The final assignment was originally set up to have groups of students present about their experience and what they learned at various venues. Well that didn’t work out too well…
Instead, each student recorded a voice-over slide show highlighting two or three of the visits that stood out to them. They are posted here for your viewing enjoyment!
Our 10 day escapade through Costa Rica came and went just like that. Sadly, now it’s time to get back to our lives in the US, where fresh fruits aren’t served with every meal. On our way to the airport in San Jose, I had time to reflect on the aspects from our adventure that stuck out the most to me.
Costa Rica is one fourth of the size of Kansas, which blows my mind! We spent 10 days traveling the country, yet I feel like we only dipped our toes into all that they have to offer. The diversity in everything, from plant species to microclimates is unreal. Costa Rica contains more than 6% of the world’s diversity; that’s crazy because again, they are only 1/4th of the size of Kansas! I was not prepared for the numerous microclimates we would experience while there. In Kansas, the climate obviously changes as you move across the state but typically not from town to town. This is not the case in Costa Rica. Within 20 kilometers, the temperature and humidity can and does change drastically. This plays a huge role in what they can grow where and how they grow it.
The forest went from rain forest to cloud forest to dry forest all in a matter of minutes.
One day on our drive, Fernando mentioned that the average wage for a farm hand was $20 a day, and they worked 6 days a week, making for a 48 hour week. I, along with most of the group, was genuinely shocked. As the days went on, those numbers continued to pop into my head, and I was reminded how hard working people in the agricultural field are. From Carla’s dairy farm to Aldo and his Cacoa to Rolando helping his father with their pineapple fields, a ton of manual labor goes into everything that is done.
Along with how much manual labor it took to operate their farms, I was shocked about how conscious everyone was about trying to be as sustainable as possible. Most of the farms we visited worked extremely hard to be as sustainable as they could, which lead to most of them being organic. They do things such as collecting microorganisms from the river or forest for making their own fertilizer, composting everything they can or reuse it in varied ways, researching different plants species that will benefit their main crop in numerous ways making the most out of the small or large amount of land they have, and much more. It really opened my eyes and made me think about how we farm in the United States. Not just on my family farm, my neighbor’s farm, my research plots, or big produce company’s grow fields, but everywhere.
Small garden plots or Earth University that use recycled items as their border.
We all loved pretty much every stop on the trip, so to summarize this trip as a group a poll was in order. The overwhelming winner was our tour at the Nortico Cacao Farm with Aldo. He walked us through every step of the process and made it very interactive. Not to toot our own horns or anything but I’m pretty sure we are chocolate experts now. Even though we LOVED Aldo, Carla at La Florita was AMAZING! We all walked away from both of those tours with so much knowledge on the subjects and a new found perspective.
Even though I am ready to get back to my bed and washing machine, I was not ready to leave this beautiful country, Fernando and Deigo, and the Pura Vida life style. The knowledge we gained and experiences we will take away from this trip are priceless. We can now talk you through the process of growing pineapples from planting to harvesting and say that we’ve all made our own chocolate almost start to finish. I’m sure I’m not just talking for myself when I say I’ve learned to appreciate the little things A LOT more.
Fernando and Diego decked out in their K-State gear for our last day.
Today was a change of pace in that we didn’t leave the hotel until 9:00 am. Most of us took the opportunity to sleep in, although a couple of us grabbed a coffee at a nearby café.
Another change of pace was having a very short drive to our destination, Manuel Antonio National Park. We walked into the park together on a raised walkway through mangrove forest. We saw a couple of different types of crabs, white faced monkeys, black iguanas, and a white tailed deer on the way in.
Once we arrived, some of us went to the beautiful beach, and some of us hiked a trail to the top of the hill on the tip of the peninsula. We saw lizards, many more monkeys, a vulture scavenging a dead skunk, a wide variety of trees, and many other plants growing in this secondary jungle. We were able to catch some great views of the Pacific once we got to the top.
We spent the rest of our time there exploring more trails or getting a head start on our summer tans (…or maybe first spring sun burn). Even with the large number of visitors, wildlife was evident all around us.
