A Mix of New and Old
June 26, 2011
The other day the agriculture team visited Pampacorral where Team Peru built a greenhouse last summer. Our visit was part of this summer’s project to see our technician, Ruben’s curriculum implementation in action. The school director, Freddie, showed us a complementary project that the municipality recently undertook to augment the school’s effort to grow more vegetables. The picture above depicts a traditional growing technology. A taut black colored net stretches above the vegetables for warmth and protection. This technology is utilized to enable vegetable cultivation in areas prone to a common high altitude growing challenge, night frost.
Even with the nets, the vegetables are exposed to a fair degree of cold, lending to a much slower, smaller scale, and labor-intensive growing process compared to greenhouse cultivation. However, in tandem with the greenhouses the municipality backed project represents yet another option for increasing the quantity of nutrient rich vegetables grown and ultimately consumed by students.
Once again, the knowledge and resourcefulness demonstrated by these communities impressed me. Prior to the more recently incorporation of greenhouse technology in the region, this older method harnesses similar properties to achieve the same goal: the ability to grow a more nutritious food source.
While I was reflecting on the awesome fusion of older and newer techniques to meet Pampacorral’s need, Freddie explained to us the importance of a non-governmental run project like our greenhouse. He reiterated a sincere appreciation for the municipality backed growing assistance. But, he explained that it took months to receive the promised aid. Bureaucratic paper battles over a missed signature detained the delivery of seeds and other supplies for an extended period. Regardless of certain challenges, it was promising to see a community receiving the means to combat one of their most pressing needs from both the local municipality and a local NGO. ~Kat
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