COLUMBE - Conservation of soils
and traditional Andean agricultural products

Indigenous communities, small plots, extensive participation, food supply, soil conservation, and traditional crops are some of the elements gathered in the development experience of Columbe.

Columbe is a united community. It has created spaces for dialogue, forging initiatives for education, to improve productivity, to strengthen small businesses and to protect the paramos.

The communities of Columbe Alto and Columbe Grande executed a project for the conservation of natural resources with the help of the United Nations Programme of Small Donations. The communities agreed that the FBU participates providing technical assistance and training.

From an agroecological focus, all of the community, 110 families, started practicing soil conservation and slope protection as well as recuprate the cultivation of traditional crops on their land.

To confront the problem of soil erosion and fertility loss, the communities developed a work plan, an "associated methodology" in which five or six neighbouring families join together to help each other with terrace construction, filtration ditches and agroforestry. In only a short time and with limited resources the results are staggering.

The food supply has been secured through the recuperation of traditional crops and the creation of vegetable gardens on the land of each family, it being the women who in an outstanding effort lead these achievements.

Regarding training, FBU centers its efforts on facilitating the exchange of experiences with other communities. Through this exchange productive actions and training were enabled which gave us confidence to capitalise on the local resources and abilities to incorporate new knowledge and appropriate technologies.

Achievements

· Each family owns one hectare with practices of soil conservation, terraces, and drainage and filtration ditches.

· Each plot has a small vegetable garden to improve and guarantee food supply for the family.

· They have recuperated and conserved native varieties of potatoe, oca, melloco, mashua, chocho, quinua; they held a biodiverse agricultural market.

The challenges :

The proposal, lead by Columbe Alto and Columbe Grande, has raised the interest of the neighbouring communities. Together with the Organization for the Integral Development of the Indigenous Village of Columbe (ODIPIC), the Ecuadorian Indigenous Federation (FEI), the Parish Assembly and the FBU, the communities are formulating a macro project whose components are: food supply, natural resource management, protection of the paramo, strengthening of small businesses, and organizational development.