A group of farmers in southern Honduras are trying their hand at cultivating a crop not commonly found in the region: sesame.

While crops such as corn, beans, squash, melons and cashews are typically found in both commercial and family fields across this stretch of Honduras, an effort to plant sesame is bringing farmers a new source of income and the possibility of tapping into a profitable value chain and export market.

The Dry Corridor Alliance (ACS) – PROSASUR program has developed agricultural business plans for farmers that place emphasis on high-value crops and improving household conditions. As part of these business plans, the program has partnered with a Taiwanese company called the Dong Jyu Group, which is providing a group of 52 farmers with the seeds, fertilizers and pesticides to grow sesame crops in the municipalities of El Triunfo and Namasigue.

“It is a pleasure to be involved in the production of sesame seeds, and the community will be very happy to see this become a reality,” said farmer José Vivian Varela, speaking on behalf of the group of sesame producers at a launch ceremony held in El Triunfo on Sept. 13. “We are very proud to be here with government officials, the Ministry of Agriculture, ACS-PROSASUR and our friends from Taiwan.”

The sesame initiative and agricultural business plans contribute to the ACS-PROSASUR program’s efforts to raise the incomes of smallholder farmers in 12 municipalities across the Dry Corridor – a region named for its extended periods of drought.

ACS-PROSASUR is implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with INVEST-Honduras and is funded by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program through the World Bank.

The partnership with the Dong Jyu Group was established as an initiative of the Honduran Department of Economic Growth. It is supported by the Department of Agriculture and Livestock’s Office of Agricultural Science and Technology, directed by Guillermo Cerritos.

A steady income for farmers

Under the agreement, Dong Jyu Group providing farmers transportation, a daily meal and a weekly wage to cultivate sesame crops, and they’ll earn additional income when the sesame is harvested in a few months.

ACS-PROASASUR is facilitating agreements between Dong Jyu Group and individual producers. The program will provide training to the farmers and visit the plots every 15 days to give assistance and monitor progress.

Each of the 52 producers planted approximately 1 hectare of sesame in August, which are each expected to yield 2,240 pounds of product in December – a total of more than 116,000 pounds of sesame.

Donald Lin, president of Dong Jyu Group, said the partnership will allow farmers to grow a lucrative crop and earn a steady income without taking on any of the upfront costs of planting or risk of the harvest being spoiled by disease or drought. And sesame’s export value is higher than that of other common exports like cashews and cantaloupe.

“I want to bring the success that we’ve had in Taiwan and share it with all of you,” Lin said to the producers. “You won’t have to buy seeds, you won’t have to purchase fertilizer, and you won’t have to wait four months until the harvest to receive an income.”

In the Dry Corridor, where climate change and phenomena like El Niño and La Niña exacerbate yearly lengthy droughts, some 90 percent of the population live on less than $2 a day. Many families rely on subsistence farming or small profits from agricultural production, but the drastic swings between heavy rainfall and drought are an annual danger to harvests.

ACS-PROSASUR Chief of Party Carlos Ruiz said that while planting sesame may be foreign to many farmers, the new crop can help improve the livelihoods and raise wages of its growers.

“This is a historic day because it is a new way of doing business and a new way to generate income for the family … We firmly believe this effort will improve the livelihoods of our families,” he remarked. “We want to thank our producers and encourage them with this new business model.”

Planting resilient crops

In 2018, a particularly hot and extended period of “canícula,” a stretch of extreme heat during the rainy season, caused Honduras to declare a state of emergency, and the government estimated that some 65,500 families in the Dry Corridor required emergency food assistance. Many municipalities lost most of their harvests.

ACS-PROSASUR and Dong Jyu Group hope that farmers in the region can become more resilient to the extreme climate with drought-resistant crops like sesame.

“Sesame seed is a plant that does not need much care to be productive … This product was chosen because it is low risk but has a worldwide demand and a lot of potential in this region,” said Dong Jyu Group Project Development Manager and Special Assistant to the President, Willis Yang. “We are very pleased because we know we’re doing something that will trigger a change in the lives of families.”

Once the initial group of producers adopt and adapt to a new crop and have a successful first harvest, Dong Jyu Group hopes to introduce more Dry Corridor farmers to sesame – and potentially begin raising household incomes through other agricultural products.

