(This is my final paper/evaluation of my service learning project so you can have an idea of one of the projects I've been working on this summer. I have more pictures, but I'll be getting them later this week.)
This semester Danielle and I worked with Carlos Aker, a graduate student working on a BioCharcoal experiment to complete his master’s degree. Carlos is the son of an American father and a Nicaraguan mother. He spent some time working in the United States, and speaks fluent English. Carlos attends Agrocología de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de la UNAN-León , where his mother is a professor. Carlos is an outgoing person and plans to become a college professor in the future and he already teaches classes and works on projects with the students. Our service-learning project was designed to help Carlos to complete his project.
Carlos set up the BioChar project with nine families in
the department of Leon. Three of the families are near the city of Leon, three
are near Telica, and three are near La Paz Centro. These three locations have
different soil types and add another dimension to his project. Each of the
famers purchased a BioChar stove and added the BioChar to the soil in their
cornfield. The goal was to determine if there was an improvement in the crops
based on which plot had the biggest yield. Each of the nine farms had their
test plots set up similarly. The graph below shows the three plots, each
repeated three times throughout the field.
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BioChar
Fertilizer
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BioChar
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Control
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BioChar
Fertilizer
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BioChar
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Control
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BioChar
Fertilizer
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Biochar
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Control
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Our service learning project had four main learning
objectives. The first was to estimate the demand and acceptance of the product
for small and medium farmers in the department of Leon. The second objective
was to estimate the sales of the product for small farmers in the department of
Leon. The third objective was to estimate the cost of production, fixed and
variable with different sources of premium materials. The final objective was
to define a marketing strategy for the product in the department of Leon.
Our project was divided into six phases. Before we
started this project, Danielle and I had never heard of BioCharcoal and this
project introduced us to BioChar as a whole and what it has the potential to do
for farmers—not only in Nicaragua but around the world. During our first
meeting, Carlos explained much of the project and Danielle and I started
reading books on BioChar to gain a better idea of what BioChar is and what it
does for the soil.
The second objective was
to establish a work strategy. This was the biggest challenge for me. I tried to
plan out how we would fulfill the goals of our practicum, and I was repeatedly
frustrated when it seemed that we were no closer to reaching our goals at the
end of the day than we were when we left in the morning. It was difficult to
plan anything relating to the practicum because we had almost no say in what we
did and what day we chose to do it. Many of the questions I asked originally
and the spreadsheets I worked on were designed to calculate the cost of the
BioChar.
The third objective was
to undertake the strategy and begin collecting data. Danielle, Carlos and I
spent the majority of our time determining the heat of the stove and the
moisture and number of logs that we would burn in the fire. However, the data
that we collected over hours on the farm site was not related to determining
cost or anything having to do with establishing markets.
The fourth objective was
to analyze the data we collected and draw conclusions. We went over the data
that we collected and put it together in a spreadsheet and book. Danielle and I
also met at her house one afternoon and at Café La Rosita to put together a
PowerPoint and divide up each part of our presentation that we were going to
present at the field day.
The fifth objective was
to create a report and brochure. We accomplished this task with a few hours of
work in the morning and a few hours of work in the afternoon. Danielle and I
put together a marketing page in the pamphlet. Our work consisted of me
contributing ideas and Danielle adding ideas and translating and typing them
into Spanish. Carlos printed the books and handed them out to farmers on the
field day.
The final objective was
our presentation on Friday, November 22nd. The field day was scheduled to start at 7:00
at Finca Sylvia, the farm of Don Reynaldo outside of Leon. Each of Carlos’s
nine families with stoves received four invitations to the field day, and in
total about 25 people showed up for the presentation. Carlos picked us up a little after 6:00 and
then we picked up other farmers from around Leon and headed out to the farm. The
presentation started a little after 8:00 after each farmer introduced
themselves with their name, hometown, and cell phone number. The owner of Mi
Fogón introduced himself and told a little of the history of his business and
about the stoves that he has created. Danielle and I handed out BioChar manuals
that we helped create to the farmers. The guide was in color with pictures, and
I think I was as excited to get a copy as the farmers were! During the first
session, Carlos explained the stove, the chemical process and the new lid that
we had tested at numerous farms to help with cooking rice, beans, and
tortillas. Carlos went over the yield results that he had gathered and the
difference that BioChar had made on the soil. The presentation as a whole was
informative, but relaxed with farmers adding comments and questions throughout.
