Carbon, Climate, and Livelihoods

Another important component of the course are the actual lectures by our very capable and knowledgeable machete-wielding professor Dr. Skole!

What especially interested me was how conservation of natural resources (especially forests) can help alleviate poverty. More than 1 billion individuals live on less than $1 a day (which is considered extreme poverty). 

In addition, 2/3rds of the rural poor live in ecologically vulnerable areas and marginally productive landscapes. Many of the world's poorest populations are also small-hold farmers.

Dr. Skole explained that by encouraging more sustainable agriculture and forestry via carbon stocks and carbon sequestration livelihoods can be improved through the creation of more jobs and healthier environments. 

Some effective methods to address this issue is increasing the amount of carbon in soil and biomass for smallholder systems via  carbon sequestration in adoption of reforestation and sustainable land use, reforestation, and other co-benefits related to biodiversity conservation and other environmental concerns, livelihoods, and poverty reduction.

Other ways of reducing carbon in the atmosphere are emission reduction, energy substitutions, maintaining carbon stocks, and increasing sinks by sequestration.

In short, by making preparations for a rural low-carbon economy we can increase the value to agriculture by incorporating innovative and adaptive approaches such as those aforementioned.

I found this particular lecture to be of interest because it really helped tie together my goals as a student pursuing a dual degree in political science and natural resource conservation. The plight of humans and that of the environment are absolutely related and I think it’s very easy to focus on one or the other without considering their interdependency. How can the 2/3rds of the rural poor that live in environmentally degraded areas thrive in the future? Especially when their environment is either polluted to the point of risking the inhabitants health or so poorly managed that they can no longer support agriculture for their livelihoods or sustenance face any sort of forseeable or sustainable future . Scientists and policymakers alike need to realize that that economic growth and development are not only related but dependent on how we go about conserving our resources whether it be from a climate change, conservationist, or humanitarian perspective.

I hope during this program I am able to better understand and the state of these issues and share with whoever is out there reading but until then I’ll keep blogging about bananas, pineapples, and trees!

Here are some pictures just because

Corsicana: Pineapple Farm!

Day 5: Visited a pineapple farm with agriculture professor Freddy! The name of the farm is Corsicana which contains pineapple organic farm in the world (I think). It's technically owned by Dole but is sold under its own brand name. We toured the farms in muddy boots and saw endless rows of low-lying spiky plants surrounded by red clayey dirt. 

The pineapples are grown in a large nursery and then transplanted into raised rows covered in plastic to deter insects to absorb heat and help water retention.

The tour was overall delicious, muddy, and enlightening. Freddy talked a lot about the costs and challenges of starting an organic farm. Quality control and visits from government officials were many and he even mentioned that corrupted officials that could be bribed was a growing problem. 

rows on rows of pinaaa...

Freddy! Master of the machete (and pineapple dissection)

Yo con una pina

Pineapple processing

Quality control

Post-tour snacks and drinks

Ethnobotanical Gardens & Tropical Rainforest Excursion

Yesterday we had back to back ‘field trips’ and had to get up at 5am in order to make it to breakfast and get to our classes on time (it was a bit of a walk from our dorm). We separated in three groups: Ethnobotanical gardens, Periurban (urban gardening), and organic farming. Me, Kellee, Sean, and Shaun signed up for the ethnobotanical gardens today and will be attending a Periurban workday on Saturday. The ethnobotanical gardens consisted of primarily medicinal plants that can be used for a variety of ailments and treatments.

But first we had to check out our gear and tools which consisted of a giant machete in an intensely decorated and tassled sheath, a curved saw, large clippers, and small clippers. We took our materials to the garden which was a paradise in itself. We met the class we would be working with. I talked to a girl named Kaylee from the Bahamas who taught me how to prune various medicinal trees.

For example, we began our first task by examining a tree called the None (pronounced no-knee) which bore strange cactus-pinecone hybrid-looking fruit that turned white when ripe. The pulp and the seeds can be ingested to treat diabetes, arthritis, and is an anti-inflammatory. Then, intense, shoulder breaking, sweaty pruning and branch gathering/occurring took place for the next 3 hours. We took pineapple breaks where students and the garden keeper used machetes to cut rounds of pineapples for us. 

Afterwards we cleaned up the pruning-aftermath and checked out some jesus lizards and toured the rest of the ethnobotanical garden with the head gardener. We tried everything from fresh sugarcane, rosemary, oregano, basil, mint, to the miracle berry that makes everything you eat taste sweet after you consume it, cacti that give you energy, grasses that cure insanity, give you energy, leaves you press against your forehead for headaches, and pretty much any plant with leaves can be used for tea to cure any discomfort, cough, cramp, or sore when ingested. I can’t begin to name most of the plants we learned about unfortunately but they were all equally fascinating.

After a quick lunch and nap (we had been working from 6-11) we went straight to our next class where we learned about different forest ecosystems and biomes for ~30min before taking a bus to a forest reserve on campus, our first trek into the tropical rain forest. Luckily for us there are rain forest reserves on EARTH grounds so we took a short bus ride and before we knew it we were walking through the rain forest. Previous EARTH students had laid down cement puzzle-like blocks as a path through the reserve. Almost as soon as we entered the forest we saw a family of spider monkeys moving around the canopy and lots of rustling. Apparently they were welcoming our arrival by throwing vegetative debris in our general direction. Cool. 

