Monthly Archives: December 2010

Oh Shit! The Story of Japanese Bokashi

28 Tuesday Dec 2010

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Bokashi Factory

The tradition of Bokashi fertilizer dates back to early Japanese civilization when chemical fertilizers were yet to be invented, farmers used them to enhance rice and vegetable crops. The word “Bokashi” is loosely translated in English as “mixed organic materials”, just a simple method of mixing biodegradable waste matter, inoculants and microbes into compost material, returning to nature what was originally from it.  In the centuries that followed, this method became part of agricultural tradition and was later to become a world known method in the practice of sustainable  farming.

Bokashi recipes are family kept secrets in Japan passed on through generations of agricultural farmers.  On certain years when the bokashi mix was considered a powerful concoction, these were given to family and friends as gifts. It was all made in their own particular way and using only biodegradable waste.  They would use the rice hull and rice straw from their fields, spent grain from milling the rice and other biodegradable waste around their farms. To this day, it is still being used and practiced with the same intention, to nourish the soil in a sustainable  manner with natural materials completing the organic life cycle as nature would do it.  Inevitably, any compost mixture would require a nitrogen source which is most vital to plant growth. And the best source of nitrogen was always, well, shit.

bokashi fertilizer

My earliest introduction to organic farming was, interestingly, full of shit. We had a lot of these, too much in fact. Our farm was then operating a poultry contract growing business as a separate division and we were growing a total of population of 120,000 chickens around 7 times each year. The poultries required rice hull for its bottom beds to catch manure, then there was the manure itself that the chickens produced. We were producing hundreds of tons of poultry waste each year. We had a solid waste management nightmare. The waste rice hull was being dumped in heaps around the farm, the chicken manure had a small storage facility where we also processed our compost. We would have mountains of chicken dung surrounding this structure and the farm, naturally, smelled like shit. This was to be my first task working in the farm, to handle the waste material and turn it into usable compost. A tall order even for someone who had just spent the last three years in Boracay managing a solid waste management project. Bokashi seemed to be the solution to our problem. It needed work but it was not impossible. It was, at the very least, worth my best shot.

windrow turner

I researched. I observed. I experimented. I tested. I learned the story and the logic of Bokashi. I proposed and constructed a compost factory structure. We mechanized some of our operations. I watched how this was made day in and day out. I had totally immersed myself into this project. I streamlined our operations, built a team, branded our product, tested for efficacy, had it certified organic,  and registered it with the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority for commercial sale. Our own bokashi blend fertilizer, now branded as OM PLUS – taken from Organic Matter Plus. It is essentially what we sell, high organic matter content plus inoculants and other microoganisms in compost form. It has also produced excellent results, all our produce is reserved for use by a small and select group of clients.

Today our farm produces over 1200 tons of Bokashi blend organic fertilizer a year, with over 7o percent of its raw material coming from our very own farm waste. A solid waste nightmare turned around 360 degrees, now  a major revenue stream for the farm. A triumph for waste management processing.  All borrowed from the early Japanese. All part of recycling nature. All in the interest of the preserving the planet and reducing global warming. All geared at promoting the organic farming revolution and a healthier environment around us. And all profit too – about turning shit into profit. Oh Shit!

Pamalican: Lessons in Island Farming

27 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in Organic Farming

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Pamalican Island , photo credits to Amanpulo

Pamalican is a private island, set among the North Cuyo Islands, 360km south-west of Manila. Lying along the trading routes from Southern China to Borneo, the Sulu archipelago and the Spice Islands, the Cuyo Islands have been known to sailors and traders since pre-Spanish days.  Literally in the middle of nowhere, the people of these 40 islands live mostly by fishing and seaweed cultivation. The jewel of these islands is Pamalican Island. An island of of just over 60 hectares, it is surrounded by pristine white beaches and coral reefs.  Beyond are sandbanks and a channel where whales, dolphins  and sea cows have been glimpsed. On one end of the island, baby sharks would swim in knee deep water at sunset.  Here, on this little island paradise, is  a  resort quite famous around the world and simply as known as, Amanpulo.