After lunch, we spent some time debriefing the last couple of days in particular and the entire trip in general. We have seen and learned many new things. We have new appreciation for the level of mechanization in US agriculture. We noticed different social priorities. We enjoyed being somewhat removed from the rapidly developing caronavirus situation in the US (some of us may be harboring secret hopes that we get stranded here, but that isn’t looking very likely).
Late in the afternoon we drove to nearby Quepos to walk along the waterfront and watch one last Pacific sunset.
Today started early and with some interesting news. Due to the Coronavirus, K-State has opted to extend spring break by a week and hold online classes the following week. A precaution taken by many other college as well, so maybe we can live the Pura Vida life for another week, am I right?!
After breakfast and much conversation about the developing class situations, we loaded the bus and headed off the Palma Tica. Upon arrival, we were met by Miguel, the oil palm expert. We also had our temperatures checked by another Palma Tica worker to ensure that we didn’t have the Coronavirus. Following the health check, we headed to the oil palm plantation!
Miguel in the field
Palma Tica covers an area of 25,000 hectares (ha) which is about 62,000 acres. Of the 25,000ha, 10,000 are directly owned by Palma Tica, and 15,000 are privately owned but sell to the company. These hectares contain about 553,000 oil palm trees. They have about 1,100 employees, and 1,000 of them are field workers. Around 50% of the workers are Nicaraguan and must have a work permit to work. They make a minimum of $250 a week for a 36 hour work week, but can get bonuses based on the number of fruit bunches they harvest.
Along with the workers, they use buffaloes to pull carts of oil palm fruits throughout the plantation! They are treated very well. They work one day and get two days off. Before they work, they get a bath, while they are working they get a snack of molasses, and when they are done they get another bath.
Buffalo pulling his cart with the worker who picks up the bunches
It is very costly to plant oil palm. One hectare will cost $5,500. They plant clones grown by a sister company. The clones take around 18 months to be ready to plant in the field. If the area they are using is an old plantation, they inject the old trees with a herbicide to kill them. After they die, they bulldoze the area. Next, they create canals for drainage. The last step is to plant the clones 7 meters apart within the row with 9 meters between rows.
The trees can grow up to 18 meters tall, or 59 feet! When they are this tall it can be hard to find the bunches and harvest them efficiently. However, workers don’t even have to look up to know if a bunch is ready. They actually look down. When they see five individual fruits on the ground below a tree, they know the bunch is ready to be harvested. The workers use 14-meter long sticks that can extend even longer and with a curved blade at the end to reach the fruit to harvest it.
A worker harvesting a bunch
After the bunch is harvested, it is placed on the main road by another worker to be picked up and taken to a large container by a third worker. The container can hold 17 metric tonnes of product and is taken to the processing plant when it is full. Stray fruit that has fallen is also picked up to be processed.
The fruit contains three parts, the flesh, the shell, and the kernel. The flesh is orange, the shell is black, and the kernel is white. The flesh is used to produce vegetable oils. The kernel produces another oil used mainly in cosmetics. The shell is burned as fuel in the processing plant.
Oil palm bunch, individual fruit, and inside of individual fruit
Through the tour I learned that even big, monoculture operations can try to be sustainable. Maybe not 100%, but there are ways to improve. For example, they compost the ash from the shells they burn in the processing plant as fertilizer, reducing their $2 million fertilizer costs by 30%.
There is also a large impact on palm oil prices from the Coronavirus. Miguel mentioned that the price has dropped 30% since the start of the pandemic.
As we wrap up our trip in Costa Rica, there are many things to reflect on including diversity in agriculture, world health, financial restraints, sustainable production, and converting waste to usable products.
After lots of information, we were able to end the day at the beach and relax a little bit!
Our alarms woke us up at 6 o’clock bright and early to pack up our bags, grab some breakfast, then hit the road for a long day of travel. We traveled from the Caribbean side, over the mountains, to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica! While we were traveling, we passed through the cloud forest and crossed the continental divide. The cloud forest was formed because of the high elevation (about 700 meters) and the warm winds of the Caribbean Sea meeting the cooler, dryer air of the pacific side, forming clouds all year round.
Our first stop along the way was a cattle ranch at 200 meters in elevation. This ranch has been family owned for many years but Don Julio has been managing the ranch for the family for 30 years now! He manages around 100 head of Brahman cattle on 250 hectares of land (625 acres). Since this ranch is on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, they experience a “dry season” for about half of the year. During the wet season (May – November) must rotationally graze their pastures to maintain the nutrient value in their grass. During the dry season they spread them across more paddocks and rotated less frequently and supplement with forage harvested during the wet season.
