Farmer Friday goes out to Doña Digna in Colomoncagua, Honduras!

Just look at that produce from Doña Digna's super diverse farm!

We work with farmers in 117 communities, including many in the "Dry Corridor," a highly drought prone area in Central America. Today, farmers must deal with a changing climate on top of this already harsh environment. With more erratic weather, even drought is less predictable

With USC Canada support, farmers are diversifying in response to the challenges they face growing on dry, hillside farms. They grow more local kinds of beans, maize and other vegetables - crop varieties well suited for the extreme conditions they can be up against.

Farmers like Doña Digna are researching and experimenting with indigenous varieties and adapting them to their needs: better cooking and storage traits, greater productivity or higher nutrition. Some have even bred corn varieties with shorter, sturdier stalks, which are less vulnerable to extreme winds and rains. And they're preserving and rebuilding soil health – strengthening them through terracing, crop rotation, planting nitrogen fixing crops and making their own natural composts and pesticides.

Beginning this year, the farmers-as-researchers model we have worked on for the past 15 years with our partner the Foundation for Participatory Research with Honduran Farmers (Fundación para la Investigación Participativa con Agricultores de Honduras, FIPAH), is headed to Nicaragua and Guatemala, where we now work with farmers, too.

Learn more about our Honduras Seeds of Survival program

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