Twenty-one families in Ecuador are changing the way they work in agriculture in order to better care for their environment. With funds and new skills to start producing mushrooms as a sustainable crop, farmers were able to substitute the cultivation of mushrooms in place of naranjillas (an orange-like fruit). This change will ultimately end deforestation and cease the local use of harmful pesticides. These chemicals had been damaging the nervous systems of both the general public and the farmers who had worked for years without protective gloves or masks.
The new crop provides several environmental and community benefits including:
- preventing the loss of 2 hectares of primary forest annually (previously cut with naranjilas)
- providing many more nutrients contributing to improving community health
- no pesticides used compared to 2x-3x the regular amount of pesticides used for naranjilas
- avoiding dangerous health risks by eliminating chemicals from the environment
We have all been blessed by the beauty and provision of God’s world and can strive to make wise choices when it comes to interacting with our environment, whether through food production, transportation, or other ways we might unknowingly be polluting our environment. Praise God for the creative ways that we can support sustainability and growth around the world!
God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself…
God created human beings…God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.” Genesis 26-28, The Message
Click here to learn more about CWR agriculture projects.