The ranch is able to calve year round because the season change is very slight, which also makes it easier for them to produce small groups of cattle for market year round and spread the income out! They also produce cashews, corn, and other fruit to feed to the calves in order to get them fat enough for market. Prime weight for slaughter is around 1200 lbs which is slightly smaller then the US at about 1350 lbs.
After thanking Don Julio, we climbed back on the bus to continue our travel. Our next stop was for lunch. About 15 minutes down the road from where we ate, stopped to we spotted “Mike Tyson”, a.k.a. one of the largest documented crocodiles in the world at 5 m, 40 cm in length! We captured all the pictures we could before he swam away and then continued on down the road.
We finally arrived in Manuel Antonio around 4:30 and checked into our hotel room. It didn’t take us long to get changed into shorts and sandals and head for a gorgeous sunset and tasty dinner on the beach! Even though today was a long travel day, and our trip is coming to an end. We experienced so many amazing things and have some fun and exciting things left!
Due to the changing prospectives of consumers in the US, the feedlot and cattle industry as a whole will need to change in many ways. By visiting this cattle ranch I’ve gained a different outlook on how to still be successful, environmentally friendly, sustainable, and still produce quality meat that I can bring back and implement in my future career as a producer and in the feedlot industry. By adding Brahman genetics into some cattle it could help in the hot summers of Kansas, also implementing more rotational grazing style into larger pastures would help maintain the nutritional value of the grass.
This afternoon we toured an organic pineapple farm called Organic Paradise Tour. Rolando took us around his land that totaled 200 hectares. Pineapples are grown in a strict monoculture, unlike most other products we have been seeing. It takes about 15-18 months from planting to harvest to get a fruit. About 5 of those months are after bloom to grow the fruit. They will plant 6,000 plants in one hectare. Since this is an organic farm, they must get also get the land certified to be organic; then they can start.
First, we saw some black plastic laid on the ground with small plants sticking out of them. This plastic is used to decrease erosion, reduce weeds, and help conserve nutrients. This plastic can decrease erosion by 90%. They then dig trenches about 60 cm deep to allow the water to drain away from the plants because pineapples like well drained soils with a low pH.
They have some black plastic out ready to be planted. Then behind they have already planted some crowns.
The tiny plants were crowns that had been cut off the top of pineapples that went to the industry to be processed. This is a common practice for them to start a new mother plant. Each mother plant will produce one fruit along with 5 suckers. Suckers are generally like a tiller in wheat or corn; they will each grow their own pineapple. Once the fruit is harvested, they will harvest 4 suckers from that one plant. They will leave one to grow and produce another fruit and 5 suckers. Then they will harvest the fruit and all suckers, pull out the plant and add it to the soil for biomass before the next crop.
This pineapple bloomed about 3 months ago and has 2 more months left before harvest.
He talked about several pest, diseases, and challenges they face. The plant itself is fairly tough, but once it blooms and the fruit begins to grow the real management begins. One of the largest was the sun, the fruit can easily become sunburned so they apply organic sunscreen to the fruit to avoid those imperfections. About 10% of plants will rot and never produce a fruit, and during wet conditions it can be as many as 40%. They also have ants get inside the pineapples along with other animals like raccoons. They apply chili and garlic to the fruit to avoid these. They have red flags with glue around the field to attract the butterflies that can also damage the fruit. Diseases become a problem in very wet times. They apply fertilizer, generally nitrogen, once a week to keep the plant healthy.
They use signs to tell them what days the area was planted so they know when to start checking for harvest.
He also explained how they market their pineapples. They can go three different places: to fruit for export, to industry for canning, freezing, or jams; or to making juice. They measure sugar using a reflectometer to determine when the fruit is ready for harvest and where it will go. The best looking fruit with a sugar content of 14% will become fruit. Pineapples with 16% sugar will go to the industry for processing, and anything else will be made into juice. They will harvest every week on rotation with their fields. Within a week they can produce 100 tons of pineapple.
This pineapple is almost ready for harvest.
