// Project Bona Fide is a non-profit organization working toward sustaining culture through organic agriculture, community correlated outreach, and re-forestation projects in Nicaragua. Project Bona Fide has been created out of a need to support rural Nicaraguan farming communities so that they may gain self-empowerment and economic stability. In addition to offering farmers financial and technical support toward gaining international organic certification, Project Bona Fide focuses on establishing much needed fair trade export market* opportunities, preserving natural environments, and focusing on local health and nutrition projects.

Project Bona Fide and its pilot farm, Finca Bona Fide are dedicated to creating organic cooperatives and establishing fair trade markets that directly benefit the farming community.

Finca Bona Fide is a 43-acre educational farm in rural southwest Nicaragua being developed as a small farm research/training center for regenerative agriculture and land management.

Technology transfer and farm projects include:

• Creating new sources of income, food and employment
• Improving the profitability and reliability of present farming operations
• Establishment of tree nurseries and higher value crops
• Improving both economic security and nutritional balance by including a greater diversity of perennial crops
• Appropriate technological processing of value added products
• Reversal of ecological problems caused by erosion, chemicals, and deforestation
• Involvement in rectifying immediate health needs of local communities
• Genetic conservation of multi-use species of tropical fruits, nuts, bamboo, palms, cycads, heirloom vegetables, and perennial medicinal crops
• Appropriate technology revolving around human powered water pumping, solar hot water systems, and ferro-cement water storage technologies.
• Providing space and materials for "continuing education" and workshops focused on building individual skill sets for local folk

Fair trade means an equitable and fair partnership between consumers in the "developed" world and producers in the "developing" worlds that guarantees poor farmers a living wage, much needed credit at fair prices, and long-term relationships. These fair payments can then be invested in health care, education, environmental stewardship, and economic independence.

From Michael Judd, Founder: How Project Bona Fide Began

In the summer of 1999 I read an article about communities in northern Nicaragua going hungry during a drought. The article said people were competing with pigs for rotted mangos. At this point I had lived with indigenous peoples who cultivated the same piece of land they had survived on for centuries using regenerative agriculture methods. So I was baffled and aghast that people living in one of the worlds richest agricultural regions were going hungry. This is when I began to understand the impacts that debt relief and cash cropping have on rural communities.

As in many parts of the world Nicaraguans have been encouraged to grow cash crops such as rice, beans and corn at the expense of native diversity and food security. Relying on annuals alone for food and economy is a gamble that changes with the weather. If an annual crop has a week or two of unexpected drought when going to seed it will fail or conversely if there is too much rain at harvest time the crop is lost. Traditionally there were other foods for forage and cultivation, mainly perennials that can withstand inclement weather. That diversity has been largely lost.

Project Bona Fide’s vision is to help reintroduce biodiversity to support rebuilding ecologies and economies that first feed and nurture the communities growing them. This multi generational approach will hopefully sow the seeds of autonomy and security that can only come from first having basic needs met. Meanwhile however we have been faced with the conditions of day-to-day poverty and the challenge to meet those needs without creating dependence. This is where Café Infantil was born. The program began over four years ago and is bridging the immediate and short-term needs while germinating the understanding for self-reliance. The 70 children in the program are getting to know new foods, how they’re grown, harvested and prepared. As these children become the parents and the foods they have planted become familiar and brought into their homes for their children to eat our vision will be complete.

So, that is the nutshell story and hopefully not too much of a sermon about Project Bona Fide’s inception. We are now a dedicated group of national and international volunteers listening to one another and the changing times to meet needs and grow a better future.

En Paz, Michael Judd