La Granadilla: Impacts on Society and Tourists

La Granadilla is a rural community where a cooperation of farmers offers tourists the opportunity to learn about their way of living in a rural community where your normal items are not easy to access. Here in La Granadilla people can walk down trails that lead to different farms and houses of the farmers within the community running La Granadilla. Tourists can also rent bikes and horses for the day as well. La Granadilla offers tours in oxcarts as well and different choices of lodging options. The main spot where tourists stay is in the communal house of La Grandilla, which is the main site. This building provides bedrooms, dining tables, showers, bathrooms, and a communal library. All the farmers running La Granadilla are all part of UCA Tierra y Agua. This organization offers other activities like more trails and visiting the local community of La Granadilla. UCA Tierra y Agua is a great organization that offers social projects to the community as well. It is a great way to get the community involved in different things. The community farmers of La Granadilla take part in helping out with the social projects as well. The projects help inform other people about the environment and other things.  

Since 1999 UCA Tierra y Agua and the farmers of La Granadilla got the help of teachers from different areas of Nicaragua. They have a program of scholarships that are offered to sons and daughters of partners within the community. The kids receiving the scholarship are studying secondary and college degrees. The scholarships cover about 80% of the educational expenses like books and other materials needed for school. The people that get offered the scholarships meet in their own community. They study subjects of their interest and at the start and end of the year they first plan and look ahead at the activities they want to achieve during the year.  UCA Tierra y Agua also has several social projects that try to fit the needs of every community in the surrounding area. One of the projects was the construction of the communal houses in different areas that did not have a place to meet, for example the communal house in La Granadilla. The houses have been able to turn into multipurpose places. They are used for meetings, studying, and other uses of the community. Besides the communal houses, UCA also meets the social needs of housing facilities. They have built houses in the communities of Miguel Castro Siles and Rommel Carrasquilla in the region of Aguas Agrias.

Tourism is very important to the community center. It is needed for them to generate a source of income. In La Granadilla, they designated a specific building right in the middle of the place to have meetings for tourists. In the next year Granadilla wants to get tourists approval in order to take tourists different places. In the early 90’s meetings with tourists happened under the big tree near the entrance of the place. This spot was not good for holding meetings. Although it provided shade, it did not provide any cover when it rained. That is when they needed to build the big building in the middle of the place to hold meetings. The same Spanish organization UCA Agua provided La Granadilla with funding. They received money from the organization, but it was the people in the community that did the labor. It was finally built in 2000 with the help of 25 members. Five members each day rotated to finish the construction of the building. By 2002 the building was finally set up for tourists. The first tourist group that came to La Granadilla was going to stay at another place, but there was room provided there for them. It was a group of 16 people, which was the first and largest group they have ever had.

La Granadilla is a small community center for tourists. It is located in Granadilla, Nicaragua. It started in 1981 and has been growing ever since. It consists of 17 different families in the surrounding area. Out of the original 12 members that founded La Grandilla, only one is alive today. The 12 original members had to work together in order to gain land in the first place. The land would have not been given to them if they were not working together. The government distributed land to them to get the project started. The main objective in the beginning of the community center was to use the land that was provided to them by the government. They used it for beans, rice, corn, and cattle ranching. With the amount of tourists coming in each year, La Granadilla has gained more money. With the money they have gained, they have been able to afford new things and expand their community center. The social aspect of this community center is very important. Without the help of the other people running this, the land may have never been given to them in the first place.  Them working together is key to their success in this business.

In the years of 1988-89 La Granadilla received no funding for micro financing. When the funds stopped from the local government, the only funding that remained for them was from Spain. Before the funding started, a single Non Government Organization foreigner came from Spain to visit the community center. He liked what he saw and made sure the NGO would finance and support them. By the end of 1994, the Spanish NGO got less motivated in supporting La Granadilla. The NGO was not supplying as much funding as it started. In 1994-97 only 7 people out of the 17 had support from the NGO. While this was all happening with the Spanish NGO, between the years of 1990-94 each family was given a cow and farming machinery. This helped the families a lot because it provided them with a source of food and milk. Making sure to work together was very important for the groups of people. This is how they were able to find another NGO that helped finance them. The name of the NGO was UCA Agua. With the help of this other organization, La Granadilla was able to benefit from it. It helped finance them for several years.

                                                                                                               Author: Jordan Kalebaugh

Alberto Brenes: A Hidden Gem of Research and Discovery

During our condensed semester in Costa Rica, my peers and I had the pleasure of visiting Alberto Brenes Biological Reserve (RBAMB). The reserve is part of the Central Volcanic Mountain Range Conservation Area and is nestled deep within the highlands surrounding San Ramon. Alberto Brenes was first established in 1975 as a forest reserve. In the 1980’s, it was lowered to a protected zone, making it vulnerable to the extraction of resources, primarily mining and logging. Recognizing the irreplaceable worth of the area, the University of Costa Rica lobbied to raise the status of the area to a biological reserve, the highest status of protection possible. Two years later, in 1993, Alberto Brenes was established as a biological reserve by executive order in order to protect and conserve biodiversity around the canton of San Ramon in Alajuela. This limits the region to research, conservation and education, excluding tourism and its potentially adverse effects. It is primarily managed and funded by the University of Costa Rica and the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), with the additional support of SINAC.