While in the fields we had to try some fresh pineapple. He showed us a perfect pineapple and then also an over-mature pineapple with excess water. After we visited the fields we got to have some piña colada drinks, pineapple empanadas, and some pineapple jam. All of these were extremely delicious.
These are the piña colada drinks we tried after the tour.
The first thing I learned from this was it’s never to late to learn to be sustainable. The pineapple industry has a very bad rap for being horrible for the environment. However, this farm tries to use biological tools to limit pest, disease, and fertilizer inputs. They also take extra steps to reduce erosion. Another thing I learned was how important the pineapple industry is for Costa Rica. It generates tons of income to the farmers. They employ about 1 worker for 2 hectors and this creates a ton of jobs for them.
Last afternoon our bus rumbled down a dirt road into the entrance of La Selva Biological Research Station. La Selva is just one of four research stations privately funded by OTS: Organization for Topical Studies, and was founded in 1968. At the lodge area, we were greeted by Kenneth, who would be our guide for our morning walk. He has been an employee with La Selva for 17 years guiding several different tours through the biological station. For tonight, he led us to our cabins where we had to cross one of La Selva’s famous suspension bridges that crossed the river. As we walked, we were greeted by several Howler Monkeys, Costa Rica’s most common and largest monkey species.
We then settled in for the night in our cabins which had netted screens for windows that let in any breezes. Throughout our stay, it was common to see geckos climbing the walls and long nosed bats hanging outside the windows. Despite their reputation, bats are an important part of the ecosystem as natural pollinators and mosquito control. La Selva has 125 different species of mammals and 72 of them are bats! Many of the animal species that live at La Selva are nocturnal and could be heard throughout the night. In the morning, we woke up to a beautiful view from our balcony of the forest along the banks of the river.
Kenneth was waiting ready to go with a scope and tripod to spot any animals on our walk. One of the first animals we spotted were Keeled Bill Toucans, one of three toucan species indigenous to Costa Rica. It is currently avian breeding season in Central America, to which bird watchers flock to get glimpses of La Selva’s 470 different bird species when they are most active. Amongst other animals, peccaries, a small wild pig species, were abundant in common areas.
As we stepped further and further into the forest, Kenneth explained that they have both Primary and Secondary forests here at La Selva. Secondary forests are growth that occurs after the primary forest has been destroyed by natural or man-made causes. The secondary forest here is about 30 years old and the primary forests are, in theory true primary forests, thousands of years old.
As we walked on, we spotted several different animals from small lizards and snakes to mammals such as an agouti and several more peccaries. One of my favorite finds was a female three-toed sloth and her baby that ventured on to the branch next to her. Kenneth told us it was rare for the young to wander away for so long at that age or be that active at all. Sloth’s metabolism’s are so slow, they can die of starvation on a full stomach!
As our tour drew to a close, I understood the importance of research stations such as these. There is still a lot we don’t know about the natural world, and there were several animal species at La Selva that might not be in existence today if it weren’t for the efforts of conservationists. I look forward to our upcoming days and adventures, but this is an experience I won’t easily forget.
Last night we arrived at Earth University here in Costa Rica. The campus is over 8,000 acres and is home to 400 – 460 students from 44 different countries. Since a lot of students come from developing countries, 90% of students are on scholarship. Earth University is unique as it only focuses on classroom theory 40% of the time and actual, hands-on practice 60% of the time. Another thing that differs from the universities we know is that test scores are not nearly as important to get in. Earth realizes that some of their students are not good test takers so they put a heavy focus on skills and ethics as well. A lot of Earth students will go back to their home countries and empower the poor to become agents of their own change. This is why they focus on small-scale, sustainable projects.
While at Earth University, we visited their organic gardens. It is a very low-budget operation that spans about 20 acres. Crops grown in this garden include cacao, green onions, parsley, kale, lettuce, arugula, bananas, plantains, taro root, and many more. Along with the crops they produce, they also raise chickens, pigs, cattle, and tilapia. Normally, livestock such as this is used for consumption, but they are just as important for their manure, which is used to fertilize the plants.
