We first became aware of the Inga Foundation by watching a documentary on Channel Four about Slash and Burn Farming, whereby farmers look for new areas on which to farm and create space by cutting down parts of the rainforest and burning the trees and plants to create an area on which to plant their crops. This removes many of the natural and required nutrients which are in the soil and releases harmful carbon into the atmosphere.

Consequently, the land is only useful for a few short years resulting in the farmers moving on and repeating the process thus destroying much of the natural rainforest. The Inga Foundation works to prevent this and provide a sustainable alternative. It does this by the implementation of Inga Alley Cropping – a plant native to Central America. The Inga plants restore the necessary nutrients to the soil to allow farmers to plant the crops they need to feed their families.

Mike Hands, a farmer from the South West of England, together with an experienced team of local people have established a demonstration farm in the area surrounding the Pico Bonita National Park in Honduras to enable them to show the farming families a working example of the Alley Cropping system. They then furnish the families with a number of plants and seeds to start their own Alley Cropping system and assist them for the first two to three years to ensure the farming is properly in place.

So far, over two hundred families are successfully employing this method of farming and more families are looking to adopt it. The plan to introduce forty new families a year is so far on track. In the long term, the project will be rolled out through Central America. There have already been groups from Guatemala and Nicaragua visiting the demonstration farm to learn from the team there.