Help a farmer avoid a food crisis
May 5, 2020
Without a good harvest this year, farmers like Santos and her family could go hungry this year. But the pandemic means many of them don’t have enough seeds to plant.
With the COVID-19 pandemic creating disruption in food systems around the world, many vulnerable communities risk entering into a long-term food crisis.
This is the case in Nicaragua, where the pandemic is taking place against the backdrop of disruptive climate change and ongoing political instability.
Farmer Santos Paula Gonzalez Contreras, from the small Indigenous community of Telpaneca, was already struggling to rebound from two years of severe drought.
Two years of meagre harvests depleted both savings and food supplies. Now, the pandemic caused the price of food to double.
Hunger is setting in, and time to get new seeds in the ground is running out. But some families in her community already had to eat the grain and beans they’d set aside as seed, and they were unable to replace the seeds stored in their community seed bank last year.
Santos’s family depends entirely on her ability to grow a good harvest this summer. But without seeds to plant, she can’t make it happen.
Our partner in the region, FECODESA, tells us there are one hundred extremely vulnerable families like Santos’ that are running out of seeds—and time—to get the next growing season underway.
The situation is critical. But Santos doesn’t stand alone.
Through SeedChange, you have a direct connection to her. Will you help?
Our partner organization, FECODESA, is on the ground already. They have a four-point emergency plan to help farmers in five communities get their growing seasons underway. But we need to raise $10,000 by May 15th.
If you give today, your donation will go towards:
- Buying and distributing an emergency supply of fast-growing, nutritious seeds that Santos and others can plant immediately.
- Delivering emergency food packages to help her keep hunger at bay while her family works to grow the next harvest.
- An emergency grow-out project that FECODESA will organized at the Cooperative Central Seed Bank in Pueblo Nuevo to replenish the stock of local seeds.
- Training for Santos to put in place ecological techniques to face future droughts, like water harvesting, micro-irrigation and soil management techniques for an increasingly dry climate.
With this help, Santos can feed her family this year.
It only costs $100 to give a family like Santos’ family access to this emergency help.
Please give today.
Your generous action will make the difference between hunger and safety for a family in Nicaragua.