The Inga Foundation grew out of a long term scientific research project into slash-and-burn agriculture and the need to find an alternative agriculture systems that could save farmers from having to clear new areas of rainforest year after year, just to survive.
The Inga Foundation now works to help communities and farmers in Honduras, as well as elsewhere in the world, change from slash-and-burn to the tried and tested alternative system that emerged from years of dedicated research- Inga Alley Cropping.
Inga Foundation does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ancestry, citizenship, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression or religion.
Board of Trustees for the UK:
The UK Inga Foundation Board is made up of experts in tropical ecology who, between them, have over 150 years of experience.
- Michael Hands, Senior Research Associate, Univ. of Cambridge (1988-2002), UK.
- Dr. Tim Bayliss-Smith, Univ. of Cambridge. UK
- Dr. Terence Pennington, Honorary Fellow, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, UK
- William Vanderbilt, Chair of the Vanderbilt Family Foundation, USA
USA Board of Trustees:
- Glenn Berger
- Heather Garnett
- Lorraine Potter
Up In Smoke: One Man’s Burning Issue
One of the best ways to gain a real insight into the heart and history of the Inga Foundation is through Up In Smoke, a feature-length documentary by Adam Wakeling that spans a three-year segment of the Inga Foundation’s work. It follows Mike Hands, our founder, as he works to connect with and convince local farmers to make the leap from slash-and-burn to Inga Alley Cropping, and his struggle to bring the issue of slash-and-burn farming to the forefront of ecological thinking.
The Inga Foundation has come a long way since the film was completed. We have had some important successes and now have more projects, more funding and, crucially, far more farmers involved and practicing alley cropping.
But this is just the start, we still have a long way to go. Alley cropping has the potential to transform the lives of slash-and-burn farmers across the tropics. We are working hard to realise that potential and are making significant progress; however, we still face some key obstacles, especially in terms of funding.
Up in Smoke Trailer
Synopsis
“Up In Smoke follows British scientist Mike Hands, who has laboured for 25 years to find a solution to replacing slash-and-burn agriculture in equatorial rainforests.
And he’s found it.
But perfecting this novel technique, called ‘alley cropping’, is only the start. Now he needs to persuade governments, agencies and, more important than anyone else, the farmers.
This is a film about a struggle for our future. About the heroic, sometimes quixotic mission of Mike Hands to get people to understand his revolutionary method. It’s about the life and death struggle of impoverished farmers who can’t afford to risk adopting a new farming method. It’s a film about our driving need to change what’s happening to the planet’s rainforests, and about the pressures that may prevent that change from happening.
Mike Hands has a solution, but is the world ready to listen?
We follow three principal characters: Mike Hands himself, and two Honduran farmers, Faustino and Aladino, one of whom has adopted Mike’s technique, the other waiting to be convinced.
Filmed over 3 years, the film moves between the UK and Honduras on a dramatic path that leads eventually to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009. We get to see the proof of alley cropping, but will proof be enough to trigger real change? Politics has its own ways of interfering with the science.”
(You can visit the official film website at www.upinsmoke.tv)