Ten farmers from the Toledo District travelled to Blancaneaux Lodge in Mountain Pine Ridge to hone their skills by observing the lodge's extensive, self-sustaining garden. The lodge's management coordinated with Paul Lister, the founder of the European Nature Trust, and partnered with Ya'axche Conservation Trust to bring this project to life. Lister, a conservation expert, worked along with the farmers to promote sustainable farming practices that will help preserve nature while allowing the farmers to make an income. The Community Outreach and Livelihoods Director at Ya'axche, Gustavo Requena, explained the importance of their visit to the lodge.
Gustavo Requena, Community Outreach & Livelihoods Director, Ya'axche
"We brought farmers from the Maya Golden Landscape which is our area of focus at Ya'axche Conservation Trust where we promote climate smart agriculture practices to improve livelihoods in the communities where we work. The objective of today's visit is to expose our farmers who are working in the human jaguar conflict work that we do in the Maya Golden Landscape to possibilities that can be adapted on their farm. I think that we have a very impressive work that is happening here where we see vegetable production being done using organic practices which really embodies the work that we do in the Maya Golden Landscape. We have always believed that we have to have a harmony between nature and human development for the benefit of both, that is Ya'axche visit and so it was natural for us to be able to form this partnership with Blancaneax Lodge for us to be able to expose our farmers with the hope that they will be able to go back to their
communities to their farms and share with their families with their community members possibilities that actually exist out here. I think here at Blacaneax lodge for example, the fact that there is the potential for tourism given the COVID situation really highlights one of the concepts that we always promote with our farmers which is value added initiatives to our raw products and so I think that this exchange visit has exposed our farmers to these options and we are hopeful that we will be able to implement, maybe not all, but some of those practices that we observed here on their farms."
And Blancaneax Lodge is the perfect place for the farmers to learn tips in organic farming since their own organic farm has been producing fruits and vegetables for years - enough to be used in all three of the lodge's restaurants. General Manager, Bernie Matute, told us more about their widely praised farming style.
Bernie Matute, General Manager, Blancaneax Lodge
"There are many levels that we do on a day to day basis and it starts with our landscaping area that all the trimmings that they would do on a day to day basis is brought into our campus house and secondly, our stables as well too, we collect the manure from the horses and use it as part of our composting, likewise the kitchen, they collect all the egg shells, the coffee grinds, the tea bags and all of these sort of things too and that's what goes back into the soil and even here after we harvest a section of the vegetable garden the leaves and all that sort of thing goes back to the compost house and comes back."
"By summing it up I would say we grow like 80% of what we consume at all our restaurants and that would be cucumber, radish, and zucchini, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, sweet pepper, tomatoes - three different varieties, lettuce - about five different varieties, herbs - about five types and these are all consumed at three of our food and beverage outlets and also at our staff area."
"It was always a work in progress, the project started in the mid 90's when I first started working here and the difficulty we had was that organic gardening wasn't even known back then so we were all used to conventional gardening so there were many tweaking that we had to do with that, one was to know exactly what amount of vegetables and different types we consume on a monthly basis and then see how the yielding would be from a plant, so we had to do all that research and we figured out how we could have made this beds that are constantly being cycled out and cycled back in."
Our team is just back from the Pine Ridge and we'll have much more on this story in Monday's newscast.
