November 10th Class - ECHO

Today (11/10) our class visited ECHO, a location that aims to help solve hunger problems in the world and promote sustainable farming techniques, nutritional plants, and appropriate technologies. Their aim is to inform and educate people on how to feed their families and communities in an effective way. Although it poured on us in the beginning, it was an awesome trip and we learned a lot!

The first thing we saw was their tanks of Tilapia. We learned that fish need protein to grow bigger, and usually they do this by eating smaller fish. Tilapia, however, are mainly vegetarians and feed on plants like duck weed. They also have Tilapia that live in a warm, freshwater pond. Ducks also feed in this pond, but usually not on the Tilapia for two reasons. For one, female Tilapia are very protective of their young and carry the eggs in their mouth until they hatch. Even after they hatch, they are still small enough to swim back in the mothers mouth for protection. For the other, when they get older they can swim deeper and avoid the duck's reach. There is a pump in this pond used to oxygenate the water so the fish won't die, and there is also a pump that was created by an Indian engineer and it works like a bicycle.

As we continued on our tour we came across a metal drum, which we learned in the best way to make charcoal (which is actually made from wood in other countries). Next to this drum there was a lot of bamboo, and we learned that they have 14 different varieties on site and they are clumping plants. Then we came across their pigs, which we learned did not give off a strong smell because the materials that are built into the dwelling as well as what they eat. Then we came across rice paddies and there were two separate fields of them. On one side they grew them in freshwater and mud. The other side planted them in an SRI method, which harvests more, but people do not use it because 1) culture is slow and difficult to change and 2) not all countries have crop insurance for farmers, and the SRI method is more risky.

We continued down the path to the low, humid wetlands where there were a lot of raised beds to keep plants from getting too much rain. They told us that if you continually mulch these beds then you won't have to keep redoing the beds, which is more time and cost effective. We saw goats, which were in cages because they are very destructive to plants, as well as a bunch of free roaming chickens.

The last things worth mentioning are that between planting seasons it is important to plant another crop in the place of what you just harvested to fertilize the land. Then we also saw a lot of what we had seen in FGCU's own food forest; Chaya, Cranberry Hibiscus, and a few others!

Overall this field trip was extremely educational and really cool. It was especially interesting to go to it after already visiting the Food Forest because it was basically the same, but on a much larger and more organized scale.