“We’re starting with one small sesame seed, but we hope to expand and introduce other crop alternatives in the future,” said Chief of Party Ruiz.

A group of riders make their way to the remote community of Navijupe, their horses and mules slowly navigating the roads that are badly damaged by the extreme rains in this region of Honduras. It takes about two hours for them to reach their destination, which is home to some 1,400 residents.

These riders, or “jinetes” in Spanish, make the journey from San Lucas, El Paraíso, to the isolated town with the goal of improving health for families facing poor household sanitation and malnutrition. According to the World Bank, 58 percent of children younger than age 5 in the region suffer from chronic malnutrition.

The jinetes’ bright yellow shirts identify them as nutrition promoters working with a five-year project in southern Honduras called the Dry Corridor Alliance – PROSASUR, which is implemented by Creative Associates International as a partner of INVEST-Honduras.

The project aims to reach 6,000 poor and extreme poor households in Honduras’ Dry Corridor, so named for the long periods of drought that follow heavy rains annually. Working in these rural areas often requires project staff to make long drives in pick-up trucks or on motorcycles over rugged roads, and in some cases, takes boat trips or treks on foot.

The trip to Navijupe calls for a different mode of transportation.

“Navijupe is a particularly isolated community, and we had to get creative,” says Chief of Party Carlos Ruiz. “But when we realized the severity of the health situation there, we knew that this was a community that needed support, particularly young children for whom poor nutrition can have lifelong consequences. It’s for these human reasons that we’re committed to overcoming any challenge.”

Household changes for community health

Dry Corridor Alliance – PROSASUR will work with families, community leaders and local volunteers to improve food security and nutrition in Navijupe, where most households live off an income of $1 per day. The project will also promote health and nutrition education, and the families most in need will receive assistance in household water and sanitation projects, such as replacing dirt floors with concrete or improving latrines.

Project technician Luis González says for now, the jinetes are beginning by getting the community familiar with the project and identifying the households that require the most support, prioritizing those with children under 2 years old or pregnant women. But the local team is already seeing opportunities to help families diversify their diets and make small changes that could have a big impact.

“Among its initial actions, the team will create Food and Nutrition Security Plans in various households,” he says. “These plans could include raising hens for eggs and providing technical assistance to plant family gardens with carrots, beets and cucumbers.”

The project has also partnered with the government-run youth employment initiative Chamba Joven (Youth Work), which seeks to give young people their first work experience. The youth will support the project’s work in Navijupe over five months, including administering diagnostic surveys and establishing demonstrative land parcels for planting.

“Through the efficient management of the parcels, it’s possible to improve the crop yields and household income, achieving a positive change in the quality of life for these families,” says agricultural engineer and project component lead Edgardo Varela. “These actions combined with health and nutrition measures are impacting lives in a sustainable way for many malnourished children in the Dry Corridor.”

At the Pan-American Agricultural School El Zamorano, about a 45-minute drive from here, Francia Cacho is quickly taking notes as the instructor speaks at the front of the room.

Cacho is preparing for a six-month internship in the remote area of Choluteca as a nutritionist for the Dry Corridor Alliance (ACS) – PROSASUR project, which is supporting families in rural areas improve their nutrition and health.

“I have never been to Choluteca, but I’m familiar with the situation in the Dry Corridor,” she says. “I know it’s a place that is in need, because there’s a lot of food insecurity. So, it’s there that we have to measure and try to move those health indicators.”

The Dry Corridor, a region that stretches across southern Honduras and other parts of Central America, is so named for its extended periods of drought, followed by months of heavy rain. The extreme climate contributes to high levels of poverty, food and water insecurity and chronic childhood malnutrition.

Cacho and the other nutritionists are undergoing training at Zamorano, a renowned agricultural university in the region, to prepare them for the health challenges families face in the Dry Corridor. Several other project staff also came from Choluteca to attend the five-day training.

For Cacho, the training was a chance to learn something new and get up to speed on the latest data and best practices in nutrition.

“This has been an amazing experience,” she says. “It’s been an experience of a lot of learning and a lot of updates, now all that’s left is to go and implement everything that we’ve learned.”