The continued success of Alberto Brenes as a biological reserve cannot be trivialized. Though the establishment of a site as a biological reserve is a great feat in and of itself, it does not ultimately envisage future success; the success or failure of a protected area ultimately depends on the extent to which ecological processes that support biodiversity can be sustained. This requires careful design and adequate implementation. As my peers and I witnessed, Alberto Brenes utilizes wise use of natural and human resources, both by capitalizing on the resources contained within its boundaries and by serving as a learning site for students to explore and demonstrating approaches to conservation and sustainable development to students. One example within the reserve is deploying the abundant rivers within RBAMB to generate hydroelectric power. 47%, (7600 Ha) of the upper basin of the San Lorenzo River is located inside RBAMB. A turbine in the nearby San Lorencito River is used to generate hydroelectricity to power the reserve station. In addition, continued success of a reserve is also aided by long-term commitment from international and national research institutions with conservation priorities that parallel that of the reserve. I was told that at the moment, funding for the reserve is challenging, as it requires visiting and requesting aid from different departments within the University of Costa Rica. The reserve is currently working on establishing an official budget that will stand for each year.

 

While only 7800 hectares, Alberto Brenes is highly representative of the rich diversity of Costa Rica.  Alberto Brenes is characterized by a rugged mountain system; altitudes ranging from 600m to 1700m enable a wide diversity of organisms suited to different climates to reside within the reserve. Temperatures are moderate, staying around 21 degrees Celsius, and an average rainfall of 138 inches. This warrants 80% of the park as premontane, 10% as low montane and another small fraction as very humid montane. As a natural laboratory, dozens of flora and fauna have been discovered within the reserve, as well as a new family and several novel genera of plants. While at the reserve, we learned some of the plant taxonomy of flowering plants and we were exposed to a wide variety of reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods. Insects and arachnids were our omnipresent guests, both outside as well as inside the station! We learned that in order to promote genetic diversity and species richness, it is important that a reserve does not stand in isolation, but has a buffer zone of protected area around it. Currently the persistence of migratory species relies on them surviving a portion of their migratory cycle in forest fragments outside of the protected zones. The University is working on trying to establish surrounding areas as protected zones in order to sustain migration and limit populations from being stranded in isolates where they would encounter the adverse synergisms of habitat degradation, poaching and resource exploitation. Despite the benefits of reserve expansion, overcoming the sociopolitical, financial, and institutional constraints necessary to establishing buffer zones is a challenge in itself.

The successful implementation and continued success of Alberto Brenes must be ascribed to the persistent dedication of a small group of passionate individuals who, despite insurmountable odds, work tirelessly on behalf of the reserve, raising funds, negotiating legal work, establishing a physical presence within the park and garnering local and national support. During the evening, we were given a presentation on the reserve and shown photos of previous student groups from decades past. While looking at a vintage photo of the first group of students that ever visited the park in 1979, it suddenly became apparent at just how quickly technology and the world around us is changing. As somebody that appreciates nature, it makes me anxious to think that our environment is changing just as quickly and we are restricted in our ability to halt the degredation. However, before our departure from the reserve, we also posed for a group photo. It was at that moment that I became hopeful. Because even though we were smiling into a DSLR lens camera that would fully capture our unkempt states with full precision, I realized that just like the first group of students in 1979, we are students with similar interests leaving with incredible memories, insight and inspiration. Hopefully decades from now, future students will garner these same feelings when looking at our photo.

AUTHOR: Heather Haj

Organic Bird Friendly Coffee Farm

ORGANIC CERTIFICATION: This week I visited an organic coffee farm on the outskirt of San Ramon. The farm is owned by Patricia, someone who cares about nothing more than growing quality café. Her three acre plot of land has had to jump through a few hoops before receiving the organic status, more hoops than one might think. To get organic accreditation, an agency must visit the farm and make sure everything is up to par, in Patricia's case, the agency was Ecologica. They make sure that there are absolutely no chemical inputs going into the production of this coffee, from the pesticides to the fertilizer. Patricia explained that this can be challenging because it intensifies manual labor by a shocking amount. One small example she gave me was in regard to the weeds that grow on the property. While most conventional farms would use herbicides, she uses a weed eater. There are many little differences such as this one that increase the workload. As if this added labor isn’t enough there is another large aspect maintaining organic certification. Patricia has to keep books of absolutely every single thing she does on a day to day basis for Ecologica to be able to see. These books include keeping all the receipts of the products she uses on the farm so she has a verifiable audit trail. This ensures that everything she uses n the farm is 100% organic. The cherry on top of this organic certification is that it cost around $1,200 every year for Ecologica to visit the property and see that all is natural. It makes you wonder why anyone would go through all the trouble of being organic when there are so many obstacles and check points.

