Chacra-Huerto ProjectFor Food Sovereignty &

CO2 ReductionSachamama Center

Founder and Director: Dr. Frédérique Apffel-MarglinChacra-huerto Team:

Girvan Tuanama FasabiPedro Luis Varas Abad

Abby Corbett

Sachamama Center• We are a nonprofit organization based in Lamas, Peru• One of our principal projects is to recreate a pre-Colombian

Amazonian permaculture in order to improve climate change as well as food sovereignty for small farmers

• We work with native communities as well as the Unidad de Gestion Educativa de Lamas (UGEL) teaching this pre-Colombian Amazonian permaculture in middle and high schools

• We currently work with four native communities: Solo, Shukshuyaku, Alto Pucalpillo y Alto Zamora as well as the new high school in Wayku, the indigenous neighborhood of Lamas.

• Together with the communities and the UGEL we implement this permaculture in permanent food fields that we call Chacra-Huertos, recuperating degraded lands

Why The Chacra-Huerto Project?

• The region of San Martin has the highest rate of deforestation in the country

• The current mode of agriculture used by the Kichwa-Lamistas is slash and burn

• According to experts, for this method to be sustainable each family would require an average of 50 hectares

• Currently, the average landholding for a Kichwa family is between 3 and 5 hectares

• The Kichwa leaders state very clearly that for the future generation there is not sufficient forest cover to continue this form of agriculture

• There is an urgency for the Kichwa-Lamistas, as well as for all small farmers, to find an alternative to slash and burn agriculture

Recovering an ancient indigenous technology: Yana Allpa

• Our goal is to recreate a pre-Columbian soil discovered in the last 20 years or so in the Amazon basin, officially known by scientists as “Amazonian Dark Earth” or “terra preta”, that in Quechua we call “Yana Allpa”. This soil is an alternative for achieving a permanent agriculture, without the need to cut down the forests, guaranteeing food autonomy for the Kichwas, as well as all small farmers, and improving climate change.

Yana Allpa• Pre-Colombian indigenous

knowledge/technology• Fertile and permanent soil• The oldest date for ADE (Amazonian Dark

Earth) is 3500 BP and it is still fertile today• It has been claimed that compared to the

average of normal soils, yana allpa is 800% more fertile

• As you can see from the picture the bottom strata is Amazonian oxysoil which is very well known to be very poor in nutrients

• The black strata on top is known as ADE or “yana allpa” meaning black earth in Quechua

• The picture here by archeologists show that the ADE is seeded with an infinite number of broken ceramics

Farming for Food Sovereignty• Once the indigenous communities stop producing their own food

within the community, they become dependent on market• When indigenous people depend on the market for subsistence,

they have to find cash to purchase this food by selling their labor in a surplus labor economy or raising cash crops such as coffee, cacao, sacha inchi

• The price that cash crops fetch is highly unstable on the world market

• When the price of cash crops falls below the cost of production, the poorest farmers are often forced to sell their land and emigrate

• These forces powerfully erode the ability of indigenous communities to survive

• It is also important to maintain food sovereignty for health reasons

• Many of the foods in the market are lower in nutrients than chacra food and are grown with agrochemicals

• Indigenous agriculture produces the most nutrient rich, diverse, and healthiest food in the world

Farming for Food Sovereignty

• For economic, health, and environmental reasons, as well as reasons of cultural affirmation, it is essential to continue farming for food sovereignty within the indigenous communities

• The autonomy of the indigenous communities permits them to confront outside forces, confident in their own capacity to provide for themselves

Farming for Food Sovereignty

Farming for Sustainability• By no longer practicing slash and burn agriculture,

C02 is sequestered three times:– Once by not releasing it in the atmosphere through

burning the trees – A second time by not cutting down the forest, thus

allowing the trees to sequester C02– A third time through using bio-char that in its making

takes C02 out of the atmosphere• Slash and burn agriculture is the 3rd cause of C02

emission in the Amazon basin.