Carlos had juice boxes and pound cake served at 10:00 and we took a 15 minute
break between sessions. Danielle and I started the second session with an
explanation of possible markets for BioChar and what we believed BioChar was
worth and how we calculated the cost. We also gave suggestions for how the
farmers should get the word out, advertise in town, and create signs
advertising the product. The farmers actively participated, asking questions
and giving suggestions. Looking back, I think our presentation went really well
and Carlos was happy with how it turned out. Following our presentation was a
presentation by a student at the University explaining his experiments with
BioChar. He talked incredibly fast, and I had trouble following his experiment
so I snuck out and helped Carlos set up the tables for lunch. Danielle and I
were also able to help serve lunch to the farmers and I overheard the woman
cooking the food say that Carlos asked her to prepare something really
delicious because he wanted the farmers to stay into the afternoon to hear the
end of the presentation.
The afternoon
session started with a tour of his farm and Don Reynaldo showed the farmers at
the field day the difference BioChar had made for his crops. The tour lasted a
little less than an hour and the final session of the presentation was a
discussion time where farmers could share their thoughts about the project and
their suggestions for the future. The farmers discussed cooperatives for a
while, and a collection center where all the farmers could work together to
promote the product. By the end of the discussion my brain was completely fried
from an overload of Spanish, but it sounded like the farmers had a good time of
discussion. The presentation concluded around 2:30 in the afternoon, and Carlos
dropped off the farmers at the bus station and Danielle and me off afterward.
A BioChar oven looks like a giant cube. The oven is
three feet long, three feet wide, and three feet high. The oven is made of
steel and has four inches of cement on each side. The original cover was made
of one piece of sheet metal. The second cover we experimented with had edges
and the third cover we experimented with was the lid designed for cooking
purposes. Inside the oven was a steel box about 15 inches x 15 inches and about
20 inches deep. The material that is going to be turned into BioChar was placed
in the box in the center. Biochar is a soil amendment made from charred organic
matter. We completed all of our tests using logs from eucalyptus trees, but
other people have experimented with leaves, coconut shells, and other
materials. In order to burn something to ashes, a fire needs heat, oxygen, and
material to be burned. When BioChar is made, it is made in the absence of
oxygen which is why the wood is only charred and not burned to ashes. This
charred wood (or other material) has properties that work well as a soil
amendment—it holds moisture in the soil and helps the plants to absorb
nutrients.
The material to be burned to create the heat was placed
in the stove below the box so that when the material was burned in the presence
of oxygen, the wood below the box would burn into ashes, but the wood in the
box without oxygen would only change composition and turn into BioChar rather
than ashes as I explained earlier. The whole process from start to finish takes
around two hours, however with travel time, purchasing supplies, the two hour
process often turned into full days of work.
The poor farmers we worked with have little capital for
their use. Although the stoves should pay for themselves based on increased
crop yields, our goal was to help the farmers begin to create a market for the
BioChar so that the farmers can sell the product to make a profit. The ultimate
goal is for farmers to purchase stoves, the stoves to pay for themselves and
eventually enough farmers will have stoves that Carlos can create a brand and
hopefully begin to market it at a wider level. I really believe that if Carlos
keeps up his work and markets the BioChar well, he could potentially set up a
business that would not only benefit him and his graduate studies but also
better the farmers that we have been working with.
Many of the farm families living in Nicaragua are very
poor. They are self-sustainable, but have relatively little extra money to buy
other necessities let alone other things that would make their lives easier or
more comfortable.
