Contextualizing family agriculture in
Nicaragua
preliminary results on a cross-CRP collaboration
La Panamericana

La Panamericana in a nutshell
Cross-CGIAR: centers & CRP
Small funding = flexibility & 6 months
Aiming at:
- Improving the local capacity to analyze family
agriculture in Nicaragua
- Contextualizing the dynamics and diversity of
family agriculture
Approach: systems + local partners + data

Planned major activities
1. Learning with partners the adoption and dynamics
of family agriculture: cases in Nicaragua
2. Building capacity of local orgs. on monitoring,
evaluation & strategies: Information Systems
3. Informing better on diversity of family faming and
entry points: sub-humid tropics in NI, SV & HN
4. Contextualizing better the dynamics of maize and
livestock production in Central America

1. Dynamics of family agriculture NI
Objective: to learn with local organizations
changes in key indicators of targeted populations

2. Capacity building on IS
Objective: to improve the capacity of local
organization to design and use IS for M&E
30 people
10 organizations
2 days course
Reference guide
December
Topics:
Indicators
Sampling
Data analysis

3. Diversity of farming (sub-humid)
Objective: to better inform on the diversity of
family agriculture in the sub-humid region
• Focus: self-sufficiency &
income
• 5 sites
• 4 local organizations
• 800 farmers
• Short survey (~40min)
• Workshops on data
• Leaflets to farmers

3. Diversity: some results

3. Diversity: some results
Based on farm size, four classes
of farm can be identified
Farm size groups
No.
households %
1<= 2.5 mz Very small 41 26%
2<= 5 mz Small 44 28%
3<=10 mz Medium 32 20%
4> 10 Large 40 26%

3. Diversity: some results
100%
75%
50%
25%
0%
Future strategies
Vender mano de obra
Migrar
1 2 3 4
Farm size group
Migration & selling
family labour would
be more common for
households with very
small and small farms

4. Dynamics maize & livestock CAC
Objective: to better
contextualize
maize & livestock
production

Lessons learnt (pers.)
• Capacity building is strongly needed
• Information needs to have a stronger role
among partners
• Results & efficiency are key, but also process
• Cross-CGIAR & collaboration with partners
needs less bureaucracy

Next steps
• Building a IS to improve & monitor agro-ecology
in family agriculture (discussion with SIMAS)
• Linking livelihoods & landscape restoration
(planned WLE & Humitropics 2015)
• Improving food & farming systems, nutrition &
health in rural Mesoamerica (proposal CIMMYT +
ILRI, CIAT & Bioversity)
• Analysis of secondary data + contextualization (in
discussion MAIZE)

Major challenges
1. Restoration & livelihoods; big
or small famers
2. Increasing deagrarianization
of rural landscapes
3. Working closely with
partners & politics