Farmers in the Trifinio region – the border area shared by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – are all too familiar with drought, crop loss and the very real threat to food security.
A dystopian agriculturist society forced by crop eradicating dust clouds to look beyond earth for promising new habitats may still be the stuff of fiction, but the opening premise of the film Interstellar was seen by some as a metaphorical call to action against climate change.
And while we are still some way from having to leave the planet in order to survive, the struggle against climate change is very real. Farmers in the El Trifinio region – the border area shared by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – have battled for years with drought as the climate changes, losing crops, seeds, and therefore food security.
As things stand, large swathes of land around that trio of frontiers have long been given over to monocultures of maize and beans. But now local populations are being encouraged to arm themselves in the fight for food security by diversifying their crops and engaging in climate smart practices such as agroforestry.#
"We have to train people to deal with these dry periods and the fact that the climate is becoming more difficult to deal with every year," Adriaan Vogel told Global Ideas. He runs a sponsored forestry and water project in the Trifinio region.
For the complete article, please see Deutsche Welle.
