Tag Archives: natural farming methods

Getting Trashed : Farming from Farming Waste

12 Saturday Feb 2011

Posted by in natural farming methods

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

amanpulo

Most of the attention is often focused on the big name projects I’ve been doing as a farming consultant, all for good reason. Beautiful islands with pristine white beaches are always easier to notice, they also seem to be the most challenging work I get to do. Tropical islands, by nature, are not ideal places for farming. In these places, people are more inclined to live like their ancestors have for years, off the bounty of the sea. Naturally, agriculture is a foreign language to them and usually arouses much curiousity.

Organic farming, more often than not, is even more amazing for them. To grow crops using nothing much but kitchen and garden waste is quite extraordinary, more so in islands in the middle of nowhere where there are no crops to begin with. Still, it uses the same principles, to bring back to nature what came from it in the first place. And using it in a way where high science meets low technology is the essence of organic farming.

 

San Miguel, Iloilo farm site

vermicomposting beds

Organic farming runs in my blood. My parents, both retired corporate executives, had started one of the first organic farms in the Philippines in the 90’s. They also started the first breeding farm for African Nightcrawler Worms in the country and our farm, was and still is the leading training center for this technology today. I also happen to live in this farm, having made it my home since 2008. All I know about farming I learned living here, pure interactive hands-on training. As a trainer, it was only natural for me to eventually evolve into an organic coach. While the high profile resorts get the most attention, I have made other farms in more obsucure areas out of the public limelight. With different conditions and different methods to adopt, they are little success stories that continue to educate me in the possibilities of using varied farming techniques. They are all part of the farming adventure as well, this post is all about these small farms in Panay, an area of vast rice plantations where we recycle agricultural waste to grow vegetable crops.

constructing the nursery

In a little town called San Miguel in the  province of Iloilo, there’s a curious new project we started in October 2010. It’s called  Sunnyvale Eco Farm. Less than a hectare, it’s one of the few organic farms producing high-value salad greens in Iloilo. It is the object of much curiousity in this little town of vast rice plantations and abundant rainfall, mainly because we work only with waste products from these rice farms. We pay people to gather rice straw, something they would burn as standard practice. We also pay people to deliver waste rice hull from the milling process, again something that is given for free and often burned as well. And ironically, we pay people to bag and deliver carabao and cow manure to the farm, something they have never ever heard of. When we were starting to clear land and farmscape the area, people would pass by and ask what we were actually doing there.

four months after breaking ground

Today, Sunnyvale Eco Farm is a small scale organic vegetable farm with big scale possibilities. It supplies a number of restauratns and hotels in Iloilo City but most of its produce is sent to Boracay, ending up in high end hotels like the Shangri-la and Discovery Shores. It seemed not so long ago that we broke bare farm land to make the first plots in this property, it is a fully functioning and productive farm four months later. Just another farmscaping adventure . And lots of surprises. All in a farmer’s day at work.

organic salad greens

Nabaoy River, Malay, Aklan

Nabaoy riverside houses

In the mainland across Boracay is the little known barrio called Nabaoy. A forest reserve with a few rice farms scattered around the lowland areas, it is well known for the river that runs through it. It is the same river that supplies the water for the world-known island called Boracay. Years ago, when the island was enjoying its early growth years, a golf course was constructed in an attempt to bring it to international standards. Lacking a sustainable water source, Boracay could not environmentally sustain its rapid expansion then. It definitely could not sustain a golf course which needed daily watering to maintain it. In a gigantic effort to make the seemingly impossible a reality, an underwater pipeline was constructed to bring in water from the Nabaoy forest reserve to the Boracay. Today, it sustains an island with close to a million tourists coming each year and over 30,000 residents with fresh running water.

farm nursery

Soon after that, Nabaoy attracted island residents longing for more tranquil surroundings away from a booming tourist destination. In a small parcel of land next to the river delta, there is a small organic farm called, simply, Lazy Greens. Started by an entreprising restauranteur eager to produce his own vegetables. Again, it became an object of curiousity as we gathered the agricultural waste around the area for use in the farm. Rice hulls, a waste product of the milling process is charcoalized and used as a soil conditoner. Carabao manure, which was left to decompose everywhere, was collected to be fed to the African Nightcrawlers. And the rice straw that farmers would burn after crops was gathered as food substrate for vermicomposting.

Lazy Greens Farm

Today, Lazy Greens produces arugula, lettuce, parsley, coriander and papayas. All organic and mostly for use in Dos Mestizos (www.dosmestizos.com), the only Spanish restaurant in Boracay and a popular dining spot. It is also used and sold in its newly opened delicatessen, Gusto y Gustos. Whatever excess produce it has, it sells at the Saturday Community Market for local residents to enjoy. High science, low technology. Converting agricultural waste to fertilizer, planting crops fertilized by waste. Just as nature intended it, healthy crops from healthy soil. Small surprises. Big results. Don’t panic, we’re doing it organic.