Danielle and I spent the majority of our times at the
farm sites trying out a new lid on the stove and measuring heat and ideal
temperatures for making tortillas, rice, and beans.
I feel that the person that we served through our project was Carlos. I think
that we kept Carlos company during his long farm visits, and I think he really
enjoyed taking us along and sharing his project with us. I think that we were
able to give the people on the farms an idea of how they could sell the
BioChar, and I hope to hear in the future how the marketing of BioChar goes. One
of the weaknesses of our presentation is our lack of numbers. This was my
biggest frustration. Carlos told Danielle and me that he wanted us to come up
with the selling price of BioChar. I had to come up with costs of materials in
a few of my classes, so I assumed that setting a price of BioChar would be
similar. This turned into the most difficult part of the project—and we never
really resolved the problem.
When Carlos, Danielle and I met at Cafe La Rosita to
discuss our marketing strategy at the “field day” it became clear to me that we
had three big problems. The first was that Carlos didn’t want to use the price
of BioChar that we had spent the last four weeks calculating because he thought
the price was too high. The second problem was that we never had the yield
results, so we really had no proof that the yields were greater. The final problem
was that Carlos didn’t know who he was going to invite to the field day, he
seemed to go back and forth debating to invite people to inform them about
Biochar or focusing on the people with stoves and the price to charge—which
made a difference as to how we would go about creating a PowerPoint to present
the information to the people attending the field day.
Instead of using the market price of BioChar that we determined,
Carlos decided on a price for BioChar that he thought was reasonable and we went
with it. Based on agricultural marketing classes I have taken, the price should
reflect the market value of the items used even if the materials can be
obtained cheaper; however, Carlos wanted the price to reflect how much the
Biochar actually cost the farmers considering that they used wood on their farm
and didn’t pay for it. I didn’t mind that Carlos didn’t use the number we came
up with in the end, and the number he decided on was more affordable for the
farmers. We were able to provide a price to the farmers at the field day and
give them an idea of how much they should charge for the BioChar.
The second problem we ran into was our lack of yield
results, so we never had any data of how much yield increased with the use of
BioChar. Based on looks alone, the best formula was fertilizer and BioChar. I
am very interesting to read through his thesis when he finishes putting
everything together.
I was so excited to start this project at the beginning
of the semester because I am very interested in ag-businesses and marketing and
I enjoy working with balance sheets and the technical information. Carlos
didn’t receive yield information until the day before the presentation, but I
think it would have been really interesting to go over all of the yield results
and soil samples to see how effective BioChar really is.
As I think back on this project, I think the biggest
benefit to my future was interacting with Carlos and learning about the
requirements for his master’s degree. I plan to get my master’s degree in the
future and it was very interesting to see all of the time, planning, and steps
that went into the carrying the project from the start to the completion. I
enjoyed learning about BioChar and working through all of the steps to examine
a potential market.
In the past, I had thought about working in agricultural
development. Through working on this project, I have realized that agricultural
development is not something that I would enjoy. However, I would welcome an
opportunity to help start a BioChar market in the United States.
Altogether, the project was definitely a character
building experience. Before this trip, I placed a high value on showing up on
time, and I found it frustrating when people didn’t show up on time. On every
occasion (except one) Carlos was late. On occasions he was over an hour late
which was very challenging for me to get used to. I went into this project
knowing that I would be flexible, but I was stretched beyond what I ever
expected.
I thought it was very interesting that a lot of the
factors that I have learned about in agricultural development and in working
with people and not for them were evident in this project. I thought that it
was a great opportunity to see what agricultural development looks like. In
addition, I think that we were able to serve the farmers in the department of
Leon.
In sum, I learned
more about BioChar and creating an experiment, was able to work hand-in-hand
with Nicaraguan farmers and I really enjoyed the field day and presenting our ideas
about a market in Spanish. I believe I will look back on this project as a
great service-learning experience.
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