“Its been a tough year,” Ulises tells me while we sit on his couch drinking coffee and eating sweet bread. He’s got his sombrero on, complimented with a red cloth that reads “The change continues in El Paisnal. Mauricio Funes for president”. This sombrero has become part of his daily attire, but he’s still waiting to see that change. As he hands me a cup of Nescafe (no comment) he walks with a slight limp, a result of being hit by a piece of shrapnel from a US funded military bomb dropped during a military operation in his home town. He lost most of his family that day and barely survived the night hiding behind a boulder, unable to move and almost bleeding to death while the military searched nearby for campesinos like him.

Corn is always on his mind, and it’s brought up again tonight. He repeats the same story of high input costs, such as $60 sacks of fertilizer, seeds, tools, paying workers, and transportation costs to bring his harvested corn from his field to his home. Last year he took out an expensive loan from the bank to pay for these input costs, hoping his harvest would cover it. When it came time to sell his 42 quintales (100lb sacks) of corn, the market was buying at around $20 per quintal…close to nothing. And with the loss of beans this year as the result of hurricane Ida, poor farmers like Ulises are extra screwed. Now his credit is due next month (they must pay it all back in one lump sum) and they are left with practically nothing. His wife Maria says, “Banks don’t really excuse these kinds of things, so we don’t know what were going to do, but we don’t have the money…We work so hard, all day long in the hot sun and are left with nothing.” Ulises adds, “Mauricio promised all these things in his campaign, but where is it all? Nothing has changed.”

This story is the same for many others in this community and around the country. There is no market and they all sell to coyotes or middlemen who rip them off to sell their corn to larger processing companies like Diana to be added to chips and other snacks. This poor income leaves very little for them to buy things like fruits and vegetables or any food other than corn, school supplies, transportation, clothes, medicine, home improvements, basic necessities like soap to wash their clothes and dishes, or recreation. So, people look for alternatives.

In this community, many have sacrificed their lives to go live en el norte. Most people have at least one family member who has migrated north in search of better employment in order to send money back home to their families, oftentimes causing broken families and unfulfilled dreams. Here are a few stories of migration an the effect it’s had on several different families…

 --Yesica his a beautiful, spunky 15 year old. She’s a middle school student who travels to El Paisnal, the nearest town, to study in the afternoons. She just celebrated her quinceañera last summer, which was a huge celebration in the community. Everyone was there except for her mother, who left four years ago to find work in Los Angeles. Her mom sends money back to her and her younger siblings each month, but it’s just enough for food and a little extra, Yeca says. Living costs were much higher than her mom had anticipated and after rent, transportation, and food, she is left with less than she had anticipated to send to her kids back home. She is not sure when she’ll see her mother again, but she misses her horribly.

--Don Carlos is in his mid sixties, although he looks much older. With many missing teeth, he is difficult to understand, but that doesn’t keep him from stopping to talk most afternoons after his long day in the field. Carlos’ son Giovanni was given a 10 year visa several years back to represent the community in Milwaukee on two different occasions, during which he stayed at my family’s house. Four years ago he used this visa a third time to travel to the states, but this time without plans to return. Don Carlos expresses his disappointment in his son’s ability to keep his promise of supporting his family with the income he’s making in the north. “What is the point of us being apart if he doesn’t even send money back to us? We only rely on corn production and were just barely making it.”

--Domingo is an older man in his 40s. He may be the one “success” story in town. He spent 15 years in the US working as a carpenter in LA. A few months ago he voluntarily returned to his home town where a two story mansion was waiting for him. While in the US, he had this house slowly built for him and his family. Aside from this giant house, he is working on getting his fruit farm up and running. He has already bought several coconut, mango, and orange trees and just finished installing his irrigation system, putting him much further ahead than any other farmers in this community.

--The most difficult story comes from 22 year old Dani. I met him one afternoon on the soccer field when he came up to me and asked how I was doing in perfect English. Surprised, I asked him where he learned English so well. “I lived in the states for 13 years. I just got deported 4 months ago.” He left Rutilio Grande with his family when he was 9 years old, in search of the American dream. He attended high school in Rhode Island and had a job stocking shelves at Walmart. After getting in trouble and being cited for a couple of DUIs, he arrived in San Salvador on a plane full of deportees with absolutely nothing. He had his parents wire him money to buy clothes and a $50 cab ride to the rural community where he spent the first 9 years of his life. There he was reunited with his grandma. The first month I was here he seemed hopeful, trying to stay positive about starting his life over. He had plans to invest in raising pigs and if that didn’t work, he would return to the US. But by the end of my stay in the community, he started drinking more and more. One night he fell on the dirt road, hitting his face on a rock. I watched it all happen and afterwards he approached me with a bloody face and a fat lip, “I feel like a piece of shit. I miss my family, my girlfriend, and my son. I want to go back so bad but I can’t. I know I made mistakes, but there is nothing here for me.”