windsurf hut

On this sunny day in July 2008, I was on a 19 seat Dornier 288 with s few tourists, loads of cargo and a few employees coming back from holiday. We were headed for Amanpulo and  I was coming on the personal invite of the General Manager who was looking for an organic farmer and had surprisingly found me through a friend who worked there. This was the trip of a lifetime. Amanpulo was arguably the most expensive island resort in the Philippines and was known to attract Hollywood celebrities and even royalty. And here I was, headed for this island as a guest. I felt like  I had won the lotto that day.

beach club

By then, I was already living in the farm and had a fair knowledge of the basics of organic farming.  Everything I knew was learned from first-hand experience in the farm. I knew nothing about farming in coastal areas, much more in a tropical island. It really did not matter now, I was on my way to Amanpulo and the mission was to explore the possibility of starting an organic farm. In a tropical island, in the middle of nowhere, in Palawan. I was both excited and nervous.

Amanpulo is, simply put, pure class. You take a private plane and land in the island’s private airport. Upon arrival, you are assigned your own golf cart for use during your stay. Guests are billeted in 40 private casitas scattered around the island, some of them with their own beach front area. There are 7 other private villas with its own pool and a beach front area. They have 4 restaurants, a gym, a spa, tennis courts, a library and all the water sports equipment you could want. Even a floating bar. At sunset, guests would rent the pontoon boat that was designed to accomodate a small cocktail party. It is also a nature reserve, where you would randomly see monitor lizards crossing the road and yellow-breasted orioles outside your window. Guests could request for private barbecue dinners on the beach front with their own private cook and waiter looking after their every need. The staff were all waving at you as you passed them and greeting you at every place you went. They were also required to know each of the guest’s names. It truly felt like the friendliest place on earth. This, I was later told, was the Aman experience.

amanpulo sunset

To my surprise, they had a little farm in the island. They grew a few vegetables, some herbs and ornamental plants. I was even more amazed to discover the island did not have any top soil. It was

amanpulo main beach

largely a huge sand bank and had only some wild growing plants around the island. They had started the garden from some clay soil that had been left from the construction of the resort many years ago. It was functional, but far from the guest attraction they wanted to create. We brought African Nightcrawler Worms to the island and started a vermicomposting facililty. We  shredded kitchen and garden waste to feed the worms. We gathered the waste sea weeds from the beach and used it as composting material. We rehabilitated the farm and created our own soil from compost, vermicompost and clay. A year later, we built greenhouses and started to grow salad greens.  We also started making our own liquid fertilizers from kitchen waste. I wasn’t long before we started to see surprising results. In a farm without top soil not even 100 meters from the beach, we were now growing lettuce and arugula. And we were doing it by recycling kitchen and garden waste through composting and fermentation. We now had a productive organic island farm.

amanpulo greenhouses

I’ve been consulting for Amanpulo  for almost three years now.  Today, our organic garden  produces vegetables and herbs for its various outlets. It has now become a guest attraction  as well, often featured by journalists writing about the island. The resort now offers a tour of  the organic farm as an option for children’s activities.  Guests are served freshly harvested salads from the garden at most of its outlets.

garden-to-plate salad

Manamoc High School students

The farm produces almost a ton of compost from its facilities each month and has become a self sustainable operation that supplies the main kitchen and its outlets with high-value vegetables,  as well as the employee dining facilities.  We have since expanded and still learning the intricacies of island farming as we move on. We now catch rain water and use it too maintain the garden.  In 2009, we started sharing this technology to high school students in the neighboring island of Manamoc. We brought a select group to Amanpulo for a day tour which included lectures, hands-on learning experiences and a some recreation time at the employee beach. They have since started their vermicomposting area and a small organic garden in their school premises.

organic arugula

In small and big ways, we strive to continue reducing the worldwide carbon footprint with each step we take.  We are also producing healthy food products for guests and even employees.  Amanpulo became the start of a new phase of my organic farming career. I have since built other farms in other places, still using the same things we did in Pamalican many years ago. I still visit Amanpulo,  it it is still a joy to come back to this first farm I had built. To see what has become of my earliest work. My earliest lessons, in the art and the science of island farming.

kitchen staff harvesting produce

Coming Home To Farmville

20 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in natural farming methods

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Buro Buro Springs Vermi Farm

Way before I had heard of Facebook’s Farmville, I was already living in it. I was quite amused at this virtual internet application of what was, to me, daily hacienda life in your computer at home. Where I come from, haciendas are aplenty and agriculture was, and still is, the lifeblood of our provincial economy.  As it was, I had figured by then it was my destiny to someday be living off the land, and here I was learning this thing called  organic farming.

