Dominican Republic Trip

	The Dominican Republic shares an island with Haite in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Florida. I went there as part of a BID project to train ag consultants. The country has beautiful beaches, interior mountains and irrigated farmland separated by dry hills covered with scrub brush. The sub tropical climate lets them grow about any crop. This is me in front of a banana plant.

One of the irrigated fields between crops used for grazing.	The land that isn't irrigated is savannah type country.

Here are some of the ag tecnicians we trained in irrigation, fertility, crops and pest control. The plan is next they will work privately to advise the members of the irrigation projects.	One of the exercises they did measuring the flow rate of a ditch. They measured the cross sectional area of the ditch, then measured the speed of the water with a float and watch and multiplied the two for flow rate.
Irrigation water is brought down by canals from the dam into the farmer's fields. Once at their fields they are irrigated my surface irrigation. The land is divided into small runs and then water is turned loose from the head ditch to flood the sections or melgas. If the land has slope to it, water is first allowed to flow down from the top. The water flollows the slope of the land down. The land is then divided perpandicular to this slope the water found. A very ingenious wasy to survey the land.

Flooding a land section for the first time takes a lot of work as the workers do land leveling so the land floods evenly. Water that floods fast and evenly means efficient irrigation.	A lot of the field work is done with animal traction, although the bigger farms use tractors. Her oxen are pulling a device to flatten out a land section.

Beans are one of the main staple crops grown and eaten . Here a horse is pulling a simple local made bean planter.	Once the beans are up they get cultivated for weed control and to push dirt up around the sides of the bean plants.
Rice is the other main staple crop grown and eaten in the Dominican Republic. Rice is planted on land sections directly. When the rice germinates the land is flooded and kept flooded till harvest time. These pictures are during rice harvest. The rice is dut and bundled up. Later a rice harvester is comunulally used to separate the grains.

Sweet potatoes are another crop. Here they are being irrigated.	Sweet potato harvest. An oxen pulls a lifter that brings them to the surface where they are collected by hand.
	Here are two local boys and a local boy bring his cows home from grazing during the day.
	A family by there field house. These house often are only used for temporary sleter when there is a lot of field work to do. Fields can be far from the towns where most people live. Transportation is mainly by small motorcycles in the Dominican Republic.