04/05/2020
Kuxur Rum in the local language ch’orti’ means “my damp land”. It is the name of a cultivation technique that involves the use of local tree varieties to maintain the humidity necessary for crops in areas of great summer drought.
This technique is used in Guatemala, in Chiquimula, through the use of the mother plant of cocoa (very common in that area), to help local populations fight drought and is well described in the video Life where drought reigns – The system agroforestry of Kuxur Rum.
Tomas Rodrigo Etcheverry Gonzalez, the author, spent a few months in Jocotàn, Chiquimula and shot the video (with the technical support of the Multimedia Laboratory of the University of Florence) for his master’s degree thesis in “Natural resources management for tropical rural development”, entitled Agrobiodiversity and plant use in the Kuxur rum agroforestry system.
The work was carried out thanks to the international mobility agreement outside the EU, between DAGRI (Unifi), Cunori (Centro Universitario de Oriente in Chiquimula), and Usac (University of San Carlos del Guatemala) as part of the project “Fight against undernutrition in the Chiquimula department” promoted by Mani Tese and DAGRI.
The project aims to improve the availability, access and consumption of food of 40 families in the municipality of Camotán, in the Chiquimula department, increasing the availability of self-produced food and improving the sanitation conditions of the community.
In the Chiquimula department in summer, in fact, temperatures can reach 44 degrees, causing prolonged droughts. The climatic situation directly affects the subsistence of an already vulnerable population, resulting in a serious food shortage.
To know more: https://www.unifimagazine.it/sistema-agroforestale-del-kuxur-rum/
