first tier cooperative to be part of a second tier seems natural, as well as a rotating fund to become a microfinance agency, and then a financial entity, for small ranchers to become businessmen and to export cheese, or a professor to become a consultant and to found a business or an NGO. All rivers run to the sea.

That “sea” is the market and the longing to “grow” is being big, getting to the ocean (supermarket, large capital enterprise) following its rules. The credit, marketing and technical assistance services, as well as physical investment, are aimed at this purpose, to access the market: volume, product quality, administration, individual values and organization. (Inter)national aid, also sharing this perspective, talks about “assisting”, “financing” and “empowering”. The approach for systematizing them is synchronized, it assumes that the economy is the basis for everything, it says how much and how they access markets and businesses are made, it defines the experiences as “islands of success” when they are not large corporations, and ponders policies in terms of markets, because “without market conditions nothing happens.”

Thus market is the vision and guide to experiences and systematizations, looking more like economic understakings. How is entrepreneuriship and innovation different? Entrepreneurship is enterprising and deals with the creation of businesses, where the entrepreneur contributes capital and coordinates economic and human resources (Solé, Aguirre y Areyuna, Emprender o innovar ¿Dónde está la diferencia?). Innovation is “implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), a new process, a new method of marketing, or a new organizational method in business practices, place of work or external relations” (OECD-2005, Oslo Manual), it assumes new ideas, their implementation and acceptance by the market (Nemeth, 1997, Managing innovation: When less is more). Both coincide in the creation of new things and in assuming risks, a context of uncertainty and economic impact; entrepreneurship requires something of innovation and vice versa; they differ in their scope, entrepreneurship focuses on the interior – and in the creation – of businesses, in the magnitud of the innovation which is incremental or radical, and in that entrepreneurship has economics as its basis, and innovation has multiples bases (social, economic, political, cultural). Seen from the financial perspective in terms of the market, the systematized experiences seem more like entrepreneurial undertakings.

Unseen effects

Accessing markets is laudable, subjecting oneself to it hides other elements of equal or greater importance. The rancher succeeds in exporting cheese without leaving milk for cheese in his home, nor trees in his pasturelands. The rotating fund that works in rural communities becomes a microfinance organization and then a financial organization, tending to grow for the commercial sectors and large producers. Producer organizations become exporters and see their members only as providers of products. They strive to put organic products in supermarkets, while they exploit them for profit; the “fair trade” organization wants the large companies to buy that brand. When a corporation accepts buying fruit from an organization for profit, this is seen as the big novelty. Correspondingly, services (credit and technical assistance) are so that the families might produce what the market wants; organizations revert their attention, they look to the market (companies or donors with a lot of capital), and no longer at their communities; rules and values are remade to serve the market. It is assumed that growing is aligning up with large capital enterprises, and having sale volume, physical investment and technical-administrative staff. What is unperceived is that the larger an organization gets, the more it centralizes, the more it bureaucratizes, the more it limits itself to the economics, the more it distances itself from its members, and the less democracy it has. The “iron law of the oligarchy”, developed by Michels in 1911 seems to get enforced.

Not all rivers run to the sea. Some cooperatives told Pope Francis, as he said in the 2013 III Festival of the Social Doctrine of the Church, that in the face of the economic crisis they decided to reduce their margin of profit to save jobs; while “for the economy and markets solidarity is almost a bad word” – concluded the Pope. Nakauchi and his friends organized a retail distribution network maintaining some small family stores within the vision of a chain and with a key social role after the earthquakes in Japan. The philosophy of “good living” of some of the Andean countries sees the markets as a means and not an end. In other words, the economy is not the basis for everything; there are multiple “bases” and “visions”; not everyone are resigned to the “law of the chicken coop”, that the chickens on the higher stoop defecate on those on the lower stoop.

Re-discovering innovations

The tragedy is reading innovations as if they were only economic enterprises, and as if they were only one rail leading to the market without “switchmen”; how much ideas matter so that “paper notes might speak” for multiple visions! Growing is not just becoming large in capital, volume and bureaucracy, it is “thinking differently” and building visions like collective “switchmen”, even getting smaller in order to catalyze greater changes. Some of the experiences reveal glimpses of novelties not picked up by the systematizations: infusions and organic products; combination of homemade products using historical means (milling) and a nostalgic transnational market in raw blocks of sugar in an adverse context of plantations of sugar cane; social networks of women in fresh vegetables and in the incubation of companies mediated with e-markets; balance between exogenous and endogenous factors in many experiences.

Rediscovering these experiences reveals glimpses of visions with the potential to change the world. Building and capturing these visions, in an adverse and uncertain context, is the greatest challenge to “thinking differently” in our times.