Peace Corps, CREAR & Conservation History in the DR.
In 1973, Peace Corps DR and the Dominican Agrarian Institute (IAD)
initiated the Frontier Development Program, established the Estacion
Experimental Rio Limpio, and introduced organic agriculture and
conservation farming as an alternative to the slash-and-burn practices
of the region's farmers.
The PCV's of the Frontier Development Program, demonstrated and taught
organic farming and soil conservation in the region's remote
settlements. In the process, these PCV's made organic agriculture
widely known and appreciated by farmers, agronomists, rural
development groups, and government officials throughout the DR.
In 1982, Estacion Experimental Rio Limpio was reorganized as a
non-profit foundation and renamed Centro Regional Estudios de
Alternativas Rurales (CREAR). In the following years CREAR established
the DR's first agro-ecological vocational-technical steepland farming
school with full scholarships for sons and daughters of the poorest
farmers. Many CREAR graduates have since taken up careers as
conservation technicians, field instructors, and organic farming
specialists, while generations of PCV's trained at CREAR, continued to
teach organic farming, intenive gardening, and soil-conservation,
providing training to many hundreds of small farmers throughout the
country.
Today organic agriculture counts for 20% of the DR's agricultural
exports. The DR has more than 8500 certified organic farmers including
790 producers of organic bananas, 6742 producers of organic cacao, and
899 of organic coffee, and also produces organic coconuts, lemons,
mangos, avocadoes, ginger, aloe vera, noni, and other products. This
year, more than 100,000 tons of organic bananas, cacao and mango have
already been exported to Europe, United States and Asia producting
earnings of US $70,000,000.
In February of 2005, CREAR was confronted by a drastic cut in
government funding to CREAR (for faculty and staff salaries from RD
$70,000 monthly to RD $7200 monthly). With the school unable to pay
its faculty and staff, it was forced to suspend student registration
and all school operations, including maintenance of the school's
quarter-century old training, research and demonstration campus with
its watershed, conservation-farming system, bench terraces, and
intensive bio-dynamic gardens.
The 45th anniversary of Peace Corps in the DR is also the 35th
anniversary of Peace Corps' introduction of organic farming in the DR.
Although Organic Agriculture is now an important and growing sector
of the Dominican economy small farmer participation in the organic
production sector is greatly limited by the lack of field technicians
and field instructors needed to transfer conservation farming
technology to great number of small farmers farming the critical
watersheds of the nation.
In this time of economic crisis for CREAR, and in this time of
environmental crisis in the DR, it is hoped that FDR and PC/DR will
support the reopening of CREAR's school of conservation farming and
watershed conservation through a renewal of the historic collaboration
between PC, DR government, and community-based efforts to improve
rural education and the rural economy, and restore and conserve the
nation's vital topsoils and watersheds in the process.
Submitted by Mark Feedman, 12/10/2006
CREAR Reports:
Link http://homestead.org/BarbaraBambergerScott/Crear/Feedman.htm