There is a lot of debate in MCC about agricultural promotion methodology. My preference is to try out an idea myself, without a lot of fanfare, and let local reactions take their course. This approach had its greatest justification (in Imi) in the case of vegetable gardening. I tried more active strategies first, talking up the nutritional importance of vegetables, providing free seed to anyone who was willing to take it, and even working with people individually in their own gardens. The results were disappointing. Without continued (i.e., unsustainable) encouragement, the gardens were neglected, the work abandoned.

My third year I said to heck with it all, and planted a garden of my own. A few months later I had a virtual stream of little kids swinging by my plot, begging for a tomatoe or an onion like other kids might beg someone for candy, and running away with whatever I could give them as if it was a great prize. Considering their all-corn diet, a tomatoe or an onion probably was a real prize. The next year, half the families in the community asked me to help them with seed, and almost every family had a garden of at least modest proportions.

Here Aurelia Tañera is showing off her Aunt Lidia's garden. (Check out those tomatoes, which Don Benito gravely assured me could not be grown.)