Semilla Nueva has applied for a Rotary International grant for the purpose of expanding their effort in expand the production and distribution of their hybrid corn. In this article John Lodal give a brief of this effort.
Addressing Chronic Malnutrition in Guatemala with an Idaho Team and Biofortified Corn
John Lodal – Semilla Nueva Board Chairman & Boise Sunrise Rotarian
Semilla Nueva is an organization that is very familiar to many Rotarians in Idaho. Its founder, Curt Bowen, has spoken at numerous district conferences and to many of the clubs within District 5400. As board chairman, I can confidently state that the support from Rotary has been critical to the success of Semilla Nueva. In 2018, SN will be seeking a Global Grant from Rotary to deploy the bio-fortified corn seed that has recently been developed in Guatemala.
To recap, Guatemala has the highest level of malnutrition of any country in the Western Hemisphere. This is largely related to the fact that Guatemalans routinely get more than half of their calories from corn. This staple crop has important cultural significance in Guatemala but it is lacking in a couple basic nutrients. This malnutrition issue is manifested as “stunting” in children. This means that their bodies and their brains never fully develop because of a lack of protein in the form of the amino acids Lysine and Tryptophan. Semilla Nueva targeted this malnutrition issue by utilizing standard corn breeding techniques (not a GMO change) and now has their “Fortaleza 3” corn variant available to commercial farmers in most of the major corn growing regions of the country.
The unique aspect of the model now being pursued by SN is that this is not being sold to the Guatemalan public as an effective solution to the chronic malnutrition. Instead, the organization is taking an approach that gives farmers what they are looking for; high yields, drought resistance, and low-cost seeds. The organization is still focused on resolving the malnutrition at the root cause level but the hard lessons learned over the last 3-5 years have told them that working with the farmers is the way to achieve rapid and sustainable scalability. The market aggressively embraced the first sales of F3 this year and 100% of the seed produced in early 2018 was sold within a few weeks.
Members of the board of Semilla Nueva plan to speak directly to clubs within D5400 over the next 6 months as a fundraising effort for the Global Grant. The grant is meant to enable rapid and large scale production of the F3 seeds as well as sales and marketing efforts to penetrate all of the commercial corn growing regions within the country. It is the goal of Semilla Nueva to improve (silently but effectively) over 1 million diets in Guatemala by the time the grant term ends in three years. At the end of this time, the organization also seeks to move the “costs covered by sales” from the current 21% to ~72%. The fundraising goal is to have $170K committed by the end of 2018 and the effort will also seek to gain support from many of the clubs visiting Boise in September for the Zone Institute.
This is an exciting year for Semilla Nueva. The focus is no longer on looking to the future for an as-yet-undeveloped solution to the country-wide malnutrition in Guatemala. That solution is now in hand with F3 and there is solid proof that the farmers like it and that the SN model is sound. That means that this Global Grant can truly take this life changing solution into a status of truly changing the nutrition and diet of an entire nation in three years. The board and staff of Semilla Nueva believe that this scaling goal of 1 million diets in 3 years makes this Global Grant one of the fastest growing efforts that Rotary has ever supported. Look for someone from Semilla Nueva to visit your club later this year.
The call to action here is at the club level and to individuals who are interested in supporting this work. If you are interested in supporting Semilla Nueva, you can email John Lodal, the SN Board Chairman, at jnlodal@gmail.com. You can also visit the SN homepage and learn more. There are numerous videos on the website (click on “Follow Along” at www.semillanueva.org ) that tell more of the details of this story. The board wishes to thank all D5400 Rotarians for their support in the past. We are now on the edge of having enormous and sustainable impact on a persistent problem in Central America. We seek to quietly populate the country with healthy kids and prosperous farmers based on a solution that got its start right here in Idaho. Let’s change the world.