We also saw a eyelash viper, blue jean frog, spiders, and a weird translucent slug that got squashed, and many 'social fly catchers' (a common bird here in CR). I also at one point took a short trip to use the forest facilities and ended up peeing on a large spider.

After we returned and had dinner, a few of us went to the pool and watched a large fruit bat fly in an '8' pattern very close to the water's edge to pick up insects for about 15 minutes. It was pretty cool. 

More to come about the largest organic pineapple farm in the world!

Diana.

Banana Farm (Bananero) Tour

The 2nd day of EARTH was mostly orientation-type stuff so I'm skipping to day 3 & 4. We woke up around 6am and took a bus to the EARTH banana farm (bananero o, finca de bananas) where we toured with Freddy Gamboa, the professor for the sustainable agriculture course who owns the farm and his right hand farm worker Tullio. He taught us about everything from the life cycles of banana plants to the diseases they face (especially fungus/mold that affects the banana leaves and turns them brown/black called sigatoca) and the challenges of transitioning to organic farming. Initially, EARTH began the farm in hopes of getting organic certified but one of the planes that dispersed pesticide accidentally sprayed over the bananero and since then it has been a non-organic farm. Tullio showed us the shallow root systems and how the nematodes had affected some of them. He also explained the importance of composting and fertilizing which they make their own on campus; the fertilizer often generates so much eat that it kills  pests. We found an empty bird nest, worms, millipedes, and other 'amigos del bosque'..

It was also really cool to see the transportation system that carried the bananas from the plantations to the processing and packaging plant. It was powered by a guy sitting in a small driver's seat with an engine attached to a pulley system with bushels of bananas in blue plastic bags (to protect the bananas from insects which were also covered in some sort of garlic/onion/mustard concoction as a natural repellent). 

Next we took the bus to the composting area which consisted of a giant pavilion with large rows of composting materials at various stages of decomposition. It takes about 3 weeks for one large row of organic material to finish composting.

Lastly we visited the processing and packaging plant where the bushels of banans arrive, are sprayed with a chlorine mixture, washed off, cut, separated and sorted by size and quality, re-washed, stickered, stems sealed with wax to prevent molding, and then packaged. Finally we finished the tour with a brunch of bananas.

Costa Rica: Arriving and First Impressions

Hello readers! First off I should probably explain who I am, what the program is, and why I'm writing this blog... My name is Diana, I'm finishing up my 3rd year at the University of Florida (Gainesville) and I'm  currently pursuing a dual degree in Political Science and Natural Resource Conservation with a minor in Sustainability Studies. I've always wanted to study abroad, especially in Latin America, and found out about this program through UF and it happened to fit my interests and elective requirements perfectly. The program has two sessions in all. I decided to attend the first session which is 3.5 weeks, two courses (6 credits) covering "Carbon, Climate, and Livelihoods in Tropical Agro-Forestry Systems" & "Making Agriculture Sustainable". The program consists of lectures at EARTH University (one of the two professors of the courses worked on the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Inconvenient Truth documentary with Al Gore), field trips to rain forests and farms, trail systems, home stays, and small projects (i.e. measuring carbon stocks, researching specific cash crops), presenting on related topics (tropical forest policy, REDD, forest measurements etc.)... and blogging!

My interests that influenced my academic pursuits began as I started as a freshman Political Science major hoping to work in the international humanitarian assistance sector with an emphasis on human rights issues and poverty. I quickly realized that I couldn't see myself slaving away in law school or even a non-profit-- and I had the room and time in my schedule for another degree. After experimenting with some environmental science courses, a field I was always interested in, I realized that the plight of natural resources is tied and entrenched in the issues that surround those of humanitarian issues (see: natural resource curse, environmental justice). After meeting with advisers in the Natural Resource Conservation department I immediately started working on a concentration in environmental sociology/human dimensions and decided to sign up for the UF in EARTH Program!

My flight was on 5/19 and during the week leading up to my departure from Florida I spent most of my free time gathering gear for the trip which (hiking boots, ripstop pants, 'breathable' clothing, you know, jungle gear). The plan was to get to my classmate/friend at University of Florida's home in Broward by 9am to carpool to the Miami Int'l Airport. However, things didn't go exactly as planned! She found out as we were trying to get our boarding passes that she needed a yellow fever vaccine before boarding the plane because she had returned from Peru just days before; I would be taking my first solo flight ever (international no less!) and I was pretty nervous. After a few hiccups (I left a full bobble of water in my purse during the security checkpoint) I finally got to the terminal and noticed that there were some college-aged kids wearing chacos and immediately intuited that they were probably in the same EARTH Program (which I confirmed later after arriving in San Jose). The flight itself was really interesting: I met a retired accountant from New York who moved with her husband to start a goat dairy farm and a girl from North Carolina who was doing a social work program with her college in CR. 

So after a very short ~2hr plane ride we arrived at the airport and I met up with some students from Missouri University (the fellow chaco-wearers) and the other students (besides Kellee! who ended up getting her vaccine and taking a later flight and joined us in the morning thank goodness!). The first day was frankly a blur: a long bus ride to Gaucimo, crazy driving maneuvers on narrow roads through extensive rain forests, small water falls, gushing rivers, reviewing our Spanish vocabulary (ten ways to say excuse me/sorry-- very important). We got our keys to our dorms, took a quick tour, a delicious dinner in the cafeteria, a cold shower then sleep. In short, we were exhausted.

Thanks for reading! More to come soon...