ORGANIC FERTILIZER: Located on the western edge of the farm is a chicken coop. This is where the 100% organic fertilizer is made. The three different types of animals responsible for its production are chickens, cows, and one horse. Patricia told me that when using organic fertilizer it is necessary to constantly check the temperature. If the pile is too dry she just adds water. When the pile is too wet she adds more dry materials. Ingredients of the fertilizer include vegetable matter, trimmed branches and other cuttings, rice hulls, shredded sugar cane, and all left over food peelings. Those ingredients mixed with the animal waste make for a healthy fertilizer that Patricia's coffee plants just can’t get enough of. Fertilizer is a mixture of carbon, nitrogen and green materials. Getting the right combination of all three is similar to getting a cooking recipe right. When all come together correctly heat is released and organic material begins to get broken down. Throughout the process of fertilizer being made there are different stages that include different organisms, these organisms are responsible for breaking down the organic material. Another large aspect in the creation of the fertilizer is oxygen. Too much moister is bad so the fertilizer needs to be aired out from time to time. Understanding how the fertilizer is made truly puts the effort organic farmers exemplify into perspective. 

             

BIRD FRIENDLY: This is the very first bird friendly coffee farm in Costa Rica located on the outskirts of San Ramon. The Smithsonian approved agency that gave the farm its bird friendly title is Ecologica, the same agency that gave them their organic coffee farm certification. Coffee grown in shade of tree canopies, rather than on land cleared of vegetation, allows a number of species of birds to thrive in the area. Baltimore Orioles are among the migratory birds in the area.  The shade in the farm offers food and shelter for the different species of birds. With the amount of birds living in the area, it provides a great breeding spot as well. The farm meets the basic requirements for successful breeding: plenty of places to build nests, nests that are safe from predators, and plenty of foraging areas. The field maintenance is very important to the success or failure for nesting birds. The birds are often seen foraging on the grass and trees in the shaded canopies around the farm. This farm does not use any pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and herbicides, which is great for the birds because it does not harm them in anyway. In addition to birds, shaded coffee plantations offer habitat for orchids, insects, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.  

 BIRD FRIENDLY TREES: Trees are the main component of a farm being bird friendly certified. There are two different types of shade that make up the cool conditions birds and coffee plants thrive in. The first is rustic shade, which is shade that consists of natural forest species. Patricia explained to me that she had to plant a variety of native trees in her farm to gain bird friendly status. This is a traditional polyculture in that there are many different species of trees with different ages and heights growing amongst each other. Planted shade is the other type; it usually consists of a backbone of shade produced by a certain species of tree. In Patricia's case this is the poro tree, which provides year round shade and is a nitrogen-fixing legume. Another requirement of bird friendly farms regarding trees is a strict policy on the number of species in a certain area. First there has to be trees that meet a certain height requirement and secondly there needs to be at least 10 different species of trees planted within 50 meters of those that meet the height requirement. Patricia's bird friendly certification is another example of her going out of her way and creating more work for herself in order to better the environment. 

                                           

   ORGANIC BUSINESS:  It is difficult for a small organic coffee farm to compete in the farming industry to make money. By being a small organic coffee farm it does not bring much money in for the farmer and there is little help from the Costa Rican government. With more sunlight larger farms are able to grow more plants. The coffee in the larger sunlit farms grows in mass quantities but the quality of it is not as good as small organic shade-grown coffee. Larger conventional farms use lots of fertilizers to produce more crops. The chemical fertilizer damages the soil, and the only way to continue growing coffee is to buy and use more fertilizer. When big conventional farms continue to use fertilizer, the companies that sell fertilizer get more business. The reason why conventional farms use chemical herbicide is because it is faster for their crops. In this small organic coffee farm, Patricia has to hire workers in order to harvest and care for the coffee. This takes away money that she receives from selling it. Patricia is the type of owner who doesn’t care too much about the money, but cares about helping out others and with her love for nature. She has not been able to make a profit from her farm because it is hard to compete, so she continues to grow her coffee because she loves what she does.          

LAND WORTH: Patricia’s neighbor had recently sold their land. They found out it was the most economically sound idea to sell the farm. They were not making a profit from the product they were selling. Patricia is having thoughts about doing the same thing with her farm. She has some mixed feelings about it and doesn’t really know what to do right now.  She wants to keep the farm organic, but thinks that a developer will just buy it and not keep it organic. Patricia thinks this might be the best idea because she is struggling with keeping the farm running. It is very difficult for her and she wants to keep the farm more than anything. Her plan is to sell it as soon as she can so she doesn’t have to worry about it anymore.  The biggest thing she wants is to keep it organic, but she really thinks that’s not possible at all. It will be sad for her to see it go because it has been in her family for many years, but she knows its for the best and will help her out in the long run. 

                                                                                     AUTHORS: Blake LeCroy & Jordan Kalebaugh