The Luke Society
- San Martin
(Powerpoint - in Spanish)
Coffee growing predominates on the upland in the Alto Mayo. Natural tropical cloud forest is thinned or completely destroyed. Coffee plants and guava shade trees are then planted in its place.
Coffee plants are nutrient-hungry and quickly exhaust soil. When harvests decline, coffee plantations are often converted to grassland pasture, with low biological diversity. Other areas of tropical forest are cut down in order to create new coffee plantations in place of the exhausted ones.
In addition to wildlife, village water sources are seriously threated from increasing rates of deforestation.
A viable economic alternative to this un-sustainable form of coffee growing and land management has not yet been found for the poor farmers of the region.
Strategy
In order to combat this situation, the Luke Society is working with farming communities to document the current landscape of the Alto Mayo, and systems of land management, and to investigate alternative forms of agriculture and land management which are more sustainable.
Facilitated Community Environmental Mapping involves providing farmers with GPS-produced oulines of their land, and copies of high-resolution satellite images (now economically viable) to enable them to draw maps of their land, document and analyse the current system of land management, and look for management alternatives.
