Changes

Once water is available, a part of the new farm pond users (about 25% of the farmers in CORACA’s operational area) concentrates on growing crops like onions, tomatoes and potatoes for the market. These market farmers tend to grow one or two crops intensively and then leave the land to lie fallow after the harvest, when the water runs dry. Their production system is intensive and yields are high: more than 40 tons per ha. of tomatoes and 30 tons of onions. Without much help from outside, they sell the produce in their own town as well as in Sucre and Cochabamba. In 1999, when prices of tomatoes were high, tomato farmers earned up to US$1800 from a 2000 square metre plot, spending US$425 on fertilisers, pesticides and transport. They had never before had so much money in their hands and earned back their initial investment in one year! But prices are not always high and increasingly farmers start to feel the economic and ecological problems related to monoculture market farming.

* [http://www.snvworld.org www.snvworld.org]

* [http://www.scribd.com/doc/18420407/FAOFarm-Ponds-for-Water-Fish-and-Aquaculture Farm ponds for water, fish, and livelihoods.] FAO, 2009.