Ag producers visit from Costa Rica
Take tours of Webster, Calhoun county farmsBy LARRY KERSHNER, Messenger staff writer
A group of 25 Costa Rican ag producers, researchers and agronomy students spent Wednesday in Webster and Calhoun Counties looking over a variety of farms and agricultural plant and land management systems.
The tour was part of a 10-year exchange program between Iowa State University and the University of Costa Rica. This is the third year, explained Donald Lewis, professor of entomology at Iowa State University, in which the exchange tours included non-students, but people who work in the field of agriculture.
Lewis is a co-instructor at ISU teaching a course in tropical crops. He annually takes a group of ISU students to the Central American country. His counterpart, Amy Wang, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Costa Rica, brings agronomy students to Iowa.
He added that he has learned that for many Central Americans, farming "is more than just for the money. It's for the family, the community and for the their spirit."
Wang said that farming in both countries are vastly different. Farms are far smaller in her country, and the mountainous terrain in some parts, combined with the prevalent volcanic soils, make for a variety of challenges that Iowans don't face.
She added that in a previous tour, two students saw how Iowans practiced greenhouse vegetable growing and took that idea back with them to start a small vegetable growing business in greenhouses.
She said her groups are looking for different ideas for soil management and conservation, as well as new ideas for producing food they could take back with them.
Gregorio Leandro, the eldest member on the tour, works for Dole Food Company Inc. He is a plant researcher, looking for better ways to produce both bananas and pineapples. He said he is running comparison between raising the two fruits organically, moving away from synthetic chemicals.
"There is more organic food (being grown in Peru and the Honduras," Leandro said. "Costa Rica doesn't have many organics. We have much rain and heat and diseases are hard to control."
Leandro said he was hoping to find some plant management skills and ideas he can use on his fruit plantation. In just two days, he said, he had not heard any. "But there is more (tour to come) so I am hopeful."
At the Otho learning farm, Karen Hansen, Webster County Conservation naturalist, explained the three types of terraces, wetland management and 15 different crop practices in use on the 160-acre site.
Jim Patton, director of Webster County Extension, told them about the role Extension plays in conducting a variety of research and passing that research to farmers. That made group leader Wang smile who said that Costa Rica has no such a service. "We have to be our own extension," she said.
The group also toured Community Orchard, owned by Greg and Bev Baedke, in rural Fort Dodge, traveled to Calhoun County to Pomeroy to see the wind farms, toured a pair of ag implement dealers in Manson and finished their day at John F. Kennedy Park, in Fort Dodge.
They are housed in the student dorms at Iowa State University. This was the second of a 10-day experience that would take the students all across Iowa.
The tour will take them to an egg producer in North Iowa, a garlic and carrot growing business near Ames, a non-traditional vegetable and fruit grower in Nevada, a biodiversity farm near Marshalltown, a community supported agriculture business and a farmers market in Des Moines. They will wrap up their tour at an Iowa Cubs game and will be in Ames long enough for RAGBRAI's arrival there.
As the Costa Ricans returned to Ames Wednesday, Patton said he was hoping that the visitors would also have a chance to see Iowans in their natural environment.
Patton, who was on the tour last winter, said Costa Ricans normally see Iowans relaxed and in vacation clothes. "But I hope they had a chance to see Iowans as we are, in our work environments."
Contact Larry Kershner at kersh@farm-news.com or (515) 573-2141