Self-sustainability is a big goal at Earth University, so they compost animal and plant waste and use it as fertilizer for future crops. They even ferment milk whey, which is a liquid waste product of cheese, and use it as a bio pesticide. One other tool they use is a bio digester. Waste is placed in here with microorganisms to decompose it. This process generates methane, which is typically a harmful greenhouse gas. However, the bio digester traps it and the university uses it as an energy source, as they have no gas pipes otherwise.
Compost area in the organic farm.
After visiting this organic garden, we moved into a more experimental area. The main focus of all the projects in this area was to see how well plants grow without soil. First, we saw plant beds full of coconut fiber, rice husks, and charcoal. The coconut fiber is used to retain the moisture and nutrients that run through the beds, and is in the highest concentration at 50%. The rice husks are used as a form of starch and also help with the interchange of gases. Adding charcoal to the mixture increases aeration, as the chunks are very porous, and adds a source of carbon. The plants growing in this mix seemed to be very healthy. They also had this mix in hanging plastic bags placed side by side on a bar. They were able to grow plants in this, which shows that certain crops can be grown in an urban environment. Earth University also works with pyramid production systems and hydroponic production. The pyramid production system uses the same plastic bags filled with coconut fibers, rice husks, and charcoal, but the bags were laid horizontally in a pyramid formation. This system conserves space and eliminates weed pressure.
Mix of coconut fibers, rice husks, and charcoal that is used as a growth medium for plants.Pyramid production system
We were supposed to visit a banana plantation today, but due to disease, we were not able to. In the 1950s, a disease called Panama wilt, caused by a Fusarium fungus pathogen, wiped out the Gros Michel variety of bananas. This was the main banana variety grown at the time. Because of this, producers started growing the Cavendish variety, which is what we buy in our grocery stores. A new strain of the Panama wilt disease, TR4, is now threatening to wipe out the Cavendish variety of bananas. Due to this, we were not allowed out in the bananas to minimize spread of the disease. On a positive note, we were able to see their “banana train” in motion. The banana train is a conveyor system of hooks that carries 100 bunches of bananas from the field to the processing shed. Once collected and processed, they are placed in boxes of 40 pounds each. Something crazy is that they export 115,000,000 boxes of bananas each year. That’s a lot of bananas! Anyways, better get some sleep so I can be up bright and early for another day tomorrow!
Banana train on its way to processing
In my visit to Costa Rica so far, I have been impressed by the self sustainability of these producers. Substances that we would call waste, like milk whey, they convert into something useful like fertilizer. I also think we can learn a lot from them in regards to intercropping. It really stuck out to me how they know so much about various plants, and they know which ones to plant to get the most out of their production system. This is all while protecting the environment they are growing in.
On the afternoon of March 9th, we visited a local organic farm on the Caribbean side of the country. We were welcomed by Don Jorge and his wife, who fed us wood-oven cooked chicken, rice and beans, cassava, and fresh fruit. To drink we had lemonade with sugarcane and ginger made on their farm from plants grown on their farm. The food was very welcome after a tour through the fresh greens of EARTH university.
After lunch we had our introductions, and Don explained he has been farming this land a long time. The way I understood it, organic farming in the Costa Rica sense was using everything that is byproduct from the crop grown to better the crop or other plants or animals on the farm. For instance, they feed scraps to pigs and the pig manure is used as fertilizer. They try hard to only buy things they can not make on the acres they own, which is much different than the typical Kansas production system where lots of inputs are being purchased and the farm sells a raw commodity rather than a ready to eat or use item.
Don Jorge has land that used to be in cacao production but was now in an extended fallow period and currently is a more natural forest. He explained after the period of going organic, that the field would be in banana production.
The group in the ‘forest fallow’.
Don and his wife sell the cassava and other crops and livestock that they do not consume to local food markets as well as exporting some to other regions.
Don explains to us the quality of cassava required for export and what must be consumed locally or fed to livestock. The quality grade is based on shape, size and imperfections.
Cassava is a tuber crop that grows in the ground, but the vegetative portion of the crop is much like a small tree with shallow, short roots.
Pictured is Don Jorge in front of the cassava with harvested ones at his feet. These plants are about a year old.
A unique quality about cassava he explained was that the crop can be left in the ground for a variable period of time. In Costa Rica it takes around one year for the plant to grow from a small section of the stem with a bud planted in the soil, to a full-sized plant with cassava tubers. The crop can be harvested as early as nine months, or left in the ground and the tubers will get some bigger. He explained this was beneficial to his production system because he can better time when he needs to sell the crop based on how much it will be worth month to month.