The ACS-PROSASUR project is working in 12 municipalities to improve nutrition and hygiene and raise incomes among 6,000 poor and extreme poor households. The project will rely on a team of three nutritionists, working in partnership with local leaders and nutrition and health promoters hired by the project, to support families in adopting more diversified and healthier diets.

The project is implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with INVEST-H. It is funded by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program through the World Bank.

Education for healthier living

According to the World Bank, 58 percent of children age 5 and younger in the Dry Corridor suffer from chronic malnutrition, characterized as being underweight, with stunted growth, and with micronutrient malnutrition.

Part of the challenge is food insecurity and limited access to clean water; ACS-PROSASUR is working with families to allow them to grow healthier foods in small plots or community gardens. The project will also complete household improvement projects in some 2,000 households, laying concrete over dirt floors, upgrading latrines and stoves and installing rainwater collection and filtration systems.

With these initiatives, households will be better equipped to provide healthier foods to families, particularly young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women. But for the nutritionists, implementing these changes is only one part of the solution.

Nohemi Alicia Ramirez Dormes, a nutrition promoter who completed the training at Zamorano, says that the biggest challenge to progress in the communities of the Dry Corridor will be changing mindsets.

A lack of understanding about nutrition and food preparation leads families to underutilize the crops they can grow on their own land in favor of unhealthier foods, she explains.

“We have to first change attitudes in these communities, especially within mothers of young children,” she says. “If a family has hens and they gather eggs, they go to the urban area and sell the eggs in order to buy, for example, bottled soda, chips and lard for frying food. They’re not eating the healthy foods they have, so changing that mindset about what they consume will be difficult.”

Adriana Beatriz Di Iorio, an Argentinian nutrition specialist and instructor at Zamorano, says there also has to be a cultural shift in prioritizing the nutrition of mothers and young children.

“There has to be a shift in the belief that the man is the one who receives the best serving, the best meat, the best part of the chicken at a meal. He eats first at the table, and then the rest of the family can eat,” she says. “I think that to achieve a change in a population with these ingrained beliefs will take time, and I think the best direction is through education. We have to educate that mother and let her know that her husband can eat, but he should share with his children who are still growing.”

ACS-PROSASUR will work to achieve this shift in thinking with the support of nutrition promoters who will work closely with communities and individual families to put better practices into use.

The project has also begun working with community leaders and staff to regularly monitor the height and weight of young children, ensuring their growth is on track or offering counseling and advice to parents whose children are not reaching their adequate weight based on nutritional standards. Other activities include workshops about household hygiene, training on how to diversify diets based on locally grown, nutritious foods, and sharing healthy recipes, like rice with mango.

Heyli Cano, a young mother in the community of El Llano, says that through the nutrition promoters, she is already learning more about how to keep her two young children healthy.

“Sometimes it’s hard because work is very difficult here. It’s not every day that you can eat well,” she says. “They have taught us about how to eat more vegetables and other healthier foods.”

A passion for uplifting communities

Dr. Luz María Aguilar Chacón, Health and Nutrition Senior Specialist with INVEST-H, says that throughout her career in the health field, she has gotten to know families of the Dry Corridor personally and seen the effects of poverty and extreme poverty on health, and ultimately the futures of children.

She says the ACS-PROSASUR project will make a profound improvement in these communities.

“Nutrition work is very important for me because at the end of the project, we’ll be able to say that our investment had a big impact in our population,” she says. “We’re Hondurans, we love our people, and I think the really satisfying thing will be when we see these same families adopting better habits in health and nutrition.”

When she moves to Choluteca in April, nutritionist Cacho says she is looking forward to working directly with families and individuals to improve nutrition and help the next generation have a healthy start to life.

“I was working in a hospital before, and I realized that change doesn’t happen in hospitals. We’re just putting a bandage on the damage that we’ve been accumulating throughout our lives,” she says. “We have to be in the communities educating people from a very young age so that they don’t end up in the hospital. We can make a change, but it has to begin in the communities.”

A dozen squirming babies and their young mothers are lined up outside of Petronila Carcamo’s home in Chaguiton, a small rural town in the southern Dry Corridor of Honduras. Today is weigh day.

The mothers huddle together holding their babies and chatting as they wait for their chance to see if their children are growing at a healthy rate. One by one, they hand over their babies to Carcamo, who gently places them in a swing hung over a tree branch that functions as a scale.

