My theme throughout the semester was how to improve the American food system. One of the points that I touched upon regarding this theme was the sustainable food system successfully providing healthy food to the people, while simultaneously enhancing a community’s environmental, economic, and social well-being. Alongside, I will talk about the similarities and differences between Texas and Costa Rica, and connect my new experiences to research my conduct on this theme.
Since my research focuses mainly on the agriculture and food side of sustainability, I want to start off by talking about a place that we visited in Guacimo; Earth University. Their undergraduate program consists of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources Management majors that strive to make an environmental and social commitment, emphasizing values and ethical entrepreneurship. They have all kind of resources, ranging from classrooms to laboratories, academic farms, commercial banana plantation, to a forest reserve. These students have to go through an interview process that serves to select the most qualified and spirited group of people to make a difference. Since they all have to demonstrate a project throughout their career, they are actually making a difference with just their project alone.
In my last blogs, I took Whole Foods Market as a great example of sustainable foods, which so happens to purchase products made by Earth University; this includes sustainably-grown bananas, pineapple, tropical flowers, and coffee. We were able to see a project made by 2 of the students there; they taught us how to make our very own “earth boxes”. We combined mulch and other things to make personal mini gardens to have and grow crops. They put aluminum cans at the bottom of a sideways milk jug, the top is cut off and poked with holes, then we put a PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) pipe to the bottom so the roots receive water and nutrients, and then covered it with plastic to keep the pests out. They also had dryer lint woven into sheets to help spread out the water. This is a great way to grow your own crops if you may not have the land to do so, which is another point I covered in my past blogs. They did a similar thing when we went to build a greenhouse in the Chiquita farm; they used coconut fiber, rice shells, charcoal, and manure to put underneath the plants they grew inside the greenhouse. Most of the vegetables, tubers, meats and dairy products served by the University’s cafeteria are grown organically and sustainably on EARTH’s academic farms. The showers were also supposed to be 5-minute long to conserve water and heat, along with just being overall cautious about how many resources we really need to use.
A strong piece of this program that stuck out to me the most is the fact that they have students from over 40 countries! This brings awareness to all the places that these kids are from and more, not to mention the amount of tourists that come and take part of their educational tourism programs, conferences, and seminars. Being world-wide about the subject on sustainability is an important part, because it doesn’t matter how “green” one place can be, it doesn’t work if it fails to spread around the knowledge necessary to protect the rest of the world.
It was really nice to see a place like La Tirimbina care so much about their environment and the policies they have to conserve it the way it is. Right before we checked in our rooms, they had a long talk with us about some of this and a little bit of history about the place. The policies that they had include the prohibition to physically take any flora or fauna no matter where or what state they are in, “any paper that is purchased should have the FSC label (Forest Stewardship Council) which guarantees that the paper was made from eucalyptus pulp derived from renewable forests, TRC personnel are informed about all the programs carried out at the organization that are meant to save water and energy and about the sustainable use of resources, which they can also implement at their homes.”
In the chocolate “factory”, the resources that they use are 100% from the forest and they don’t include anything like chemicals, herbicides, etc. Instead, they use compost to develop a natural fertilizer for the chocolate. “By showing this processing of cacao to chocolate, the tour aids in the conservation of one of our native plants, the cultivation of which is one of the friendliest to the environment.” Seeing the chocolate being made from scratch like that using nothing but natural resources was really mesmerizing. I’m not saying that everyone will go out and make chocolate from scratch, but if they see that it is still done to this day, maybe that would give them encouragement to go ahead and do something in a smaller scale so they can produce their own crops at home.
Moving on to La Fortuna, we were introduced to a wide section of animals and a beautiful rain forest hike with endless vegetation and plant species. While on our tour, we passed by a big, beautiful waterfall that made me have a flashback to when I saw an artificial waterfall in Six Flags. I can’t help but think that people see an artificial waterfall and believe that nothing could possibly be wrong with the environment, because there is a waterfall right in front of them! Ignorance is a sad, but true fact of the people around us, but they don’t know that there is so much wrong that is just right behind their nose. Exposure to the real thing will never cease to amaze me in a way that it should amaze every single individual living in this earth. While zip lining, I was able to see the incredible view of the tropical rainforest, and while on that ride I had an urge to take action in order to conserve that breathtaking piece of the earth, and every other place in the world.
Rancho Margot is one of the main places that blew my mind. Every single employee is really dedicated and into their job, and they leave a good impression while on the stay there and afterwards as well. Since my theme includes sustainable foods, they are the perfect example to showcase; they “harvest fresh vegetables and fruits by hand, make all dairy products and butcher our meats, all within walking distance of our kitchen. The processing that occurs between our farm and kitchen is minimal, but the attention to detail is extensive and ensures freshness and quality. Needless to say, it also greatly reduces waste.” The openness and welcoming environment is really important to make the tourist leave with a positive attitude of sustainable foods and the importance of the environment as well – “Beyond offering visitors and residents a peaceful setting within which they can commune with nature, Rancho Margot, with its focus on experiential education, is a seedbed of innovation and a model of sustainable business operation and living.”
