Ignacio Villa wrote:
>
> Dan
>
> I have had my reservations about Sharon's plans for helping folks in eastern
> Peru, and I concurr with your thoughts on their level of sophistication
> regarding their biological environment. They may not use the same tools to
> understand these systems as the otherwise sophisticated scientists, but they
> sure have an understanding of it. I think there are several things that bear
> thinking about.
To steal the last two paragraphs from my original long post...my goal is
not to create any system for the campesinos, first because that's
impossible for one person to do, and secondly because there are several
much bigger players involved in a very extensive area, the most
influential being, even in it's absense, the State of Peru.
Therefore...I repeat...
<<<-Anyway my goal is eventually to get enough information to convince
the various international cooperation projects that they should put in
public internet centers in the major towns in the jungle as we have in
Lima, which could be used by all the farmer organizations until their
"economy" permits them to buy their own.
The center would come equipped with small cameras (to rent so they
could take pix of problem crops), scanners for the photos, CU-SEEme
video conferencing (or something similar), and of course just plain ol'
e-mail and web access. There are finally developing lists here in Lima,
such as that for the small and medium businessman and it is catching
on>>>>
However, I would
> urge anyone, as you said, to go and get dirty for a long time: much more can be
> learned when one has an open mind and a humble attitude.
Point taken, except... The other major aspect of this Connections idea
perhaps I failed to communicate. One of the major problems for the
campesinos is that even where products for export might be logically
grown (i.e. in river basins already cultivated or in areas already
deforested from coca planting) they have little or no access to market
information. To give my personal prime example, three years ago with a
couple of phone calls from my very American experience with Celestial
Seasonings tea, I was able make the connection between a group of some
100 families in the Upper Huallaga Valley who grow lemon grass and CS.
Out of this very slight almost imperceptible effort on my part with a
couple of English phone calls they succeeded in getting first a 17 ton
order (which they successfully and ecstatically completed) and then
later an 80 ton order, which, however, they were not able to complete
because their fields in the meantime had been attacked by a fungus.
Unfortunately although AID had pix of this project on their walls in
their Lima office, they only said after consultation with the agrarian
Univ. of Tingo Maria (the nearby jungle town) and with someone at USDA,
that it was the campesinos own fault for having not rotated their crop
after some 15 years. Interestingly enough no one from anywhere who knew
about this project ever said to the campesino group, you know y'all
better start rotating that crop or you're going to have a problem, or
here's a good suggestion for a crop with which to rotate. AID certainly
knew they had gotten the orders and never was there a peep about their
having a bleak future. BUT when the problem did come, basically everyone
just washed their hands. STILL there were no suggestiong of what they
could do to specifically recoup their crop, which obviously for
Celestial Seasonings had to be chemicals free.
Bottom line. The Net now counts... I from my naive outsider's view
think that if they had access to communications they would have had a
decent chance to get information on how to cope with their problem, not
to mention perhaps having access--now by Internet, and not my phone
calls--to other tea companies and traders with whom they might establish
a relationship. If you don't know a market exists, obviously you can't
even begin to try to go for it!
I am simply trying to give the campesinos the same chance at information
that you, dear readers and I have ...and perhaps are even beginning to
take for granted... on the Net. And I repeat that means information for
those as well who are more equipped, i.e. agronomists with experience in
the zones and dirt under their fingernails, who also are lacking in NEW
(or even old tried and true) information hopefully generated from
informed research and experience from people like yourselves...
>
> The commitment to help becomes a commitment to become part of an extremely
> complex process, and not to be taken lightly.
Are my posts redolent of frivolity??? :-)
> What I am trying to say is that Sharon's sophistication with information
> exchange and her access to political power may be more useful to the campesino,
> than any production recipe she might glean from cyberspace.
...
> Ignacio Villa
> 9697 SR 534
> Middlefield OH 44062
> 75557.3256@compuserve.com
You're right. And I may be remiss in not having written about this need
publicly. The problem has been one of ethics, since at one point I was
trying to get two-month funding from AID just to get enough information
together to show them (and in part being on this list--finally-- is part
of that still!!) that computer communications are essential and very
usefully productive in this approaching 21st century. I guess I felt if
I wrote about it, it would be a breach of ethics seen to be only be
furthering my own interests, although in thinking about it, if I
mentioned my own efforts in an op-ed piece to get funding, I would be
laying out my bias.
I should point out that at this particular time the ONLY communication
out of the Apurimac valley is a squawky, radio-phone hookup. (Note that
access just to get into the middle of the valley, involves a 6-8 hour
drive. My exercise in gathering enough information is to convince the
folks with money that having Internet access is essential is also to
convince them to put in satellite phone communications into the area,
at least for the major projects working there.
Basta...Thanks, to all, again, and I promise not to send such a long
post again...(promises, promises)
>
...
-- Sharon Stevenson (51-1) 444-4749 Lima, Peru ---------------------- Our best hope for civility? The Golden Rule: Treat others as you wish to be treated--for the good of all of us! :-)