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By MEREDITH GOAD, Portland Press Herald Staff Writer Sunday, April 8, 2007

Florence Reed joined the Peace Corps in the early 1990s because she "wanted to really get to know life in a different country and also try to make some sort of positive change in the world."

She lived and worked in rural Panama, where she saw firsthand how farmers' "slash-and burn" practices were destroying the tropical rainforest.

In 1997, she founded Sustainable Harvest International, a nonprofit organization that teaches Central American farmers principles such as crop rotation and educates them on sustainable farming practices. Now a decade old, the program has converted 5,000 acres of land into sustainable farming areas, created 1,000 biological gardens and planted close to 2 million trees.

SHI has expanded to its operations to Honduras, Belize and Nicaragua and now employs 30 Central Americans in addition to its seven full-time U.S. staff members. The organization is providing long-term assistance to 900 families

In February, the Yves Rocher Foundation-Institut de France, which promotes the protection of plant life, gave Reed one of three "Women of the Earth" awards. The award came with a prize of $5,000 to further her work in Central America.

Reed, now 38, grew up in Fairfield, Conn., and received her undergraduate degree in International Affairs and Environmental Conservation from the University of New Hampshire. She lived in coastal New Hampshire for about 15 years before settling in Surry with her husband, Bruce Maanum, who works in alternative energy and eco-friendly building and is a full-time dad to the couple's 10-month-old son, Clay. They are busy building their own eco-friendly house here in Maine.

Q: We haven't heard a lot lately about slash-and-burn techniques and their effect on the destruction of tropical forests. Is the problem getting better or worse?

A: As far as I know, we are still losing the world's tropical forests at the rate of one acre per second, or maybe more. I think it may even have gotten worse recently. Half those forests are gone already.

Q: How destructive are agricultural practices, as compared with logging?

A: Both logging and agricultural expansion cause deforestation in the tropics, but in Central America agricultural expansion is the leading cause.

Q: How environmentally aware are Central American farmers about the impact their practices have on the bigger picture?

A: It is very obvious to them that their practices degrade the land through erosion of the topsoils since this leads to decreased agricultural productivity and the need to constantly clear and burn more land. They also miss the forests and the plants and animals they contained after they are gone. Beyond that, they often know about some of the global implications, such as how deforestation increases global warming. Lately there seems to be more awareness of how deforestation depletes watersheds and thus local water supplies, as well as how it leads to flooding and landslides during the rainy season. All these concerns are overshadowed, however, by the number one concern of providing food for their children.

Q: Can you give me a couple of examples of the kinds of techniques you teach the farmers?

A: We generally start out teaching them basic sustainable agriculture techniques, such as composting, using cover crops, mulching and crop rotation so that they can grow their staple crops on one piece of land year after year without having to clear more forest. Beyond that, we help them improve their families' diets with things like organic vegetable gardens and fish ponds. Lastly, we focus on teaching some basic business and marketing skills so the families can produce and sell some new crops and products for income generation.

Q: What kind of difference does this make for individual families and their livelihoods?

A: It means that children and adults go from being malnourished to having a healthy diet and that the families make more money to pay for medical care, housing improvements and schooling for the children, among other things. When families begin working with us, their income averages $500 per year. After working with us for several years, we have seen their income rise to as much as $4,000 per year.

Q: How long do you follow their progress, and how do you know when you leave an area that these sustainable practices will continue?

A: We generally provide regular technical assistance (more or less weekly visits) for a period of around five years. After that, we maintain contact with the families on a much more infrequent basis, but we feel confident that they will keep using the techniques they have learned with us if those techniques are making life better for them and their children.

Q: How do your home improvement projects help curb deforestation?

A: The wood-conserving stoves that we help the families build use half to a third the firewood of the traditional open-fire cooking system, which saves 40 or more trees per year. It also removes smoke from the house to alleviate respiratory and eye problems, as well as preventing children from falling into the fires and getting burned. The biodigesters we help people set up turn animal and plant waste into methane gas that can fuel a cook stove and completely eliminate the need to cut trees for cooking fuel.

Q: Can you explain how your "Smaller World" program works?

A: Our "Smaller World" program connects groups (school groups, religious groups, businesses etc.) in the U.S. with communities that work with us in Central America. The U.S. groups provide support for the work in the Central America and in return get periodic updates on the progress of that work in the form of letters, reports and photos. Some of these groups also take part in the Smaller World trips that give Americans a chance to visit the communities where SHI works and volunteer to work with local families on one or more projects.

Q: How often do you travel to Central America yourself? Do you do mostly administrative work now, or are you in the field a lot?

A: When I first started SHI, I spent about half the year here and half the year there. Since then our staff, both in the field and U.S.-based, has grown and gained more experience. Now I am needed more in the U.S. to work with the board of directors on things like strategic planning, governance and fundraising, so that is what I do. That also works well with changes in my personal life, as I am setting down in roots in Maine with my husband and baby son.

Q: What's your next project? Do you plan to just keep expanding this basic program into other areas?

A: We have many families on our waiting list in all four countries where we currently work. We also get requests from local organizations in other countries all over the world who would like see us bring the SHI program to their countries. Our plan is to just basically keep expanding our program to more and more families, first in the countries where we already work and eventually in other countries too. We want to do this without creating a huge bureaucracy, though, so as our country programs reach a certain size and level of maturity we spin them off into independent affiliates. We have already done this in Honduras, where Sustainable Harvest Honduras is now a Honduran organization that pretty much runs its own show with limited guidance from us. They still get financial support from us, too, but are also starting to bring in their own funding to expand their work. Sustainable Harvest Nicaragua is starting down the same path, with Sustainable Harvest Belize getting ready to follow suit. In the very long term, I would like to see SHI basically be the hub that facilitates the flow of information and resources amongst a global network of local affiliates.

Q: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about tropical deforestation? Is it possible to really turn things around at this point?

A: I am an optimistic person by nature, but I don't know that I would be doing this work if I did not think we can still turn the tide of deforestation and poverty that plagues so many countries around the world. I truly feel that as more and more people see the environmental, economic and social benefits that can be gained from sustainable land-use practices that we will reaching a tipping point where it becomes the norm. At that point, I am certain that tropical deforestation can be reversed around the world just as it already is in the nearly 100 communities working with Sustainable Harvest International.

Staff Writer Meredith Goad can be contacted at 791-6332 or at:

mgoad@pressherald.com