They have chemical-free agriculture, and agroforestry. This is the very same place that started by little kids planting some trees, and now it’s one of the must-sees when visiting Costa Rica. This is an inspiration that no matter how small we may think a change could possibly have, it will still make a difference to the people and the environment around us. If a couple kids could start something like this, it should give people hope to take action and make it to themselves to live better. (a land use management system in which trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland. It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land-use systems.)
We passed through some pigs that at that time were getting fed. Little do people know what goes on behind the scenes in order to get those fancy food plates on their table. As soon as we walked inside the cages, I stood there in terror for a few seconds just watching everything, and I couldn’t do it – I had to get out. It was so terrifying to me, and even one of my friends that saw it too got a little teary-eyed. The pigs were going wild, and they had so little room to move around. They said that this is the best position that we’ll ever see compared to anywhere else. At least these pigs are put back in the field, but some, if not most, stay in those cages their whole lives to be used for nothing else but butchered and served on a platter. I am not vegetarian, but I now know that I will not look at bacon the same way. One of the vegetarian students that I talked to said that they have a “if I can’t watch it happen, I can’t eat it” attitude.
Just driving around the country opened up my eyes about just how different the style of living is as opposed to the United States. Everyone lives simply. That’s the key; we went without our phones for a whole day and could only look at them briefly when we’d get back to our hotels at night, which made us bond and talk to each other. Seeing kids being taught to separate everything they use into recycling bins, compostable bins, paper-only bins instead of simply throwing it all in one big trashcan really speaks volumes about what we, as a country, could improve on from the roots. We were introduced to a first-world country that, even though has its luxuries, is not very eco-friendly when you compare it to a country like Costa Rica. This is why it is important to keep making eco-tourism a big and important part of Costa Rica. Some of my peers argued that tourists are not sustainable, and in the more touring sites the place would clearly look less taken care of. However, the people that come and travel from other places realize that they could be doing something different from their way of living; they could read hundreds of articles about sustainable living, yet the impact that one gets from seeing it in person could never be replaced by anything you read in an article.
There are already companies out there that offer programs for residents to learn about how they can grow their own food at an affordable price to keep the hunger away, and making it a healthy, sustainable gardening environment. There’s a sustainable food center that has gardening classes, community and school garden support and training, amongst others. They are also similar to a couple of the places we visited in such that they farm what they eat, straight to the cafeteria that’s open to the community, and even have cooking classes so that the adults know how to make food for themselves and their families. The only thing that would be different is that even when the U.S. has these programs, it’s a way of life for Costa Ricans. We are slowly getting the hang of healthy food style living, but we should always strive to make it bigger and better than the way it is now.
Something else that could be done to improve how food supply chains function, according to Food + City would be to: “lessen food waste, increase the supply of affordable and nutritious food, provide food that meets personalized health needs, improve transport and distribution of food into and through urban populations globally, and utilize new storage materials and processes that minimize waste.” In a couple places we visited, we saw that they converted livestock (mainly pigs) manure as a fertilizer instead of using chemical fertilizers, and according to Sustainable America, “U.S. farms generate more than one billion tons of manure annually.”
I do think that Costa Rica does a fine job when it comes to balancing their tourism, they won’t let their impact mess with their system or the environment. While Costa Rica is considered a green country, it should still strive for even more ways to improve so that it never settles and keeps inspiring other places and people to do the same things they do. They just need to be exposed to it, just like we were exposed to it and left a huge impact in each of us, everyone should get a chance to experience something like this so the world can slowly (but surely) start to become a green world, instead of just having a couple “green” places.
Works Cited
“Farm to Plate.” Sustainable Food Center. Sustainable Food Center, 2016. Web. 2016. http://sustainablefoodcenter.org/
“Food + City Challenge Awards Food Innovation.” Texas A&M Today. Texas A&M University, 2015. Web. 2016. http://today.tamu.edu/2015/10/02/foodcity-challenge-awards-food- innovation/
“La Fortuna Costa Rica.” Arenalnet. Arenalnet, 2015. Web. 2016. http://www.arenal.net/la-fortuna-costa-rica.htm
“La Selva Biological Station.” Three Paths to reach nature. Organization for Tropical Studies, 2012. Web. 2016. http://www.threepaths.co.cr/laselva_facilities.shtml
“Produced by Us.” EARTH University. Tierra Tropical Journal, 2016. Web. 2016. https://www.earth.ac.cr/en/about-earth/earth-facts/
“Production.” Rancho Margot. Rancho Margot (rhg), 2016. Web. 2016. http://ranchomargot.com/education/sustainable-living-immersion/
Rogers, Nicole. “How To Make the Food System More Energy Sufficient.” Sustainable America. Sustainable America, 2015. Web. 2016. http://www.sustainableamerica.org/blog/how-to- make-the-food-system-more-energy-efficient/
“Sistema Nacional De Areas De Conservacion.” SINAC Costa Rica. SINAC, 2016. Web. 2016. http://www.sinac.go.cr/AC/ACOPAC/PNManuelAntonio/Paginas/default.aspx
“Sustainability.” Tirimbina. Tirimbina Biological Reserve, 2010. Web. 2016. http://www.tirimbina.org/sustainability.html
“Sustainability and Our Future.” Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Market IP. L.P., 2016. Web. 2016. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/core- values/sustainability-and-our-future