Agros Blog

When Agros succeeds, it is usually because we have paid attention to three things: We need to have the right families, the right land, and the right staff. Last week’s approval of Bella Vista as the fourth Agros village in Honduras is a case in point. It’s a voyage that began in the spring of 2007 when Bruce Andrews, a member of a delegation visiting Agros villages outside of San Pedro Sula spoke these words:

“If we don’t help these people, we’ll be spitting in the face of God.”

Bruce’s words were the defining moment of reflection for the delegation from Lake Grove Presbyterian Church in Lake Oswego, OR after they had visited Los Bordos, one of the most impoverished slums in the Western Hemisphere. Their visit was guided by staff from Agros Honduras and CASM, the Honduran Mennonite agency that had been caring for the people of Los Bordos. CASM had asked Agros if together, they might be able to help people from Los Bordos move back to the rural area and form successful villages.

The people of Lake Grove were willing to help support the effort, but they were not to be the only ones. Two months later, a group from Bellevue, WA, who were for the most part veteran supporters of Agros, visited Honduras and spoke with the same group that CASM had selected. They also pledged their support. We were going to need more support before we were done, but we were already paying attention to those three things, and they weren’t all looking good.

First, the Bordos families, a group of people originally from a village called El Limonar, were not doing well with negotiations for the land to which they hoped to move. Then our staff leadership in Honduras went through a transition, and Joel Martinez, our new director, wanted to rethink a number of things, including how we went about the difficult process of assisting in the replanting of urban people in a rural entrepreneurship setting.

Urban migration is a worldwide, massive phenomenon for the landless, rural poor who find it difficult enough to feed themselves, let alone make a living in rural areas, and who are subsequently drawn to cities where they can earn cash by competing for menial jobs. The influx is so great that– even with cooperative municipal governments– the migrants end up living in poor shelter and overcrowded conditions, without water, sewer, or utilities and with disease and crime. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures, if not the reality. In the gloom of these conditions a silver lining gleams: cash from the jobs, and the elusive urban temptation of possibility. By contrast, the rural areas seem hopeless.

This is the environment in which our Agros staff sought to find some of these urban poor who might be interested in returning to the country, taking on long-term debt in order to own land, and learn how to profit from its use. It’s like traveling upstream.

Joel began by finding a few families who might be interested in joining established Agros villages such as Nuevo Amanacer and Brisas del Volcan, working alongside campesinos, country-born and bred farmers who, thanks to their partnership with Agros, were well on their way to profiting from their agricultural enterprises. The experiment was only partially successful. A few families stayed, but others ended up returning to the city, citing the amount of hard work and the long wait for cash as reasons.

In time, Joel could see a way: It helped if Agros and CASM found people who had migrated to Bordos from the area where the new village was to be established. It also helped if the families had only recently arrived in the city, and had not become accustomed to the immediate reward of a cash environment.

He then found a group of campesinos in the La Montañita area of the Santa Barbara region who wanted to become an Agros village, and who were interested in the idea of welcoming back some families who had moved from there to Bordos. He brought the two sets of families– 29 from the country, and six from Bordos– together to talk. The families agreed to work together, and began looking for land. That proved to be a lengthy process as well, since the land required irrigation, and that in turn required obtaining water rights.

Meanwhile, we were still working on the necessary financial support. Two principals from Ludeman Capital Management, financial advisors based in Bellingham and Seattle, also visited Honduras, and provided that crucial final cap. A couple of graduate students from Harvard, moved by their visit to Honduras, joined the Bellevue group.

Finally, everything seemed solid: families, land and staff. The original support partners, who had been so eager to help two years previous, were thankfully still ready, so that when we went through the Agros International board’s due diligence process for approval, we obtained it. The land is situated high, and the villagers decided to call it Bella Vista. The resemblance to “Bellevue” (the French version of “Bella Vista”) may be unintentional, but was not lost on at least one person from the Bellevue group of supporters.

When people from the developed world are faced with the overwhelming plight of the urban poor in the developing world, we tend to have one of two extreme responses: We want to help immediately, or we despair of ever making a difference. If you think about it, both stances are self-centered. The former assuages our pain, that latter attempts to anesthetize it. Either way, the response is about us.

There is a third way: To gently and firmly decide to make a difference somewhere, go about it, and not tire of doing good. This is what the staff of CASM did, it’s what Joel Martinez and the Agros Honduras staff did, it’s what the families of Bella Vista did, and it’s what their supporters from Oregon, Massachusetts and Washington did. As Barry Rowan, one of the Bellevue group said during his visit, it’s what the Pilgrim immigrants to America did: They persevered, over the long haul, to a new beginning.

Bienvenidos, Bella Vista. You are worth the wait.