“Congratulations! Your baby is growing and is at a normal weight,” she calls out along with the number on the scale for the babies on track. Their height is also recorded before being handed back to their mothers.

For those underweight or falling behind in height, an on-site nutrition counselor provides advice that can mean the difference between thriving and malnutrition. On this day, only one baby and mother need to visit the counselor- a sign that, for many, the monthly visits are resulting in changes at home and healthier babies.

Carcamo, a mother herself of a 2-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son, turns her front yard into a pop-up clinic once a month for the 42 kids in her neighborhood who are younger than two years old.  In between growth check-ins like this, she visits the families to make sure their youngest members are staying healthy.

As a volunteer nutrition monitor, she is a critical part of a project known as the Dry Corridor Alliance – PROSASUR, an acronym that roughly stands for “Promoting Food Security in the South” in Spanish.

Operating in 12 municipalities in the southern departments of Choluteca and El Paraíso, the project is implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with the Honduras Strategic Investment Office, Invest-H. It is one piece of the larger Dry Corridor Alliance and receives funding from the World Bank through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program.

Carcamo has a busy role with a big responsibility, but one that she knows is important for her community.

“I decided to do it because you have to take advantage of projects like this. Because of this project, they’re practicing things that they’ve never done before. We can see when children are gaining or losing weight,” she says.

Fighting malnutrition in first 1,000 days of life

Children in the Dry Corridor region of Honduras – so-called because of its intense rainy season interrupted by long periods of drought due to climate change – are at increased risk of malnutrition due to the food insecurity associated with extreme climate.

According to the World Bank, 58 percent of children younger than age five in the Dry Corridor suffer from chronic malnutrition, characterized as underweight, with stunted growth, and with micronutrient malnutrition. These problems early in life can have permanent consequences, explains Ninoska Bulnes, a medical doctor and the nutrition and health component lead for the project.

“Their growth directly indicates their cognitive development, which has to do with abstract thinking and all of the skills that the baby needs from preschool to adolescence,” she says. “Everything that happens in those first 1,000 days indicates their quality of life. The more malnutrition we have, then it is a population with a much higher incidence of chronic illnesses.”

By intervening early, the project aims to prevent these problems. It works with 3,000 households with children age five and younger, including 3,750 kids under two, as well as with pregnant women. On the front lines are trained community nutrition monitors like Carcamo who are the first to detect the signs of malnutrition and refer families and children for more intensive counseling and support.

A goal of the effort is to diversify diets to provide key nutrients to growing minds and bodies, but this can be difficult in an area plagued by poverty and unpredictable harvests. Nutritious foods can be hard to come by and expensive.

“Keeping in mind that these are families that find themselves in extreme poverty, one of the biggest challenges is diversity of diet and behavioral change,” says Bulnes. “The nutrients that we’re most looking for are those than substitute or contribute to improving iron deficiency, which is connected to development, especially in children’s brains and intelligence. Cheese products and proteins are essential for growth.”

Through initiatives like counseling on dietary guidelines, feeding practices, food safety and sanitation, and establishing small gardens, the project works with families to overcome those barriers.

Though only six months into the project, parents are already seeing progress in their children, including Karen Oneyda Cruz, whose son Branden is one of the children Carcamo supports.

“Last month I brought my son to be weighed, and he lost weight. Now in this month, he gained weight. I think it’s good to bring them for weighing because that way you see the change,” she says.

Tackling health holistically: Water, sanitation and nutrition

In the Dry Corridor, nutrition problems are compounded and interconnected with others—including a lack of clean water, dirt floors, and unsafe cook stoves to name a few. Nutrition counseling and support alone can only go so far, explains Bulnes. For example, a healthy diet can’t protect you against water-borne diseases or worms, a common problem when children eat and play on dirt floors.

“We describe a healthy home as one that has an improved floor, that has a stove, that has water harvesting, roof improvements, etc. That’s what the project purports as well- achieving a healthy home, but at the same time the people have the knowledge and put in place key practices that assure their improvement of the health and hygiene within the home.,” she explains.

For this reason, the project pairs nutrition support with small home improvement projects like paving floors, installing latrines and more efficient stoves, and constructing rainwater harvesting systems to collect and store the most valuable commodity in the region for use in the household and fields during the long stretch of drought.