In comparison to others, this hacienda I lived in was but a tiny speck in a sea of vast sugar plantations that one can see in the province of Negros Occidental. It simply was a different farm with different things in it. We did not have one single sugarcane plant, for starters. A rarity in this land they had often referrred to as Sugarlandia. This fertile province had been producing most of the country’s sugar since way before I was born, and this place was full of interesting stories about the wealth that this industry had generated and the characters it had spawned. We were the odd one. We grew vegetables anf fruits, raised chickens, bred composting worms and only used what came from nature. Organic farming it was called, and our farm was quite known for being one of the first ones. People started businesses from what they learned here. It was a showcase for integrated organic farming, using very little land to its full potential.

Hacienda Buro Buro

Hacienda Buro Buro is our family farm. As kids, me and my brothers had spent countless summers swimming in the mineral water pool, camping in the orchards and climbing the many fruit-bearing trees that filled it. It always had a special appeal to me, and I remember telling a friend many years ago that I would live here someday. In the years that I had been away, my folks built a  house in the farm where we traditionally had family celebrations. Nobody really lived there and I had decided this was going to be my home now, it was the start of 2008.  So here I found myself , fulfilling a self-made prophecy and moving home to Farmville. I have not looked back and will be living there for a long time. After a long journey, I was finally home.

vegetable green houses

The African Nightcrawler Worms, which were being bred in the farm were a source of much interest to people. People came from all over the country to see them and my parents went all over the country teaching about them. They were considered the pioneers of Vermiculture in the country and had helped start this organic revolution we see happening now. And it was still about the worms, these little nightcrawlers. My mom called them by a pet name, “Eugene” , taken from their scientific name. They first appeared in Africa but have since been used in tropical countries like Cuba. There are over 200o different species of these worms worldwide and composting is their purpose for existing. Like some cartoon characters, they were known as wonder creatures. They made fertilizer from all sorts of things, they renewed the soil and most of all, they generated a steady income stream. We were supplying most of the worms being used around the Philippines as the first commercial breeding farm of these tiny creatures. This became my first lesson in Farmville, observing these nightcrawlers and what they did. I continued to learn more about them as life moved slowly. We have actually sold over 6000 kilos of these over the last 12 years. I was amazed.

organic lettuce

african nightcrawler

Scientifically known as Eudrilus Euginae, they were interesting subjects of study for most people. They were true hermaphrodites, which meant they were both male and female.  Everyone bred with everybody else around and they multiplied so fast, you could hardly keep track of them. But I envied these little things. They, not me, lived the life as we would call it. They had free housing, free food, all the sex they wanted every single day. They ate so much I would never be able to match them, foraging on shredded farm waste and consuming as much as their own weight each day. They were also expensive little things, costing more than premium beef per kilo and demand was constantly increasing by the year. We became very good friends, naturally. I had to learn about them and the best way to learn was to make friends with them. They still amaze me to this day, and I’ve carried them with me wherever I’ve gone to build organic farms.

We have since become partners. They became an integral part of my work and started a career for me introducing them to other people. We’ve built farms in remote places, helped natural farmers and have travelled to beautiful islands as well. We’ve truly had one hell of a great ride together.  Welcome to Farmville. Live.

The Organic Coach

18 Saturday Dec 2010

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I never understood the whole idea of blogging till 2009, and always wondered why people would go into so much trouble to write about anything that came to their mind. I started reading my friend’s blogs and found them interesting, fun and informative. It seemed like so much work and  I really had no idea how these things were done. Yet, for many years, people always told me I should write about my colorful life experiences. Just today, I somehow got into this thing called WordPress while tinkering with our farm website and had a flash of inspiration. It seemed so simple and easy…..it was certainly worth a try!

The Organic Coach is probably the best description of the work I do, travelling to remote places and tropical islands, building farms from scratch, sharing technology while having one hell of a great time. This blog is about the work and play of an organic coach, places I visit, people I meet, farms I’ve helped make. It is also meant to share the basics of organic farming and encouraging people to take a closer look at the advantages of cleaner, healthier food. It is also meant to share about little things we can do reduce the carbon footprint – one person at a time. It will also be a fun blog, because I’ve always believed if something ain’t fun, it ain’t worth doing at all.

Here goes the first step, the thousand miles come next…..