Agriculture
Agriculture
A Dream to Reach
Victory Farms started as a dream to reach and empower those who have land and do not know now to utilize it. We had been using 50 acres under a free lease for 7 years. We have now moved off of that property and are using another property while we look for a farm to buy to continue the visions of the farm and the bible school..
Victory Farms
In many countries around the world, November to March are called “Lean Season”. The time between the planting and the harvest where there is no food to eat. We intend to empower the farmer to avoid this through sustainable agriculture. This will not only provide food for their families year round, but a surplus they can sale to obtain other necessities.
The idea for Victory Farms grew from our involvement with the Sustainable Healthy Living (SHL) program of Heaven’s Reach Ministries (HRM). Heaven's Reach is a Springdale, Arkansas-based nonprofit organization that operates in Honduras. They had worked predominately with pregnant women.
The Sustainable Healthy Living program teaches future mothers how to lead a healthy life for themselves and their family. Clients receive seeds and learn gardening techniques so that they can start their own home gardens. Growing their own produce that give them access to the vitamins and minerals they need to sustain the health of their families.
Some of the teachers in the SHL program are knowledgeable and experienced farmers who volunteer on a part-time basis to teach farming to our clients. Victory Farms creates paid positions for these volunteers to do what they are already passionately doing. It will provide them a much-needed income. Additionally, it will create opportunities to produce seeds for the SHL. It will experiment with new farming techniques. We will teach new findings in SHL and to local farmers. Our ultimate goal is to increase the quality and quantity of food grown by the farmers in the mountains while giving them the seed of life.
Mission Statement
Victory Farms is introducing the Word of God and sustainable farming practices for food security while providing nutritious produce to the local and national markets in Honduras.
Purpose of Victory Farms
This farm will complement and help sustain the HRM projects in Honduras and provide needed jobs, education, and economic assistance to the region.
Victory Farms will initially provide work for eight unemployed farmers. Those working with Victory Farms will learn, teach, and experiment with innovative and sustainable ways to farm to meet the unique needs of the poor in Honduras. We will seek organic solutions that will allow those in remote areas to fertilize and control pests with local resources. This will help them to improve the quantity and quality of their production. The result will be a better, more prosperous life.
Currently
Victory Farms is a 50 acre farm near La Esperanza we have loaned to us to use. We now need to move as
the leans is ending in August 2019. Victory Farms is a demonstration farm that disciples the participants and grows food to sell while teaching sustainable agriculture. We are looking to buy land for a permanent home for Victory farms. Anner, one of the young men we have been discipled over the last few years is working with Joel one of our staff. They are has been collaborating with a program of USAID to find the best crops for the area. We are now growing those crops including green beans, corn, beans, carrots and others.
We are currently growing carrots and corn with the funds we have until the full funding comes. These Honduran are learning land management, soil conservation, and tractor operations to start.
This is a self sustaining demonstration farm that will be start in 2012. This farm will do three things.
Demonstrate new ways to farm: using new ways to farm will increase production and quality empowering the local farmers to live better as most of them live off the land.
Produce Seed for the Sustainable Healthy Living program which will be given away.
Employ and minister to unemployed farmers who are out of work or have land but do not have resources to plant enabling them to utilize their land.
Provide chemical dependency rehabilitation many of the unemployed are alcoholics.
Partner with local landowners lacking the resources to farm their own land.
Host seminary classes for leaders and pastors farmers who are leaders will be trained to be chaplains in the hospitals. Some national pastors need education.
Reduces Deforestation by reduces the farmer's need to cut down the rain forest.
This farm will be run as a social business with the focus of affect social change not maximizing monetary profit.
This is a new sustainable business that is in the fundraising stage. Our primary mission is to create social and spiritual change through agriculture while maintaining sustainable profitability.
Aquaponics
Aquaponics is a great solution for those who have little water and land. The water cycles from the fish to the plants and back to the fish again. Once the system is full of water there is little need to add more water. The systems are scaleable and flexible to the need and area available.
Here we are employing three systems large enough to supply food for the Alberge where the expecting mothers live at the hospital as part of the SHL program. Food for the Feeding Center in Lepaterique and the ministry center. They are also being used to demonstrate and teach Aquaponics to the local communities and expecting mothers.
This system at the Hospital utilizes Solar Panels to move the water. In other systems the water is moved by hand two to three times a day using a 5 gallon bucket.
This is the system at the feeding center.
We will serve the people of Honduras (the poorest country in Central America) by growing healthier, better quality produce, employing the unemployed, educating farmers, and empowering the poor to use their land in a sustainable way.
In Honduras, the poor often exist on as little as one or two corn tortillas daily. Lack of food access is one of the greatest threats to the health of people living in developing countries like Honduras. This lack of food security is partly due to the inability to grow sufficient food on land owned.
Food security will increase as we teach and empower the Honduran farmers. The end goal is for every household to be food-secure. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.
Teach the hungry to farm
When you give to Heaven's Reach you give a farmer a way to feed his family. $300 per farmer will teaching a three month program.