Nicaragua at a Glance

Nicaragua After the Storm

Home gardens in Nicaragua struggled in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. Imagine a carefully planned garden that provides your family with essential crops for food, fuel, and medicine. Imagine relying on this home garden to sustain your family until the next cycle of planting and harvesting. Now imagine all that erased in just a few hours. That is exactly what happened to the people of Nicaragua on October 27, 1998, when Hurricane Mitch released its force on the Central American isthmus. Nicaraguans have had to literally rebuild the land where they used to grow a wide array of plant species necessary for their survival.

Nicaraguan home gardens are typically characterized by the following:

complex planting systems

multi-purpose crops

nutrient cycling

indigenous crop rotation

These agricultural systems were dramatically altered when Hurricane Mitch raged through Nicaragua, dumping four inches of rain per hour at the height of the storm.

The History of Huertos Caseros

To understand how vital home gardens (huertos caseros) are to sustaining families, and to understand what Hurricane Mitch destroyed, one needs to look at the socioeconomic role of agriculture and the ecological characteristics of the country. Home gardens, which are located in primarily tropical, humid parts of the country, have either clay loams (volcanic residue) or mountain soils. Gardens are carved out of hillsides, mountain tops, and rolling valleys. The rotation of crops, growing of a diversity of plants, and use of terraces in gardens minimizes soil erosion.

A typical home garden in Nicaragua provides three fundamental functions:

1. The agricultural practices and crops planted are adapted to local growing conditions and don't rely heavily on the use of fertilizer, pesticides, or machinery;
2. A wide variety of crops secure stable yields and nutritional diversity over a longer period of time than monocultures provide; and
3. Crop rotation and other agricultural systems yield larger harvests with minimal technology and help prevent soil erosion.

Principle crops include:

The areas affected most by Hurricane Mitch were located in the north and northwest regions of the country--home to some of Nicaragua's poorest residents who rely heavily on home gardens to provide food and medicine for their families. Mitch's floods wiped out entire agricultural areas (including plants, trees, seeds, and soil), leaving mud and debris behind.

Because home gardening is interconnected with Nicaragua's economic system, the destruction from Hurricane Mitch affected the entire socioeconomic health of Nicaragua. Hurricane Mitch erased all basic necessities for people living close to the land. Without food, fuel, or medicine, people were unable to pursue external work opportunities. A shortage of labor affects the tourist trade, large-scale agriculture and forestry businesses, manufacturing industries, and the U.S. economy. As the extent of Mitch's fury became apparent, many Nicaraguans reached out to family members working in the United States for immigration assistance or relied on other networks for immigration to the U.S.

Using Our Connections

Two years after Hurricane Mitch, Nicaragua's ecological, agricultural, and economic balances remained seriously askew. Restoring landscapes, agricultural systems, and entire villages is a Herculean task. Mitch destroyed forests, agricultural infrastructures, wells, irrigation systems, and fertile lowlands bordering rivers and streams. Local knowledge and land management strategies were not destroyed in the hurricane, but most of the tools necessary for maintaining this culture were badly damaged.

Helping to rebuild Nicaragua's home gardens through people-to-people connections was a vital piece of the Making Connections Through Gardening project. Cross-cultural interactions provided opportunities for students to investigate such topics as agricultural practices, hunger and nutrition, environmental disasters, such as Hurricane Mitch, deforestation, and other environmental problems.

To learn more about Nicaragua, visit these Web sites:

United States Agency for International Development: Nicaragua

IDEX: Nicaragua

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