The Preparation of Yana Allpa• The ingredients we use to produce Yana Allpa must be

either free or extremely low in cost as well as locally available

• The bulk of Yana Allpa is formed using three principal organic ingredients:– Cow or chicken manure– Decomposed sawdust– Decomposed sugar cane

• To these principal ingredients we add three special ingredients:– Fermented micro-organisms from the forest– Bio-char– Broken ceramics

Principal Ingredients

Fermented Micro-Organisms from the Forest

• Micro-organisms are found below the layer of leaves on the forest floor• Below this layer, we collect the dead leaves and twig that contain white

and yellow spots• Before collecting this matter, we make an offering of mapacho (tobacco),

to Sachamama asking her permission to take these MM (micro-organismos del monte)

• MM, apart from accelerating decomposition and giving life to the Yana Allpa, are capable of neutralizing any toxic ingredients that may be found in the organic ingredients that make up the Yana Allpa

Bio-char• Bio-char is organic material that is carbonized using a method called pyrolysis, which means to

burn and carbonize without direct contact with the flame and without oxygen• Making bio-char sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.• The initial heat up to 400 degrees centigrade, is produced by burning twigs collected from the

floor of the forest at which point CO2 emanates from the furnace and becomes the fuel• In this way, our production of bio-char does not contribute in any way to deforestation and

reduces the existing CO2 in the atmosphere

Bio-char• We make bio-char using

agricultural biomass such as coconut husks, corncobs, or rice husks

• Making bio-char with rice husks doubly reduces CO2: Once through pyrolysis that sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere and again by using rice husks that are otherwise burned in the open air by the rice mills, releasing a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere

Bio-char• Bio-char is a miracle

ingredient that gives fertility to the soil

• It causes the nutrients in the soil to attach to it so that they are not washed out in the torrential tropical rains

• Bio-char gives the soil its black color, which is then referred to as “terra preta” or “yana allpa”

Broken Ceramics• The archeological literature

explains the broken ceramics in the ADE as coming from middens, however, the Kichwa communities Sachamama collaborates with, have a practice of making offerings to various spirits of the chacra with ceramic shards

• This fact makes it highly probable that the presence of ceramic shards throughout ADE is the result of offerings to the spirits. Among the Kichwas, the main spirits of the chacra are Mama Pacha, Mama Killa, Yaku Mama, Tayta Inti, among others.

Offering in the Community of Shukshuyaku, June 2012

Offering in the Community of Shukshuyaku, June 2012

Offering in the Community of Shukshuyaku, June 2012

Final Preparation of Ingredients• After mixing all the ingredients together, the soil must be left to

ferment for approximately 30 days• The temperature of the soil should be controlled • When the soil is no longer warm, it is ready to apply to the chacra-

huerto

Initial Preparation of the Chacra-Huerto

• The chacra-huerto makes for a permanent agriculture that produces year after year if new layers of Yana Allpa are applied

• We use the name chacra-huerto to describe a permanent garden that is near the community as are the “huertos” or house gardens

• We choose degraded lands such as cashukshales, shapunbales and yaraguales

• The Yana Allpa recuperates these degraded lands

Requirements for Preparing the Chacra-Huerto

• Construction of terraces on slopes so that the rain does not wash away the Yana Allpa

• Terraces also permit the layers of Yana Allpa to increase in depth and fertility with each new planting season

• Construction of a fence to protect the crops from the animals in the community

Example of the terraces in the chacra-huerto at Sachamama

Center

Preparation of the Terraces in Shukshuyaku

Preparation of the Terraces in Shukshuyaku

Construction of the Terraces in Alto Pucalpillo

Construction of the Fence in Solo

Preparation of the Chacra-Huerto

• Initial inversion of work: the choba-choba• Once the chacra-huerto is constructed only an

occasional maintenance is necessary• Using this new structure the Kichwas can plant

according to their traditions and the phases of the moon, planting for food sovereignty

First Choba-choba in Alto Pucalpillo

Cultivating in the Chacra-Huerto in Shukshuyaku

Women in Shukshuyaku Planting in the Chacra-Huerto

Chacra-Huerto at Sachamama Center