Organic crops gain ground in El Salvador

IDB program assists farming cooperatives that supply local restaurants and supermarkets

By Carlos Gonzáles, La Palma, El Salvador

Home-grown organic strawberries are gaining popularity in El Salvador.

Organic food, like fancy bottled water, is often portrayed as a luxury for well-heeled people in rich countries. The assumption is that only people with means can afford to buy food produced without chemical pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and other agricultural inputs that have become the mainstay of farmers around the world.

But in El Salvador, a number of forward-looking farming cooperatives have discovered a market for organic fruits and vegetables at their doorstep. Under a project partly financed by the IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund, these cooperatives are selling fruits and vegetables to health-conscious restaurants, hotels and supermarkets right in the capital of San Salvador. Better yet, the cooperatives are generating new, better-paying jobs for rural men and women while helping to protect and restore scarce farmland.

One such cooperative operates out of a large shed in the Salvadoran municipality of La Palma, just a few kilometers from the border with Honduras. On a typical workday, women stand at stations inside the shed, sorting piles of carrots, spring onions, tomatoes, strawberries and passion fruit, all of which has been delivered there by local organic farmers. All the produce is washed, graded and bagged. Some of the fruit, such as strawberries, is processed and bottled as jam and bar-coded so that checkout machines at supermarkets can identify it.

"We have been working in various localities, and several cooperatives are now implementing expansion plans," says Mario Urrutia, coordinator in El Salvador of the Cooperative League of the United States of America (CLUSA), one of two executing agencies running the project. CLUSA provides technical and marketing assistance to participating cooperatives along with Proexsal (Producers and Exporters of El Salvador), an agricultural marketing company based in San Salvador that is the project’s other executing agency. "We come in once the farmers have begun to produce organic crops and want to penetrate the local market," explains Godofredo Pacheco, manager of Proexsal. "Our pitch is simple: high-quality, organically grown Salvadoran products." Together, the two organizations help qualified cooperatives to become financially and ecologically sustainable businesses.

Green methods boost yields. The case for organic farming in El Salvador goes beyond rising consumer demand. One of Latin America’s most densely populated countries, it already faces a shortage of high-quality agricultural land. The intensive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers can often hasten the degradation of land in tropical climates, so farmers who correctly implement organic methods can actually increase yields and lower their production costs over time.

Scarce land is just one of the challenges facing El Salvador’s farming cooperatives, however. Many of these were founded 20 years ago, when the government instituted an agrarian reform program in response to long-standing conflicts over land tenure. Most of the farmers who acquired land thanks to the reform had little or no experience managing businesses, and as a result many new cooperatives saw their production decrease. The country’s commercial banks have also proved unwilling to finance most cooperatives; even when loans are available, interest rates remain prohibitively high.

The new project aims to help cooperatives deal with all these obstacles. "CLUSA is helping us with the production of organic cacao and sesame, and strengthening the cooperative," says Rafael Pineda, chairman of La Carrera cooperative. "We are learning about how to run a business and the different types of credit." Proexsal’s Pacheco says La Carrera is learning to handle the kind of strategic and planning decisions that all businesses face. "Now they’re trying to come up with a brand name for their chocolate bars," he says. "But first, they have to learn about the features of the market and use efficient processing and packaging techniques so that they can compete."

As recent earthquakes and hurricanes have shown, Salvadoran farmers also face a disproportionately high risk of natural disasters. In the Lempa River basin, the river is once again threatening to flood, as it did in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch struck. "Now we are more aware of the danger the Lempa River represents," says José Santos, chairman of the Los Navegantes cooperative, "but our situation has changed a great deal in two years. Even though there were many promises of support for development of the region after Hurricane Mitch, we have not received any significant aid. Since April, CLUSA has been providing us with advisory services," says Santos, "and we have been very encouraged by what we can learn."

"They came to us," says CLUSA’s Urrutia, "because they had heard about the progress other cooperatives have been making with the program. So we explained to them that CLUSA and Proexsal could help them, but that they would have to follow the official procedures and commit to the program. In just four months of work, the first farmers are already experimenting with demonstration plots of organic crops and the cooperative members are immersed in institutional and technical training."

One of the more interesting aspects of Los Navegantes is that 56 percent of the cooperative members are women. "Many of us are parents," notes member Sonia Hernández, "and we need a strategy to help us improve our lives. That need motivated many of us women to join the cooperative."

Pacheco and Urrutia say the ultimate proof that organic farming is viable in El Salvador is the fact that several cooperatives are starting to compete effectively with imported conventional food products. They say the market for organic produce also tends to be more stable than the general agricultural market, a factor that helps cooperatives to maintain a steady revenue stream.

For more information about IDB support for El Salvador’s farmers, see link at right.

Date posted: June 2001