This is one of those stories that makes me want to shout ‘why doesn’t everyone know about this miracle?’ I hope you’ll be thinking the same thing when you’ve finished reading. It is a story about a sustainable resilient rural livelihood that lets subsistence farmers escape poverty, protect tropical forests, protect the climate, and work with – rather than against – nature.

Mike Hands was working for the Honduran government in the 1980s, surveying river-flood control, when he began pondering a question whose answer has led him to a revolutionary breakthrough for Central American farmers – and a way to save the tropical rainforests that are disappearing as they work to feed their families.