Miriam Cruz, a 35-year-old peasant woman and mother of an 11-year-old girl, who belongs to the Empresa Campesina 1ero de abril, of the Movimiento Campesino del Aguan, in Tocoa, Honduras.
In Honduras, the growth of poverty among smallholder families, the increase of malnutrition and the rise in food prices, increase the vulnerability of a population that is already in a situation of misery. Most families depend on agriculture and the climate impact has affected harvests.
“Not having access to food affects us emotionally, physically, and even educationally. Food is a basic primary need, the most important thing in life and in the formation of a human being and many women cannot access or bring food to our homes due to lack of economic resources, lack of access to land to cultivate, we have no place to grow our food.” Miriam Cruz tells us.
We Effect supports productive projects for food security and organizational strengthening of the housing cooperative of the San Alonso Rodriguez Foundation in Honduras. Technical assistance and agricultural supplies are provided to establish productive plots at the collective level and gardens at the family level.
“Although the land is not ours, we grow pineapple, bananas, lemons, avocados, and other foods; we use the production for family consumption and thanks to the work we do on the land, we assure food for our children. All our production is chemical-free thanks to the vermiculture we learned in the peasant company.”
“We have started to sell the organic fertilizer we learned to make, and it represents an economic income of 5,000 lempiras ($205.00) per production, which we distribute among the members of the organization and invest again to expand the harvest.”
Miriam ends by sharing with us the following: “We know well the history of the struggle for land and the defense of the territory, since the year 2000, many women do not have access to land and we cannot have safe food, I am fighting for a plot of land in the peasant company Primero de Abril of the Movimiento Campesino del Aguan to be able to produce and thus ensure the sustainability of my family and my desire is that other families can also have this right”.
