A BETTER BREED FOR LIFE.

• Author: Jacques, Ben
• Position: Husbandry and agriculture research in Guatemala

In an adobe house on the altiplano, a nearly ten thousand-feet high plain atop the Cuchumatanes Mountains in western Guatemala, Pedro Chum reaches into a bowl of beans, then holds out his hand.

"How many varieties can you see?" he asks.

His guests are seated at a small table next to the stove, enjoying hot coffee and pan dulce baked by his wife, Antonia.

"I think there are five, perhaps more," says one guest, examining the different beans: red, black, speckled, yellow, white.

"This is a special bean," Chum points to one. "It's softer than the others. It's good to eat and it improves the soil."

But what do beans have to do with sheep?

Chum's guests--a neighboring sheep farmer, a writer, and Marikler Giron, a staff member from Proyecto Heifer--have come to see the sheep, which recently arrived from Massachusetts in the United States.

In April Proyecto Heifer's parent organization, Heifer Project International (HPI), a nonprofit ecumenical organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas, shipped thirty-four pure-bred sheep and goats and thirty-six rabbits to Guatemala. The shipment was made in response to a request for genetic upgrading. Some HPI animals went to breeding stations, and others to families in eastern and central Guatemala. Eight rams and one ewe were delivered to families on the altiplano, north of Huehuetenango.

The link between the beans and sheep illustrates the integration of animal husbandry and sustainable agriculture. Chum's experiments in plant diversity exemplify the innovative projects of nine families in this remote area. Sharing their resources and expertise, they are working together to upgrade their livestock, rebuild depleted soil, reforest, increase family income, and improve opportunities for their children.

Before he shows his guests the sheep, Chum takes them back into the intense sunlight for a tour of his small farm, a succession of small fields divided by stone walls or barbed wire on hillsides rimming the altiplano. Once this high plain was covered with oak and pine trees, but now, except for a few clusters of ancient oaks and a thin scattering of small trees, the area is barren, cleared long ago for pasture or firewood and now overgrazed by sheep.

But Chum and other farmers are rebuilding the soil through cultivation of a variety of trees and plants. Sometimes planted in steep contour strips on hillsides, these trees, often fast-growing alder or leucaena, like legumes, fix nitrogen in the soil, an essential condition for cultivation. They also provide forage for animals, firewood, or fruit for humans.

Just outside his front door, Chum shows his guests berry-producing vines. And at a nearby shed, he points out two different kinds of potatoes ready for planting...