The cassava is harvested by cutting the top part of the plant off, and gently wiggling and shaking the stem and ripping the roots out of the ground, revealing the cassava. This was much like pulling potatoes out of the ground without using a shovel to dig them up.
Don took volunteers to harvest some cassava by pulling it up with our hands.
On the edge of the open field where cassava had been harvested, there were some coconut trees. Don offered us some fresh coconut water and handed each of us an opened coconut for us to drink coconut water right from the fruit! It was a very refreshing drink in the hot, humid field. The flavor was even more enhanced by squeezing the juice from fresh citrus wedges that Don’s wife had handy into the coconut water.
After we had our fill, the farmer showed us to his sugarcane and heart of palm patch. The sugarcane is squeezed to become an ingredient in the lemonade that they sold. Heart of palm is much like radishes and can be placed in salads and other fresh produce items. He casually waved a large machete around sculpting the fruit and letting us taste straight from the field! It was a highlight of our day!
Overall, the production system is much different from the United States because in many cases the producers can grow year-round, eliminating the need for a planting time and harvest time, so there can be plants ready more year round such as we see in our livestock industry.
This was one of my favorite visits; the family was very welcoming and was very passionate about what they do. I found it especially intriguing how the farms support what they need with what they have. Don Jorge’s farm was only 7 hectares, but it was enough for him to provide what he needed for his family, and they did everything they could to make it efficient and self sustaining. This is an ideology or way of thinking I hope to bring home to my farm someday and do some form of increasing efficiency within my cropping systems by means of biodiversity, intercropping, and reducing waste with hopes of purchasing less inputs.
Today began with breakfast at the same place we had dinner at last night: Sitios Angostura. As we ate eggs, beans and rice, bread, and fresh fruit we enjoyed our overlook of the Turrialba Valley. The view was beautiful!
The view during breakfast at Sitios Angostura.
Reinhold guided our visit to Aquiares Coffee Farm and a small family farm. In terms of contiguous area, Aquiares is the largest coffee farm in Costa Rica. The smaller, family run farm is organic. Unfortunately, the harvest season for coffee was just coming to a close, so there were very few berries on the coffee plants.
Coffee cherries at various stages of ripeness at Aquiares.
At Aquiares, Reinhold taught us about the history of coffee production, the methods of processing coffee, and the impacts conventional versus organic coffee farming has on the Costa Rican environment. Reinhold emphasized that turning to monoculture ruins the soil fertility, which causes a domino effect that degrades many aspects of the surrounding ecosystems. Monocultures decrease bird and insect populations, increase crop vulnerability to disease, require more chemical inputs, and deplete soils of nutrients. Losses like these are difficult to bounce back from, and forced coffee producers to learn a valuable lesson: short term profit leads to long term losses.
A glimpse into the processing of coffee beans. This is the room at Aquiares where coffee beans are washed and dried before being stored for 3-4 months before shelling and exporting.
At the organic farm, Reinhold translated for the owners of the farm. The husband, Edgar, told us the story of the farm and the way their production has changed over three generations. Although things are going well for Edgar and his family today, they experienced many hardships to get where they are. Pests, diseases, and changes in the social and economic climates made it hard for Edgar and other small farmers to survive.
I appreciated the operation that Edgar and his family runs, and I learned more about Costa Rican agriculture there than I did at Aquiares. While large monocultures generate a lot of money, small farms like Edgar’s make up the majority of farms in Costa Rica. I learned how the common person in Costa Rica has dealt with the huge amount of change seen in agriculture in the last 45 years. Edgar’s story of how the farm was “organic by default” when he was a child, then decimated by the collapse of coffee prices and disease, and now thriving under a diverse intercropping system felt more meaningful and genuine.
Once we finished up at Edgar’s farm (only after buying all of their coffee and devouring a home cooked meal), we departed for Earth College, where we were greeted by students from Zimbabwe and Nigeria. Together we will experience new crops tomorrow: pineapples!
A view of the organization at AquiaresA view of the organization at Edgar’s farm.
KSU Agronomy Study Abroad 