A sweet future? : an agroecosystem analysis of strawberry farms in northern Nicaragua

Sammanfattning: Nicaragua is severely challenged by poverty and the country was hit hard by the coffee crisis in the beginning of the year 2000. The situation forced farmers to find other ways to earn their livelihood and strawberries were identified as a possible cash crop. One geographical area with promise for strawberry cultivation was Las Sabanas in northern Nicaragua. There, the farmers have now founded a cooperative, DeliFresa, and the berries are introduced on the market. Simultaneously, more farmers begin to cultivate strawberries with new demands and needs for development arising. The main objective of our study is to describe and analyse the farming system for the farms constitutingthe cooperative DeliFresa, in order to identify challenges for development of their strawberry production. Specific objectives are to describe the role of strawberries within the farming system and evaluate its potential for development, with focus on social and economical perspectives, and to investigate processes and actors included in the value chain for strawberries produced by DeliFresa. We analyse the farming system by performing anagroecosystem analysis and a value chain analysis. Our data consist of 18 qualitative interviews, three participatory observations and four group meetings, taken with theoretical sampling. Our results show that the strawberries now arean important cash cropand they are sold in a short value chain consisting of four key actors; the farmer, the cooperative DeliFresa, supporting organisations and final customers. The most important process is logistical difficulties of getting the strawberries to the customers. We identify five main challenges for development: (1) The lack of goals (2) Division of labour (3) The functioning of the cooperative (4) Productivity losses (5) The unstable market.