“We’re not only talking about telling a mom that it’s important to wash her children’s hands and how to wash their hands,” says Bulnes.  “If they don’t have a faucet, if they don’t have a water harvesting system, they don’t have the instruments that will help them adopt the practice.”

The project expects to improve 2,000 households with these projects and, in the process, raise the health of thousands of the region’s children.

Carcamo’s family will be getting a paved floor, a water filter and a clean cook stove. Cruz is due to receive a new floor, water filter and latrine.

“I think that it will help my children so they don’t get sick, they grow, and what I wish for them will come true,” says Cruz.

A community at work

With a problem as widespread as malnutrition, the solution requires input from the entire community.

“We need participation of citizens, of local authorities, household members, health volunteers and promoters in the monitoring of nutrition and growth of each of these children, and obviously to provide them access to health services when we detect a problem through our monitoring,” says Bulnes.

In addition to local monitors like Carcamo, the project relies on a network of other volunteers who reinforce the nutrition messages to their neighbors and help them stay on track, as well as key staff known as promoters, who serve as a support system to the volunteers.

The promoters make regular visits to the communities, helping out on weigh day, motivating families and making sure they have the knowledge and services they need.

Nutrition Promoter Olman Orriel Aplicano says that it is rewarding work and it is also critical to the region he calls home.

“It’s beautiful when the child reaches that expected weight. “My hopes and vision are that we improve conditions. My goal is that there are not children in the state of malnutrition; that they grow well and with a strong mind so that when they go to school they can learn well.”

He adds, “If we want that child to have a future, we have to watch over their present.”

With reporting from Honduras by Evelyn Rupert and Amalia San Martin.

For Dayra Escalante and Olman Aplícano, the drive to the remote community of El Llano isn’t easy. They ride motorbikes more than an hour outside the city of Choluteca over a pothole-ridden highway and narrow, rocky roads.

Arriving in baseball caps and blue jeans, they park their bikes and walk to the shade of a sprawling tree to address a small crowd of women who have gathered with their young children.

The pair are in this patch of Honduras’ Dry Corridor region to assist in measuring the children’s height and weight and to help educate the families on keeping their kids healthy.

“We know that the weighing happens monthly. And how often do we measure height, does anyone remember?” Aplícano asks the semi-circle of women seated on plastic chairs and wooden benches.

A handful of mothers call out the answer: “Every four months.”

After explaining the process, Aplícano and Escalante lend a hand recording data as each woman brings her child first to a scale hanging from the tree and then to a height measuring board resting on a small table.

Aplícano and Escalante are “promoters” working with a project called Dry Corridor Alliance (ACS) – PROSASUR. The project is funded by the World Bank through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program and is implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with INVEST-Honduras.

ACS-PROSASUR aims to reduce chronic childhood malnutrition, which is prevalent in the Dry Corridor due in part to food and water insecurity, poverty and lack of access to medical care.

The project provides food security planning, health education and support for household works to improve sanitation and hygiene.

As promoters, Aplícano and Escalante’s job is to keep the communities informed and engaged with the project and oversee interventions, such as the height and weight monitoring, which is followed by counseling for parents whose children are not reaching their expected measurements based on age. They collect valuable data on not only children’s growth, but also household conditions, poverty and the needs of a community.

Escalante says that after they begin building local awareness and trust – which includes identifying leaders and convening a public meeting – the project is able to make inroads into even isolated communities that can be wary of outsiders.

“Once we’re there, once we do the community assembly, the families always have their doors open to receive us. Sometimes we don’t even need to plan visits, we just arrive impromptu to see how they are,” she says. “We always refresh their minds on what the project is and always socialize what the project expects from them and what we’re going to provide in terms of basic sanitation.”

Promoters like Escalante and Aplícano are vital in ACS-PROSASUR’s efforts to reduce childhood malnutrition, diversify diets and improve health for poor and extreme poor families.

Dr. Ninoska Bulnes, Director of the project’s health and hygiene component, says she depends on the promoters to work at the local level to get to know families personally and be a connection between remote areas and the office in Choluteca.

“These community agents are like the social fabric that works around the community. It’s a human platform and promoters really promote behavioral change, they motivate the households,” she says. “For us, it’s fundamental.”

