Food Security & Agroecology
The population of the Bluefields region in Nicaragua is particularly affected by malnutrition due to poverty and lack of dietary diversity. The "Food Security and Agroecology" program aims to help communities adapt to their environment and the consequences of climate change to meet their basic needs with the objective of ensuring that families have sufficient, varied, and good quality food by disseminating agroecology practices.
Agroecology is a people-led movement that represents an alternative food and farming paradigm, rooted in healing the relationship between agriculture, the environment, food systems, and society, redesigning agricultural systems in ways that amplifies biodiversity and strengthens relationships between different plants and species, including human beings, as part of holistic strategies to build long-term healthy agro-ecosystems and secure livelihoods. Families and communities are placed at the center of food system governance, and agroecology has proven positive impacts in climate change adaptation, soil regeneration, and combating the biodiversity crisis in vulnerable regions like Latin America and the Caribbean while also positively impacting emotional health and increasing self-confidence, which is an objective this program aims to address.
Technology & Training We Implement
Nutrition Workshops
Nutrition workshops provide training on which foods to eat and grow for better health.
Ergonomic Garden Tools
Garden tools specifically designed for women, the elderly, and disabled folks to increase their capacity to establish and maintain their home garden beds.
Efficient Cookstoves
Efficient cookstoves reduce have a cleaner burning process and thus decrease indoor air pollution and associated acute respiratory infections in women and children, while also reducing the cost of fuel.
Biointensive Garden & Methods
Beneficiaries are trained in nutrition, healthy cooking, and the "BIOINTENSIVE GROWING" method and are supported in the creation and maintenance of their biointensive home gardens.
Caribbean Garden
Small-scale organic production in households, communities, schools and churches based on and permaculture principles, inputs, plants and traditional knowledge adapted to the coastal reality.
Seed Conservation
Seed conservation is critical in preparing for and adapting to the new climate reality, where soil regeneration is necessary to sustain plant like and traditional practices.
Project Highlights
Food and Nutritional Security with Marginalized Groups
Designing the
Caribbean Garden
Document Library
Caribbean Garden
Learn about our multi-year effort to develop gardens designed and adapted specifically for local conditions in Nicaragua.
Webpage
Spanish
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Preserving Our Traditional Seeds and Plants
Practical document based on seed conservation practices of the Rama people of the Southern Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua.
Spanish
Biointensive Methods
Learn about the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method, founded by our friends and partners at Ecology Action, and its relationship to climate change.
English
History of the program
2014 - Present
Increasing hurricanes and tropical storms are contributing to the loss of seeds and traditional ecological and agricultural practices throughout the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. While working in the Rama Territory with Rama leaders, longtime blueEnergy partner Martina Luger led the development of blueEnergy’s food security program in 2014. Working from the local university BICU, she set up a master’s degree in adaptation to climate change and set the stage for the workshops and training blueEnergy employs today. This program has developed in partnership with local institutions (municipal and regional authorities), regional universities (URACCAN and BICU), and RedBioNica Nicaraguan network of biointensive producers), as well as the Wawashang Agroforestry Center (CETAA).
