WORM GROWING AND HUMUS MAKING IN BELIZE

Manufactured HUMUS in Belize, made using earthworms, or vermiculture. This was done by organic vegetable advisor, Paula Vega.

* Paula Martinez Vega is the Food and Agriculture Organization consultant in organic vegetable growing. She is from Cuba.

EARTH WORMS MAKING HUMUS IN BELIZE

There are two major problems and a whole lot of smaller ones, in vegetable growing in Belize. The first problem is finding the right kind of seed variety, for the time of year. Mostly this is divided between hot season and winter season varieties. There is a long way to go on this yet here in Belize. The second problem is getting the right kind of soil. You need humus for vegetables. Somebody from Arizona wrote me ( see down the BLOG articles ) on making humus out of Red Clay in Arizona and advising me to try it in Belize. We have too much clay in Belize, both red and black types. It gets really thick and hard at times of the year. At any rate, I decided to make a trip to Central Farm to talk about experiments with earth worms, like the earlier letter I got from Arizona.
First I talked to the chief of the Taiwanese Agriculture Mission. He said he was growing California Red earthworms in a compost pile at his experimental plot. I asked him about experimental trials with vegetables, with or without worms. He said, that earthworms were more for organic vegetable production. In commercial growing, tilling the soil to get aeration and using fertilizer, the process was less labor intensive for commercial purposes. He advised me to go see the ORGANIC EXPERT across the street. So I met the FAO consultant, Paula ( the Cuban ) and she was kind enough to show me her earth worms and humus. She said she is also growing the California Red worms, they are about 3 inches long and take about 45 days to make a crop of worms. You use them to make your humus. Converting clay soil into humus using worms
as an additive is my understanding. The soil looked really good. She said after that, the natural local 6 inch long Belize worm will do the rest. You don't need to use the shorter California Red worms in your beds. Local worms will make their way there if you have your humus right.
On the subject of commercial versus organic vegetable growing. She said that yes, the organic vegetables were more work and labor intensive. However, they grow bumper crops, bigger and healthier produce. In the commercial systems currently used in Belize, they kill the soil with chemicals, fertilizers and various fungus and virus and insect sprays. The soil is a living eco system full of many microscopic creatures that need to live in the soil in life cycles supportive of each other to get natural bumper crops. Once you use the chemicals to kill any part of the eco system, then the soil is only used to support the roots and stem. You must supply all the rest and that can get more expensive. Very expensive! Organic growing is cheaper, only involving more labor, but commercial chemical growing is faster, but kills the soil and invites pests, blights and other things, due to destroying the eco-system required to grow the plants.
Paula was an interesting person to talk to. She told me of the huge beds of humus making worms, shaded by plantains and bananas from the sun in Cuba, in long production rows. She also said that Belize is not yet making seeds and there is little or no understanding of how to make seeds that suit the local environment and climate at Central Farm Agriculture Station yet. She has been doing some local teaching on this subject at Santa Familiar Village, an agriculture village across the BRANCH MOUTH of the joining of the three rivers in Western Belize. The Mopan River, the Macal River which join and make the Belize River. I must go and see what she is doing there.
I've dealt with FAO consultants before over 40 years, mostly in fisheries experiments, and while Paula was very polite, I got the feeling she had not gotten the cooperation from Central Farm she expected. Which is par for the course with ALL the FAO Consultants I had ever dealt with, that ever came to Belize. Apparently there is no money from local government, and probably a fair amount of either resistance, or just plain apathy, from government workers, when foreign experts come in. The equipment and stuff they need is never forthcoming, despite joint partnership type deals arranged with FAO on paper. At any rate, I was VERY DISAPPOINTED she only had 4 more months to go on her contract, she said. I would have liked to get involved a lot more. I think once she is gone, ORGANIC farming knowledge is going to die a sudden death with her departure. I asked her if she would like to stay, or extend hoping she would. She said yes, since a lot of the remote farmers are really getting interested in organic growing, but there wasn't much time left for her contract.
I guess now it is up to me to lobby the government to lobby UN FAO to give her another two years. Then maybe I can join forces with her, provide her some local transportation and other accessories necessary for her expertise. I'll start with this online newsletter here. Failing that, I sure would like to take a sponsored trip to Cuba and see what they are doing in soil and vegetable growing and seed making.

Taiwan Foreign Aid to Belize and Onion Leeks !

Tropical fruit of Belize
Miguel and helper showing me his version of the Taiwanese onion LEEK.

The guy on the right is Miguel, he is in charge of the experimental vegetable growing plots for TAIWAN, here in Belize. Currently he is doing greenhouse experiments and variety experiments. We asked him to do LENTILS for us as well. We had asked the administration at Central Farm Research Station to make this a formal request, but after a month they had neglected to do so. What he was showing me and the wife, was his Taiwanese version of the onion leek. This one he has, does not have a bulb, or a bottom white part you eat, but what you do is eat the grass like leaves. It actually looks like grass, but has a strong aroma of onion. We do grow LEEKS, but the ones we grow, you only use the bulb on the bottom. Anyway, to make a long story short, he gave us a couple of bunches of his variety and we will pot them and try them in our nursery and eventually eat them.
THE TAIWANESE TECHNICAL MISSION TO BELIZE
This technical mission is going on 18 years now. It is the longest lasting and probably the most effective program of all programs of FOREIGN AID ever done in Belize. It is funded by the International Cooperation and Development Fund of TAIWAN.
The Technical Mission has a RICE project. They are trying different varieties and a seed production system. The HORTICULTURE project is the one I'm involved with, they are doing vegetables, a relatively new science in Belize and my own TEXTBOOK is now the standard guide for development research in Belize. The mission is also helping the University of Belize to organize the tissue culture training program with micropropagation. There is also the agro-processing for tropical fruits and foods. Mostly they do a school feeding program using dehydrated fruit snacks in plastic bags. They are slowly effecting the upgrading of local food processing technology. There is another program they have with the local Community College system, which is still basically in infancy, until the population grows some more in about ten years. They do vocational training in food science for processing technology with student help. All of these programs are intended to promote Belize Economic Development as the population grows and assist entrepreneurial employment social opportunities. There is an Information and Communications Technology Center in the small national capital of Belmopan. There is also five long term volunteers assisting in various economic development programs, including the University of Belize automation system and training of librarians.
There is no other FOREIGN AID from any first world industrial country to match the assistance that TAIWAN is giving to Belize. They are vastly appreciated here in Belize !

Tropical Belize POLINA tomato experiment at Taiwanese Vegetable Mission in Belize

The POLINA tomato experiment at Taiwanese Vegetable Mission at Central Farm in Belize is over. As you can see from the photo the tomatoes are about done. They are also smaller than the POLINA I get. I talked to the Chinese guy Miguel and he said he did not do anything to the vines. Consequently they were bearing 5 to 7 tomatoes per branching, or budding and thus without pruning down to 2 or 3 tomatoes per bunch, you don't get the big size, because the nutrition feeding capacity is reduced, for soil based production.