Mobile School for Soil and Water Conservation – GUATEMALA
The Mobile School does agricultural assessments, conducts educational field trips for farmer-to-farmer exchanges, presents short courses on all the practices taught in EPIC agricultural projects, and does on-site project monitoring and evaluations.
FUNDAMARCOS, Fundación Agri-cultura Marcos Orozco, is re-initiating the highly successful Escuela Móvil de Conservación de Suelo y Agua (Mobile School of Soil and Water Conservation). Director, Felipe Tomás, brings to this project over 35 years of teaching sustainable agriculture throughout Central America and Mexico.
The Mobile School for Soil and Water Conservation was founded in July 1979 by Guatemalan agronomist, Marcos Orozco Miranda. Marcos Orozco is often called Guatemala’s Father of Soil and Water Conservation. The purpose of the Mobile School was to share the very effective practices of sustainable organic farming that he and others had developed in Guatemala.
Marcos Orozco, together with farmer-teacher Anacleto Sajbochol, pioneered the farmer-to-farmer experimentation>learning>teaching methodology. Mayan farmers who were formed under the practical, ecologically based teaching of Marcos and Anacleto have become agricultural teachers, directors of agricultural development programs, international consultants, and authors. Felipe Tomás, the new director of the FUNDAMARCOS Mobile School of Soil and Water Conservation, is one of these outstanding teachers.