“PROCAGICA taught us as young people to value and leverage the production opportunities on coffee farms”

Santa María, Honduras, 27 May 2021 (IICA). As a child, Diana Carolina Urquía García helped her parents with the daily tasks involved in coffee production in the municipality of Santa María, La Paz, Honduras. Now, at 19, she has improved her understanding of the crop thanks to training provided by the Central American Program for Integrated Coffee Rust Management (PROCAGICA).

Diana Carolina is a graduate of the San Jose de Cupertino Technical Institute, one of the academic institutions that received support from PROCAGICA to implement nurseries for growing rust-resistant coffee plantlets.

“Through the program, we built two nurseries. We planted 25,000 coffee plants in the first and 60,000 in the second. This allowed us to earn income for the school and a 30% profit for ourselves, which we invested in educational field trips for the students to help expand our knowledge”, explained Urquía.

“I was trained in horticulture by the program, which was aiming to diversify the coffee farms and help farmers increase their income”, she added.

Due to the instruction provided by the program, students were able to plant vegetables; establish school gardens and sell the produce at the schools, creating a market and a diversified product offering.

Diana Carolina explained that at the start of the program with PROCAGICA, “they took us to see the crops with our own eyes, to be able to smell and touch them. We worked a lot on the problem of coffee rust on the farms and on how to identify it and find solutions”.

“After coffee rust completely infected one farm, we had to diversify with other crops, such as pataste (a type of chayote squash) and citrus trees, including orange, lemon, and bitter orange, as well as cassava, beans, radish, cilantro, and flowering plants”, she added.

A new venture

Diana Carolina Urquía described that at the school where she studied, a business was created with the students’ parents, who became vegetable suppliers, opening a market. It was difficult to find certain vegetables, like patastes, however, since they weren’t grown in the area and so the market couldn’t keep up with demand.

“We decided to start planting patastes, which was a good idea because the schools provided a market. With PROCAGICA, we learned how to manage the market under different business profiles. Then we started raising laying hens and sold the eggs, which was beneficial to many people during the pandemic as it helped feed many families”, explained the Honduran entrepreneur.

The family pataste business produces enough to harvest weekly or biweekly. Today, Diana Carolina and her family sell the majority in the community, since schools have been closed due to the pandemic and the produce market at the school is inactive.

The teenager stressed that selling patastes has allowed her to continue her studies in Veterinary Medicine at the National University of Agriculture (UNA), located in the department of Olancho, and has helped her family to diversify the farm with other produce like cassava and malanga; citrus trees, like orange, lemon, and bitter orange; and to raise laying hens.

Diana Carolina is a positive example for the youth in the areas where PROCAGICA operates.

PROCAGICA is a project spearheaded by the European Union (EU) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), operating in the municipalities of Marcala, Chinacla, Santa María, and San Jose, in the department of La Paz, Honduras.

Implementation of the agroforestry systems promoted by the program contributes to biodiversity and water resource conservation, as well as carbon capture, while facilitating adaption to climate change and variability in the region. 

More information:
Institutional Communication Division.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int