Project Title: Border Woodland Recovery Project III

SCERP Project Number: NR99-1

Principal Investigator: Richard Gordon

Task Manager's affiliation: Arizona State University

Goal: Our goal is to examine the financial and institutional barriers to financing alternative crops as well as developing forward strategies with banking officials, both private and public, as to what would be viable for rural producers interested in alternative crops. This is necessary in the Mexicali Valley because salty flows from the Colorado River have contaminated much of the land in the Mexicali Valley, making farming increasingly difficult. Previous SCERP grants supported our demonstration of the possibility of reestablishing the historic mesquite forests (cleared for farming by 1900) in the Valley. Now $19,750 is requested to fund the last phase of this project: preparing a preliminary development plan with Mexican federal & state agencies, financial institutions and community organizations. This plan would establish the agencies, financial institutions and community organizations. This plan would establish the parameters for reforestation of at least 70,000 hectares in the Valley that is both economically and environmentally sustainable. As indicated in previous reports an proposals, the goal we have established with our Mexican collaborators and colleagues is to build a final plan worthy of funding by the major international donors: World Bank, InterAmerican Development Fund, Rockefellar and Packard Foundations, and others who have a record of supporting regional sustainable development.

Because we have successfully integrated ecology & agriculture with training and technology transfer, we and our Mexican colleagues believe it is feasible to establish a sustainable economic alternative to farming made so difficult by the salinized soil and water in various parts of the Valley. This work is unusual because it combines reforestation and habitat restoration with sustainable agricultural development. Goals include:

• Organizing and preparing a regional reforestation and sustainable economic development plan to energize Mexican federal & state financial institutions & economic development agencies who work with local residents, farmers and landowners.
• Persuading Rabobank’ food industry clients to test further processing of mesquite seed pods to demonstrate value-added products important to the food industry; e.g., soluble fibers and galactomannan gums.
• Developing approaches to the World Bank, the InterAmericna Development Bank, private investment firms and major foundations in order to make applications for long term support for renewable reforestation of 70,000 hectares including habitat restoration & sustainable economic development.

The project has been so well received that our larger and institutional collaborators (the Baja California Department of Forestry and major landowners involved in transborder agribusiness) are now committing their own funds to accelerate the effort, targeting over 400 hectares of new plantings for the next 12 months. In fact more than 150 hectares of mesquite will have been planted by winter 1998, compared to the 3-5 hectares originally projected as ‘test’ plots.

The previous grants from SCERP stimulated a significant number of Mexican institutions and organizations to collaborate. Funding at the level requested will help support our outreach program and development of the plan.

The major objective if this year’s proposal is to get all interested and concerned Mexican parties to come together and work on a regional development plan that could be submitted to the World Bank and other international donors. A final objective is to involve members of the SCERP consortium in the larger funding effort who might be interested in various facets of this major undertaking.

Last updated 3/8/00