Community leaders step up

While Aplícano and Escalante are constantly on the road traveling to different municipalities, they have some built-in support in each. The promoters rely on leaders who live in the communities to help with activities and continuously spread the word about nutrition and hygiene.

In El Llano, Isabel Betancourt talks with mothers and helps them seat their children in the hanging scale, reading their weight aloud for others to write down. Isabel was elected as one of five “monitors” by her neighbors at a community assembly.

Monitors preside over the monthly measuring of children in the community and help ensure that families attend the sessions in order to accurately track children’s growth. Often the monitors themselves will benefit from the project, whether through nutrition counseling or household improvements.

Betancourt says that preparing for the monthly reunions and convening the families on the sixth of every month is a lot of work, but it’s worth it to see mothers better understanding what their children need to stay healthy.

“It’s a big responsibility, but I want to see the development of my community and of the children,” Betancourt says. “That’s why I felt committed when they elected me in the first meeting that we had. I accepted because I’ve always liked to work for the community.”

Aplícano explains that the collaboration between the promoters on the project side and the monitors within the communities together ensure that mothers can better understand how their children are growing and make changes at home if necessary.

“The mothers never realized how their children were growing, so we did visits with them. I have visited mothers alongside the monitors to check up on the families and give some advice about improving the health and hygiene conditions for a child,” he says. “For example, in cases of diarrhea, how do we treat it? Chlorinating, boiling the water, washing the child’s hands each time he eats and always keeping the house clean.”

Youth serve their neighbors

While respected community-based leaders like Betancourt are a major asset to their communities and ACS-PROSASUR, the project is also focused on engaging the next generation.

Jairo Carranza, 17, is bouncing a baby on his lap, chatting with some of the women. He lives right next door to the meeting point for weighing and measuring, and is the only man present aside from project staff.

Carranza and Cynthia Suyapa Cruz, 22, were nominated by the community to be youth volunteers and will assist with promoting good sanitation and hygiene.

Both say that they hope to give back to their community and help nearby families improve the conditions in their homes.

“That’s why they elected us as youth volunteers, because we’ll be at the service of the community and we are from the community,” Suyapa says. “To benefit the community, to help them. Not only with weight but with hygiene, so that there aren’t as many illnesses and the children live well.”

Across the municipalities, ACS-PROSASUR will help families make improvements to their households, focusing primarily on replacing dirt floors with concrete, installing or improving latrines, upgrading wood-burning and inefficient stoves and putting water filters in place. Other undertakings may include fixing roofs and setting up water harvesting systems.

Without these changes, families and particularly young children are more susceptible to sickness – from unfiltered water, bacteria and smoke inhalation. Diarrhea and pneumonia are common problems that can hinder a child’s growth.

“What we’re looking to do is help the community, so they have better protection with hygiene,” Carranza says. “We want to see changes in the homes, even in our own. If someone doesn’t have water in the latrine, you have to help. Same if someone doesn’t have a floor. That’s what we’re looking for, to work as a team.”

Carranza, Suyapa and other youth across the Dry Corridor project will receive trainings on sanitation and hygiene and become a resource for their communities. Working alongside the community monitors and with support from the project promoters, these volunteers will be an important asset to their neighbors.

Promoter Escalante says that this web of volunteers is crucial to keep educating and guiding families. For example, she says, the project can install a new cook stove, but still needs to be present to coach people on how to properly use it.

“I’m a promoter in two municipalities. I can’t give myself to all of the homes in all of the communities. We’re organizing this group of youth so that once the technologies are implemented, with supervision and checking in from us and the volunteers, we keep educating the home,” Escalante says. “Making that change in the culture of the family, from the youngest up to the oldest.”

Bulnes, the project’s health and hygiene lead, says that empowering young volunteers with the ability and knowledge to help improve their communities will ensure that the situation continues to improve even after the end of the five-year project.

“We leave a capacity installed in the community through this web of volunteers,” she says. “They truly work voluntarily and for a love of their community. Often, they leave their own homes to dedicate themselves to the protection of others, to guide the mothers, invite them to participate, motivate them. It’s their leadership.”

With reporting by Jillian Slutzker and Amalia San Martín in Choluteca, Honduras.