Others work as sharecroppers or day laborers. Many of them try to develop cash crops for their basic needs if they have handy access to arable soils. Firewood commands a good price in Guatemala if it can be delivered to the cities. It is used for cooking in nearly all the households of Guatemala aside from those of the very rich. Given the incredible poverty and the tremendous demand for firewood, the result is massive and unsustainable deforestation.
Farms creep higher and higher into the mountains, and firewood is transported by backpack to cities.
Legislation that is designed to protect the forests of Guatemala is often used to persecute and prosecute the poor rather then mitigate the process of deforestation. Extortion abounds, for it is very difficult for the poor to prove whether their cutting of wood for a cash crop is legal or illegal. Small, highly efficient, and inexpensive cooking stoves are one possibility. Cooking over an open fire and heating with an open hearth are highly inefficient processes. Design and experimentation with stove technology is not new to the development community or to the history of technological development.