Sangat Island : Jungle Farming in Coron

28 Friday Jan 2011

Posted by in natural farming methods

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

 

Coron Bay

Up in Northern Palawan is the Calamianes Group of Islands – 3 large islands with hundreds of mostly uninhabited outlying islands. Busuanga is the main island where the airport is located and where you find the rapidly growing town of Coron. There is also the island of Culion, which had traditionally been the trading center of the area in the early years. This is where the National Leprosarium Colony is located and they continue to have the best available medical facilties to this day. Then there is Coron Island, another large limestone island with inland lagoons, deserted beaches and beautiful dive spots.This is all part of the last frontier of Philippine tourism, Palawan.

Coron Pier

Coron brings about images of white sand beaches, world-class diving and awesome limestone cliffs. In fact, it is far from that, much in the same way as Caticlan is to Boracay. It was a small fishing town until the backpackers and divers discovered it in the 80’s. It is also surrounded by other large islands that make a little bay where ships would hide in bad weather. It also has a small port where passenger ships would pass on the way to Puerto Princesa, unload cargo and the few tourists that chose the rough way down to these islands. The attraction of Coron was, and still is, its world class diving sites. It is also one of the world’s ten top dive sites, largely due to the wrecks left in the aftermath of the Japanese retreat in World War II. People from around the world come to dive the waters around the Calamianes, swearing by its excellent wrecks and impeccable biodiversity. It is poised to become a major tourist destination of the Philippines and making a name for itself in the tourist world map.

My first visit to Coron was a trip to Sangat Island Dive Resort ( www.sangat.ph ), one of the more

Sangat Island Dive Resort

popular dive resorts in that area. Interestingly, like most Filipinos, I had never heard of this island resort before. It was first mentioned to me by a friend who happened to know the owner.  Having made a few farms already, I was fairly known around certain circles as the island farmer. Could I

Sangat Island

possibly make an organic farm in this island of 700 hectares, made up of mostly of limestone with a few hectares of jungle scattered around it? It meant carving a farm out of some forested areas surrounded by mangroves, to which the only access was through the sea. This was, quite literally, island farming. We found a reliable water source about 4 months later, in a cliff about 200 meters above the farm which was surrounded by limestone cliffs everywhere. We were also carving our farm out of this little jungle by clearing foliage, cutting branches and cleaning the area. From these clearings we made our vegetable plots, using the fertile clayish soil of the island. The Nightcrawlers came soon after that and we also started making our own liquid  fertilizers from kitchen waste. In an island of dive enthusiasts, I stuck out as an object of curiousity.  I was gathering sea weeds on the beach and moving them towards the farm. I was chopping fruit scraps, fish guts and seaweed for fermentation into natural fertilizers. While most of these were by now second nature to me, everyone in the island kept asking me about this “thing” I was doing. This thing called island farming.

Vegetable Plots from Cleared Forest Area

Sangat Island is an ecotourism destination. Started in the mid 80’s by a British treasure diver that had decided to marry a local lass, this resort was the closest to most of the wrecks in Coron Bay. It was, surprisingly, quite popular with foreign divers. People from all over the world practically came to the Philippines to go to this island and dive the wrecks around it. It is very native setting one sees in Sangat, houses are made of bamboo and topped with nipa roofing. In the evening, the staff would put mosquito nets on the beds to protect their guests. Electric power was only available from six in the evening till seven in the morning. There were clean bathrooms, a huge ceiling fan over the beds and not much else. No music system, no television and no power in daytime. The resort did have an internet point, the clubhouse where people would converge to avail of the solar powered batteries that charged phones, laptops and cameras while the generator kept silent. The feel of Sangat Island is very family-oriented. Everyone ate at set times of the day, sharing a common family style buffet setting at every meal. The employees were very friendly and casual, it would make anybody feel at home.

composting with nightcrawler worms

Just half a year of work in the jungle, we’ve carved out a little farm for the resort, producing a good percentage of vegetables it consumes. We’re slowly moving towards lettuce and high-value crops. We’re also looking at catching rain water to sustain the farm. Our little worms are doing wonders, producing fertilizer for us. The kitchen waste is also fermented to liquid stuff we feed our plants. Slowly but surely, working for a sustainable environment in the island.

In mid-December 2010, I was on my way to Coron from Sangat Island on the early morning boat that

vegetable plots

would bring tourists to town, to be picked up by a van that would bring us to Busuanga airport and back to civilization. While clicking on my camera during the trip, I noticed a big box of vegetables riding with us and got a big surprise. In it were cucumbers and lots of okra. “Why are we bringing vegetables to town?”, I asked the boatmen. “We need to sell them sir, we have too much of these we can’t consume all of it anymore!” was the reply. I gave them a big smile while I wanted to give my back a little pat for a job well done. Jungle farming in an island has its own simple rewards.

Pamalican: Lessons in Island Farming

27 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in Organic Farming

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

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.