2024-08-01 14:37:45
Sucre, Twenty-one small agricultural producers from rural communities in the San Isidro parish of the Sucre canton completed their training in the Learning Communities developed by the Undersecretariat of Family Farming of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG), with a focus on Integrated Fire Management, in coordination with the Forest Fire Reduction Program through Integrated Fire Management actions in the Sierra and Coast of Ecuador “Amazon Without Fire” – Phase II.
Leopoldo Viteri, District Director of MAG in Manabí, emphasized the Government’s commitment to continue strengthening the agricultural sector through training in sustainable production, where students apply ancestral knowledge along with technical training, with the firm objective of obtaining a production that will allow them to improve the soil and thus increase productivity.
The objective of the Learning Communities is to combine the recovery of ancestral knowledge and combine it with technological innovation to improve the production process of Peasant Family Farming (AFC), the Director stressed.
Mayra Falcones, representative of the Amazonias Sin Fuegos project, highlighted that this is a regional project that seeks to prevent, control and remedy forest fires in Ecuador. She added that this program seeks to promote environmental education and citizen participation to mitigate the impacts of these fires.
He added that they work in coordination with the MAG in training in the field, in order to raise awareness among agricultural producers about uncontrolled burning that can cause forest fires, in addition to contributing to the productive scaling up of family agriculture and the conservation of biodiversity.
Family farming represents 70% of the Agricultural Production Units (UPAs) with a concentration of 20% of the land, has 37% of the water for irrigation and is mainly dedicated to production to satisfy basic needs, more than 60% of the national agricultural production is in the hands of small producers, the Undersecretariat highlighted.
Jennifer Aveiga, on behalf of the graduates, highlighted their commitment to cultivating the land by harvesting organic products. “This new knowledge allows us to change the way agriculture has been carried out for the last 50 years, producing with chemical products. For now, our only goal is to rescue the ancestral knowledge of our grandparents to strengthen the family economy and take care of the land.”
Producers received training distributed in 14 modules of theoretical and practical training in sustainable agroecological production, capacity building in the rural sector, rural territorial development, harvest and post-harvest, gender approach to rurality, crop management, animal husbandry, participatory guarantee systems, financial management, alternative marketing circuits, associative strengthening, knowledge dialogues, sustainable agri-food systems.