Farming Communities In Developing nations Should try to Take lesson from "Santa Anita" of El Salvador

Sustainable social development is a complex phenomena. There is certainly no recipe to solve our problems, even if we add to our strategy a new dimension of poverty alleviation. constructive social development is quite possible, provided that a
number of conditions can be fulfilled, and provided that the observer has enough patience and time to wait.

One of the main problems for the rural poor in El Salvador has been land and the land reforms connected with it. This has been so since a bloody massacre of farm labour
occurred already in 1931, known as „la matanza“, and has overshadowed all the attempts on reforms undertaken since then. In the early 1950s El Salvador, the small country had hardly 2 million people. Now it has 6 million.

The story of the Christian mbased community of Santa Anita, an agricultural community of something over 50 families, stimulated by a Catholic priest to work together. Thus a cooperative was founded in the late 1980s, during the civil war, and with the help of
FINATA, the national land institute, a piece of land in an old hacienda has been found. This was good land for coffee and also sugar cane, received on a mortgage in the region of Guazapa, located in one of the main regions of war activities.

The members of the community had no capital, no machinery and equipment, no housing but only their hands to work with. They had to make the down payments on their land debt and also needed production credit from a local cooperative. Even during the war,
the armies on both sides, of the government and of the various groups of the rebels, were raiding through the fields of the new community, and a neighboring group occupied part of the land while another group burned part of the In April 1997 a mission of three couples from the former volunteers arrived at Santa Anita to discuss the future cooperation and sign an agreement for the provision of a soft loan (to be repaid within 3 years and to be put into a revolving fund).

Luckily an agricultural engineer to provide the financial advice and training to the cooperative as well as to update the farm management plan was found and he could start already work at the beginning of 1997. But working capital was still hardly available and investment funds to build up the old coffee areas were simply not existing.

In the meantime the settlement of the actual payment of the land debt was delayed on the side of the government. The issue was raised in parliament if 30% could really be paid
by the campesinos in the cooperatives or if the entire land debt should not simply be forgiven. After more than an year of negotiation in parliament, the president of El Salvador ncould sign a new decree that only 15% of the debt had to be paid.

Thus with the loan of the”Friends of Santa Anita“ and the contribution of C 110'000 the 15% was paid immediately and the land could be transferred into the ownership of the
cooperative. The rest of in the cooperative the money collected could be used to cover the cost of the training programs.

To follow up on such a program, including the operation of a revolving fund, a local organization in El Salvador was needed. For this a committee of local Salvadorian volunteers with experience in rural development could be set up. Among this group was Julio, a campesino leader who had already worked with the community of Santa Anita since many years, Carolina, a Franciscan Sister who had often helped and visited the
community, Carmen and Transito as social educators, Eduardo and Romeo as leaders of

organizations to help rural communities, and finally Conchita, a social worker who had been working already with some of the former volunteers in the 1950‘s. This committee, who served on a volunteer basis could also help the community, when needed, with the finding of a lawyer to settle legal questions or by talking to friendly politicians who could give advice.

This saving of the community of Santa Anita had different effects. One was that a larger Spanish NGO became interested in the community and started with a program of social
investments, first with a community building, followed by a kindergarten and later with a drinking water supply. This was a welcome help in a program which concentrated in the first place in helping to provide the economic basis of the community.

The second effect was that other communities in the neighborhood of the town of Suchitoto (the capital of the Department of Cuscatlan) also noticed the progress at Santa Anita. They also had the same needs in accounting and in financial management, as well as in training with operating a computer.

Thus by January 1, 2000, technical assistance work also started in a larger community, in El Bario, by reducing the time which was given for training at Santa Anita. Requests were also received from other interested communities.

Another link to the basic problems of rural El Salvador showed up in a report by the World Bank, published in 1998. This report came to the conclusion that relying primarily
on land redistribution was not a realistic option to alleviate rural poverty. Rather a strategy which focused on non-land factors (human capital, infrastructure off-farm employment, technology) was needed. Above all, the challenge for rural development based on cooperative organizations was to improve governance.

Cooperative management should be subject to controls like any other business enterprise for the benefit of their members as shareholders: external audits, management representation and professionalism were needed.Indeed the World Bank report found that although 30% of the agricultural land belonged to cooperatives, they only produced 8 % of the agricultural GDP. One main reason was inefficient control of accounting management.

There would be, thus, a great potential for increasing rural GDP through better governance and accounting. This is the direction the organization of ex-volunteers is encouraging in Santa Anita, El Bario and possibly in other similar communities. But experience at Santa Anita also teaches us that good governance depends always on individual people. Thus creating understanding and cooperation among individual members of cooperatives is finally the basis of lasting success. These problems have still to be solved before a substantial alleviation of poverty can be achieved.