Brazilian black beans were, without any question, my most successful introduction. They grow "like garbage", are relatively easy to thresh, and (once you get used to the dark blue color) taste better than kumanda or carioca. After my first positive experimentation, Imi decided to plant two hectares together. It did so well we planted three the next year, as a community, and many people grew it individually.

Once again, the Imeños started out talking about selling the community crop, and wound up eating it instead. Some of us in MCC Chuquisaca were a little disappointed in this turn of events, as if it represented a failure on our part. I disagree. This is the kind of community decision-making we need to respect, and if I failed to encourage my neighbors to join the globalized economy, either through the adoption of horse traction (which can only be justified by commercial production) or the sale of perfectly good food, I am unembarrassed, unrepentent.

I should mention that MCC provided the initial seed for these initiatives, with the condition that it be returned on a one-to-one basis at harvest time. This was a strategy I employed to promote a number of crops every year, on the individual and community levels. I shared out 200 pounds of seed in my third year in Imi and more than 300 my fourth. I got most of it back too: a lot of the crops failed, but people were very generous with their successes.