President Ortega visits Finca El Peten

President Daniel Ortega at Finca El Peten

We had a big surprise this weekend when President Daniel Ortega showed up at the farm by helicopter to give a speech on self-sustainability and organic agriculture! The president called the farm a “fantastic model of diversification”. The theme was women in agriculture and self sufficient food production for Nicaragua. The minister of agriculture had gone looking for model sustainable farms in northern Nicaragua and found ours to be the most impressive. They informed me on Thursday and the mass of army soldiers, policemen, and set up personnel all started arriving on Friday. They surrounded the farm with perimeter security and proceeded to set up an elaborate stage and tent camp. It was quite impressive. The dignitaries started flowing in Saturday morning. Ambassadors from Switzerland, Taiwan, Luxembourg, ministers of agriculture, education, rural development, etc. and the heads of some UN delegations participated first in a discourse on how to more efficiently help poor farmers. The government has been giving out “abonos” of a cow, two goats, ten chickens, a rooster, and a pig to each of some 3,500 of the poorest families. Since there was not sufficient investigation into their abilities to feed and care for these animals, the program was of dubious quality as far as long term benefits. Agreements were reached by providers and administrators that more education, evaluation of capacities and follow up on results were necessary. To that end relationships were formed to resolve those issues. Finca El Peten will participate as a training center and model farm for the many diversified disciplines of permaculture and organic food production. The minister of agriculture is on board to take Nicaragua toward self sufficiency in an organic way. We are very excited as this is exactly what we have been promoting.

The press was there in a big way with national live broadcast. It rained right through the event and remarkably everything went smoothly. Their teams were well prepared and efficient, setting up and breaking down the elaborate stage and decorations in record time. Romualdo and our team handled things very well on our end as well to make the event a big success.

Our friends from Peace passers were also on hand and made a donation of some 20 uniforms and several balls to the local girls soccer team in Los Robles. Their support is welcome and much appreciated in our effort to help kids in the local community.