History

To help low-income peasants to improve their well-being is the mission that Don Lorenzo Servitje Sendra, along with a group of businessmen, got in 1963 in the city of Guadalajara, where, motivated by the sense of helping those who were most affected and dissatisfied  with the  governmental actions in the rural sector, they started to look for a way of helping poor peasants.

In their first approach, they established that the lack of credit was a barrier that prevented their development; therefore, they earned their trust and together they developed a strategy that would lead them to the solutions they were looking for. They decided to back the word and work of the peasants with a Guarantee Fund they created and which allowed peasants to be candidates for credit at the National Bank.

As the years went by, they integrated the actions which broke the circles that generated inequality when transferring operations to the field , with the necessary inputs and resources for activating economy in the rural areas.

This is how the Fundación Mexicana para el Desarrollo Rural, A.C. emerged, a non profit institution, created in 1963 under the mission of comprehensively promoting the increase of the productivity and human development of  peasants and their families, as well as the development of rural communities.


THE WORK OF THE FOUNDATION

Experienced revealed that not only money was needed for promoting the land; the group of businessmen also realized that they were more successful when the peasant’s  confidence and interests were at stake and when they assisted them in matters related to the organization of productive projects. So that, based on previous experiences, they designed their own methodology that would encourage the productivity and human development through constituted formal groups.


BENEFICIARIES

The Fundation is focused on the low-income rural sector that has potential for development; that is, peasants that have small areas or have possibilities for renting them as well as the tools or means for working.

Usually, peasants  cannot get bank credits or funding, unless they get it by intermediaries who give them credit with high interest rates (around 10% each month). They are unaware of the new agricultural technologies (improved seeds or fertilizers),  which means that they get very low yield and harvests  that are only enough for autoconsumption. Their family income is lower than the urban minimum wage and they live in high and very high  marginalised zones, from which many people have migrated.

Generally, peasants did not finish their elementary studies; they lack the critical consciousness about their reality; they seem to have a low-esteem and high resistance to change.

IMPACT

For almost half a century, the joint operation of the Foundation has produced benefits concerning education, work, and  rural development for more than 500 thousand countryside families in 16 entities of the country.

Nowadays, the Foundation works with more than 10,000 producers in different states of the country, developing 81 projects in 10 agricultural, agribusiness, and related activities. With these projects, only in 2010, 32,000 persons of the rural sector were benefited.