Guatemala

The Mosaic Villages Project in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, has grown since its inception in 2008 in both scale and success. The combination of a strong implementing partner with deep knowledge of the region in HELPS International and the expertise of the Mosaic agronomy staff has yielded impressive results in just five years. Formal measurement was necessary to provide a quantitative perspective to help take the projects to the next level. An independent evaluation by Deloitte confirmed that average yields have reached four metric tonnes per hectare (MT/ha) compared with 0.8 MT/ha before the program began, representing a five-fold increase.

This has been achieved through the following steps:

• Soils are tested to understand their overall health, and a balanced blend of macro- and micronutrients is designed, along with a prescribed amount and time to apply (4Rs).
• The farmers are trained in no-till agriculture to reduce the risk of pests, to grow in dense rows and double crop to maximize yields and reduce the need for farm chemicals, and not to burn the crop residues, in order to maximize the organic matter in soil.
• This is a partnership, and the farmers choose to use their heirloom corn seed over more high-performing varieties, as they are seen as sacred in their Mayan traditions. But once their corn yields for personal consumption increase, they sometimes convert part of their land to cash crops for sale.
• The farmers are educated by Mosaic agronomists and given interest-free loans at planting, which they repay when their harvest yields a surplus. After just five years, 97 percent of farmers who started the program have graduated and no longer need loans, as their large yield increases have allowed them to sell a surplus at market.
• The projects have a fixed annual investment by The Mosaic Company Foundation but naturally expand in scale through continual improvements in efficiency and the reinvestment of the repaid loans.

One of the most exciting discoveries of the Deloitte evaluation is that best practices from the program have been spreading by word of mouth to the surrounding villages without any level of intervention by Mosaic or HELPS. The potency of the project stems from its easily duplicated simplicity and defined focus. In many of these neighboring villages, the doubling of average yield is being observed.