![]() “A lot of people inherit the farm through the generations, but don’t necessarily understand the business.”įarmers with small to mid-size farms can’t compete on quantity. “Being a farmer is hard and complex and there are all these variables that you don’t control,” said Gonzalez Canon. “Our hope is that this is just the start of a long-term collaboration between the Middlebury Institute and community organizations in Colombia like the Norte Nativa association.” Farmers Experiment with Different Approaches “This experience was transformative for all of us-faculty and students alike,” said Professor Gabriel Guillén. They also learned about alternatives to coffee growing, the potential of sustainable tourism for the region, the economic importance of paving trochas (dirt roads), the Paisa identity of Líbano, and how to preserve local oral knowledge around farming. They explored issues such as the importance of reforesting the coffee-growing landscape, the role of women in regenerative agriculture, and tensions in the relationship between small regenerative farmers and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, a nongovernmental organization that supports the Colombian coffee industry and promotes it internationally. “For sustainability-minded students to meet people who actually grow the coffee-and are doing it in ways that aim to regenerate the soil, restore ecosystems, and build a vibrant community-was more than eye-opening. “For most people, coffee is all about consumption,” said Professor Lyuba Zarsky. Students connected their academic and professional interests with Norte Nativa members’ daily work, building relationships based on mutual interests. Eleanor Bent MAIEP ’24 got to meet her language partner, Alejandro Franco, the president of Norte Nativa, in person on the trip. The exchange kicked off last fall as faculty paired students virtually with language partners in Líbano. The two connected with Professor Lyuba Zarsky with the International Environmental Policy program and Professor Gabriel Guillén, faculty in Language Studies, who led the trip. Gonzalez Canon’s family farm, “Finca Pensar,” hosted Christodoulou to do research focusing on local development challenges and alternative crop drying strategies as a means of bolstering harvests. The spark for the immersive learning trip started with a friendship between Gonzalez Canon and Alex Christodoulou MAIEP ’23. Connecting across Languages and Disciplines “When you’re cutting the trees, you’re cutting the whole ecosystem-killing the insects and the birds,” said Gonzalez Canon. The result was widespread deforestation, water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. The hybrid seeds are resistant to sun so farmers could cut down the shade trees and plant more coffee. “The ways we used to do it have been lost and we are trying to recuperate that.”Ĭoffee is sensitive to sun and used to be grown in the shade of the tree canopy. “A lot of the traditional knowledge was lost because farmers followed the technicians’ recommendations,” said Gonzalez Canon. ![]() ![]() The aim was to maximize quantity: grow as much coffee as possible, focusing on adding land, cutting down trees, using nitrogen fertilizers, and planting with new hybrid seed varieties. To rebuild, the government made a huge push for farmers to use “modern” methods introduced in the 1970s. As a child, Gonzalez Canon couldn’t go out to his family’s farm because of the intense fighting between guerrillas and paramilitary forces in the area. Líbano was once the country’s coffee nerve center, but lost a lot of productive land during the five decades of armed conflict preceding the 2016 peace agreement. Preparing fermented coffee cherries to extract the coffee beans at Finca “El Diamante.”Ĭonflict, Climate Change, and Colombian Coffee Middlebury Institute students and Norte Nativa members on visits to local farms. Jaime Gonzalez Canon and Alex Christodoulou (IEP master’s candidates and student leaders of Team Colombia). They were virtual exchange partners for Spanish in the Global Community course (fall 2022) and got to meet in person during the trip (spring 2023). Hillsides in the area around Líbano, Colombia.Īlejandro Franco, the president of Norte Nativa, discusses the coffee drying process.Ī coffee plant presenting all the different stages of productivity: initial flowering, green cherries, and maturing cherries.īeans are one of the alternative crops to grow within coffee farms as a means to diversify crops.Įleanor Bent MAIEP ’24 and Alejandro Franco, president of Norte Nativa.
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