For those that have stayed in the country, education is what has pushed them ahead. Money from sister relationships in the US, especially through the Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, has provided numerous scholarships for students to continue studying past sixth grade. A high school education has helped many community members find alternative forms of employment. At least three people have gone on to study (for free) for one year at the police academy in San Salvador. The pay isn’t great, but it is a reliable, steady income. However, it also comes with the sacrifice of patrolling the gang saturated colonias of the big city. Police officers and security guards also have to migrate to the city, usually spending four days on away from home and three days off at home with their families. Aside from police officers and security guards, others hold jobs as teachers, bus drivers, secretaries, and employees of agricultural shops, and even organizers at local non profits. Only with the help of these scholarships are they able to occupy these jobs. There is a notable difference between families with an outside income and those who still only rely on corn and bean production. Traditional agriculture here has proved to be hopeless, unsustainable, and simply not enough.

On the bright side, several organizations and projects have arrived in the countryside, searching for alternatives to corn production and migration.These projects include…

--A really great project through a community development organization called CORDES who does great work with rural communities throughout El Salvador. They are promoting a fruit tree project for women throughout the municipality. I had the chance to attend one of the organic agriculture trainings with three older women from the community. The plan is to train 50 women (through 15 workshops) on organic agriculture practices and provide them with coconut, nispero, and papaya trees as well as irrigation systems. The organization also provides them with agricultural technicians to help support the project. The agronomist giving the training told us, “Now that we know that corn isn’t cutting it, fruit is the future of our country.” He calculated the possible income these women would receive from each fruit tree planted, and as the numbers rose, so did their eyebrows.

--Another organization called FOMILENIO arrived in the community to present a vegetable project. They took information on each interested community member’s land and signed them up for the project. The idea is to focus on alternative crop production, assisting with organic agriculture trainings, technical assistance, seeds, and irrigation systems. During the orientation, Don Lucio, an older man stood up and said, “Well, I hope this works because we have been forgotten here. We have poor land and poor soil and there is little hope for us campesinos.” Most people seemed interested in the idea, but nothing had progressed with this by the time I left town.

--UCRES is an NGO also focused on rural development. They are beginning an organic home garden project with two women from each community in the municipality.

--The government’s ministry of agriculture has also planned a $22 million project to hand out agriculture packets which include 22 pounds of seed and one 100 pound sack of fertilizer. With this project, they are hoping to reach 380,000 small subsistence corn producers, those with less than one of land to satisfy the demand of nearly 2,546,000 pounds of corn each year. The packets have a value of $51 and priority will be given to women run households. They are hoping for more transparency and organization with this year’s hand outs. This may sound like a good idea, but when talking Ulises and other producers, this packet is not nearly enough. One sack of fertilizer may help, but input costs are still too high.

--The youth garden we have invested in during my time here has turned out well. With the technical support of my agronomist friend and 35 scholarship students, we helped plant nearly 100 tomato plants, lots of radishes, cucumbers, cabbage, yucca, carrots, beets, onions, lettuce, and corn. With the weeklong draught, we sadly lost the carrots, beets, onions, and lettuce, but everything else miraculously survived. Before I left, we harvested radishes three different times, the kids rinsing, bundling, and selling them door to door throughout the community. They sold each bundle of 7 beautiful organic radishes for a quarter and were never denied sales at each doorstep they visited. While seven radishes clearly were not enough to make a big change in their diets, they were the talk of the town for a couple of weeks after the kids made $40 only in radish sales. Whether or not this garden will continue while I’m gone is unclear, as many have told me that projects like this don’t always last here, but the simple idea that people have begun to think of the possibility of growing their own vegetables (other than corn) and profiting from those sales is hopeful. Many people have decided to incorporate radishes, cucumbers, and other vegetables into their own plots of land this year after seeing the results of our garden. I was sad to leave the garden before everything was harvested, but I know that it was left in good hands.

These alternative agriculture projects seem to be a trend throughout the rural communities I’ve visited in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala these past few months. Terms like agronomist, organic fertilizer, trainings, alternative markets, and vegetable production have been heard often in each place. From country to country, I’ve found that producers are even using the same recipes for organic fertilizers and finding ways to make agriculture profitable and appealing in a world where the idea of migration is present in most small farmer’s minds. The good news is that the communities in Guatemala and Nicaragua who’s goods are exported to Just Coffee at a fair price seem to be much better off than communities such as Rutilio Grande in El Salvador. The market that Just Coffee provides to these small producers is impossible to find in other parts of the country. When I told one corn producer about JC’s model, they said, “Man, it’s too bad we can’t grow coffee here in the community.” Some of these smaller projects are hopeful, but it’s obvious that bigger structural changes need to be made in order for change to really reach those than need it most.