Projects to Help the Dying Honduran Coconut Trees--Results and Problems

What  Happened with the Projects to Help the Dying Honduran Coconut Trees?

By Wendy Griffin January 2015

Several years before Hurricane Mitch hit the Honduran North Coast in 1998, Lethal Yellowing coconut disease began affecting Honduran coconut palms, first in the Bay Islands. Just before Hurricane Mitch it had begun doing serious damage of the Coconut trees on Honduras’s North Coast, first in the área of the Garifunas and then in the Honduran Mosquitia. Hurricane Mitch made the problem worse on the Coast and carrying the disease into Olancho where it also affected the Coyol Palm, used to make wine, and all the way to the Southern Coast of Honduras where dead coconut trees were seen at Cedeño by 2000.

The effects were devasting. Garifuna farmers who had harvested 100-500 coconuts a week suddenly had no coconuts even for their own use. Coconuts which used to cost 3 centavos a piece, then L3 a piece, jumped to L10-L11 a piece. Many Garifunas switched to using canned coconut milk from Thailand to replace what had been free, affecting both their family economy and the need for foreign Exchange for Honduras.

The first organization to donate hyrid coconuts which were hoped to be Lethal yellowing Resistant was Caritas of the Honduran Catholic Church with funds from Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the social agency that is an arm of the US Catholic bishops. In Trujillo, older Garifunas travelled weekly in the truck of the Garifuna Emergency Committee (CEGAH)  to their agricultural lands in Barranco Blanco by the Guaymoreto Lagoon where they set up a seed bed and nursury near a source of wáter and watered them. A photo of this can be seen in Los Garifunas de Honduras.

After one year, the Garifuna farmers, mostly older women, transplanted the coconut trees to their fields in Barranco Blanco.  Because of the death of thousands of coconut trees, the fields were hot and sunny. None of these fields in Barranco Blanco had access to any source of wáter, other than rain wáter.  There was a drought that year and almost all of these hybrid coconuts died due to lack of wáter during the drought.

In the five years after Hurricane Mitch, during two of the years there were hurricanes or tropical storms in the Trujillo área, including Tropical Storm Katrina and Hurricanes Beta and Gamma that left Garifuna crops ruined due to flooding. Another year left the Garifuna crops ruined due to drought. This situation where the Garifunas were faithfully in church, spent signficant time and resources on Saint celebrations, loved God, and end every plan saying, “If God is willing”, made me wonder about the existence of the mercy of God. This is what climate change looks like at the level of the Honduran farmer.

FUCAGUA, the environmental NGO in the Trujillo área, then got a sizeable donation of “Altos de Pacifico II” (Tall Coconut Trees of the Pacific, as opposed to the trees that were dying which were Tall Coconut Trees of the Atlantic) which were supposed to be used to start a “Huerto Madre” or Mother orchard or grove of this type of coconut to produce seeds to plant elsewhere along the Coast.

The Garifunas who were to plant these Pacific Talls in Barranco were recommended to cut down any of the coconut trees that had survived the Lethal Yellowing disease within 500 yards of the new Mother Orchard of Pacific Talls. This was to prevent cross pollination.  I would have  thought that these were important trees to preserve because if they had survived 3-5 years after Lethal Yellowing began, obviously there was something good about their genetics. The Mother Orchard was planted in Barranco Blanco by Garifuna volunteers and CEGAH.

To prevent these coconuts from dying from lack of wáter like the last group had, CEGAH got funds for a pump motor and a small well. This was installed, but the Ladinos in the área had stolen them before the first month was out.

Other Garifuna farmers and foreigners in the Trujillo-Santa Fe área had planted hybrid coconuts and if the trees survived the 5 years it took to produce fruit, they often died when the fruit appeared after 5 years.  So the Garifunas of Trujillo and CEGAH would have to wait five years to see if this also happened to the Pacific Talls type II planted in Barranco Blanco.

The good news is that now 6 or 7 years later, the Pacific Tall coconut trees have not died and they are producing coconuts. There was also the concern whether or not the meat of the coconut would satisfy the Garifunas for their needs in cooking and in taste.  A Garifuna woman in Trujillo is buying these coconuts for making coconut oil, and people come from as far away as the Bay Islands to buy it. So it has passed the taste and cooking qualities test.

The bad new begins with the fact that CEGAH’s truck was stolen, so the Garifuna farmers who had planted the coconut trees have no way to get to where they are.  Ladinos from Puerto Castilla go to Barranco and collect the coconuts, and then take them to Trujillo to sell to the Garifunas, sometimes to the same Garifunas who planted them. They are sold as common coconuts, and so they are just being eaten instead of being used to plant more Lethal Yellowing resistant coconut trees.

The área of Barranco Blanco is under threat as the Honduran government is planning to expand the port of Puerto Castilla from one dock to four. The people in Puerto Castilla are being displaced and have already taken the highway in protest. The Trujillo-Puerto Castilla Model City is still being planned, specifically because “there is a lot of flat land available for development.”  That this land is currently part of the Garifuna land titles to Barranco Blanco, Malpaso, and Silin does not seem to deter the government’s plans.   All the land where Puerto Castilla and the Honduran port and Navy Base there were previously parts of the Garifuna land title of La Puntilla also.

The City of Trujillo replanted the beaches of Trujillo with Malaysian Dwarf coconuts, another variety recommended to possibly resist Lethal Yellowing. After 4 years, the trees are still alive, although they have not yet produced coconuts.  In the Tela área the Garifunas are using the Green and yellow coconuts of the dwarf trees, known locally as Filipinas, traditionally used only for coconut wáter, to also make coconut milk for making coconut bread.  The meat is very thin and thus not as good as the Atlantic Talls were, but the Garifuna coconut bread sellers said “We are using this as there is nothing else”.

Some Garifunas have also planted the coconuts of the tall trees that were left, which they called Cocos Criollos.  Some of these have also survived.

In Vallecito, near Limon, Colon disease resistant coconuts were also planted. Under President Pepe Lobo’s administration, the Garifunas there, men and women, started a microbusiness of making coconut candies called tabletas in cellophane covered containers so that they could travel better with help from SEDINAFROH (Ministry for the Development of Indians and Afro-Hondurans). These were featured at the 2013 Garifuna Day celebration in Limon.

OFRANEH, the Garifuna ethnic federation, is concerned that Garifunas are being moved off the land in different parts of Honduras, and so they were thinking where could they go. This seems to be the reason why they went to Vallecito and cut down the coconut trees.  In the video Tierra Negra which is about Model Cities in the Garifuna área, the Garifuna leaders are in fields with no plants or trees.  The microbusiness which was making tabletas from the coconut trees in Vallecito had to give that up and now just sells coconut wáter in Limon.  So again the idea of new varieties of coconut trees for seeds to solve the problem of the local variety having died out was lost due to other social issues threatening the Garifuna.

In Sangrelaya, in Colon, they also received some of the hybrid coconuts. Drug traffickers in Sangrelaya have taken over signficant parts of the land Garifunas claimed as theirs.  So while there do seem to be varieties of coconuts which could be planted to help recover the shade on the North Coast and provide the ingredients for the 101 dishes the Garifunas, Miskitos, and Bay Islanders make with coconuts processed in different ways, various other social problems on the North Coast of Honduras are hindering this process.