Don’t Mind the Liquid Nitrogen

I’m going to eat some yogurt today while I’m in the market. Yogurt isn’t hard to find in Cameroon or Oku in particular. Sometimes it’ll be homemade, sold out of a cooler in little plastic bags (my tip, buy it early in the day) other times you find products like yogurt or soy milk in refrigerated cases. In a city you’ll find these on just about every block, in village there may be one or two shops that keep a refrigerator. But the yogurt I’m about to eat isn’t imported from Nigeria or South Africa, it’s actually made less than 10 miles from the market, in modern facilities with impressive hygiene standards, by a milk cooperative that is doing some of the most progressive work I’ve seen in Cameroon.

I visited the Tadu Dairy Cooperative a few months ago, but when I stopped in last week two things I hadn’t noticed before stood out: Their shiny new Massey Ferguson tractor and the whirring of their liquid nitrogen compressor. Yup, someone in Oku Sub-Division makes liquid nitrogen on a regular basis. Why? To preserve semen of course. One of the many activities of the cooperative is a breeding program to improve the milk production of their cows. About 25 years ago they began impregnating their local cows with semen from Holsteins (the black and white cow of cartoon fame) and in the ensuing years increased their average milk production about 10-fold. This helps them preserve the characteristics of the local breeds and any adaptations they have to the local climate while improving their profitability.

Before I saw the compressor, my eye had been caught by the tractor in their garage complete with attachments of harrows for seeding improved pasture grasses and cutters for windrowing hay. Up to then, I’d never seen cows in Cameroon kept in any way except extensive grazing systems, so I geeked out at the idea of a cut-and-carry feeding system being used in my own backyard. If I can gauge by the reaction of my American friend that was with me that day, not everyone gets so excited by these kinds of revelations, but taking advantage of cut-and-carry opens the door to the 20^th century for dairy farmers (and not so much in an Upton Sinclair, The Jungle sort of way, more of a better nutrition, more efficient land use, profitable business kind of way).

To Recap: Modern, stainless steel processing floor, tractors for better management, and a breeding program racing to catch up with any dairy in the world. Not bad, but to top it off, all of these ingredients lead to a product line that is marketed across the country. Yogurt is the flagship, but milk, butter, and cheese are also available. Yes, there are backers living outside the country, but, unlike so many businesses in Cameroon, this one would survive without them and each time the members of the cooperative learn and adapt a new skill (improved pastures, breeding, etc.) those backers become less integral. I hope we’re doing something similar in our work with Organic coffee farmers. Check back in 25-years. 

That’s not a fox, that’s a tortoise...

  For this post I’d like to relate a story I had told to me. To be totally cliché about it, the story was actually told around a fire. Before beginning it’s important to note that in Cameroonian folk tales the tortoise takes the place the fox usually fills in Western stories. He’s cunning, ambitious, haughty, and pretty often ruthless. This story has him in a slightly less brutal state than others I’ve heard, but it’s a good example of his style.

The Tortoise and the Hot Peppers

 
Everyone knows that when you eat hot pepper, your nose makes you go *sniff*.
The animals in the forest knew this and so none of them thought the
others were weak when they heard them go *sniff* while eating hot
soups or beans. Except for tortoise. He made fun of all the animals
whenever they ate food with pepper and went *sniff*; he called them
weak and stupid for adding more pepper than they could handle.
One day, chimp was enjoying his fufu and jama-jama with plenty of
pepper and after each bite he went *sniff*. Tortoise was passing and
began to berate chimp for being weak and stupid, as usual. Chimp was
sick of it, he just wanted to enjoy his food in peace so he said back
to the tortoise, ‘You aren’t so strong and smart as all that. I bet
that when you eat pepper you go *sniff* just as much as anyone. You
just refuse to eat in front of us.’
‘I’ll have you know that not only do I never go *sniff* I put more
pepper in my food than anyone. I’ll prove it to you too, cook me some
pepper soup with plantains this evening and invite everyone to come
watch me eat it.’
That night all the animals gathered as chimp was finishing the pepper
soup and plantains. Some took a small taste and immediately started to
go *sniff* because of how hot it was. Tortoise arrived, said nothing
to anyone, and took a spoonful of the pepper soup. ‘You think this
soup is going to make me go *sniff*?’ he said. ‘This is barely spiced.
If you want me to go *sniff* you’ll need to do better. I’ll even add
my own pepper and still won’t go *sniff*’ The animals were shocked as
he added a whole burnt pepper to his bowl and continued eating.
‘If any of you tried to eat this, you’d be going *sniff* for the next
week. But not me. I am strong enough to eat this without going *sniff*
and smart enough not to add so much pepper I would need to go
*sniff*.’ All through the meal he bragged and berated his neighbors.
When he finished he said, ‘Now you all know that when I hear you go
*sniff* I must think you are stupid and weak because I never go
*sniff* when I eat pepper. *Sniff*, indeed!’ With that he turned and
walked quickly (for Tortoise) away without a drink of water.

Seasonal

It’s Internal Inspection season again. More accurately, it was the season about three weeks ago and we are wrapping them up right now. This year we inspected 54 farmers, up from 36 last year. As I look at our yield estimates it seems like our strategy for targeting higher producing farmers is paying off some. The 20 farmers that we added this year (two farmers from last year dropped out of the program) have just about doubled our yield estimate over what we brought in last year. They also bring with them a truckload (not a literal truck, but close) of In-Transition coffee that we are going to have to pay a small premium for, but can’t label as Certified Organic. This is a downside of our strategy to target larger farmers. Larger wealthier farmers are more likely to have used agrochemicals in the past few years than the hyper-small scale farmers we were recruiting last year. This means more of their coffee needs to go through an In-Transition period before it can be certified, a necessary ‘evil’.

Around the North-West, the orange flowers signal a change in season

The pace is still below what I was hoping for this year. I can’t quite put my finger on the reason for this. I know I wasn’t breaking my neck doing Field Entry Interviews, but I was moving at about the quickest pace I felt comfortable with. The last thing I wanted was to have too many novice organic farmers to look after and them making mistakes faster than I could catch them. Thankfully, that hasn’t been a problem this year but it certainly could have been and still could; we haven’t really gotten into the height of harvesting season, which is the most ticklish time with the highest potential for mistakes.

It is gratifying to notice that the day to day work has been getting easier with the farmers that have been part of the program for a year or more. No one is quoting the National Organic Practice or anything, but during our training meetings there have been a few occasions where a veteran will explain to greener farmer one of our organic rules that he himself certainly didn’t know ten-months ago. It gives me confidence that as the number of growers in the program expands, the workload won’t grow proportionately. This Inspection period may have been an indication of that as we were able to inspect about 1.5 the number of farms in pretty much the same time period we used last year. We also have our ducks in a much more orderly row for our external inspection that in 2012. So here’s to a round of seasons’ experience.

Are you guys gonna start acting like hipsters soon?

I lived in Ithaca, NY for about two-years between 2009 and 2011. Ithaca is one of those towns where hippies go to retire, finding tree stumps carved into ‘gnome homes’ is common, and a conversation along the lines of :

‘Drinking Kambucha has changed my life.’

 I know, right, I just bought some yesterday and I feel great.’

‘Oh, you buy yours? I make mine from scratch from a mother culture that comes from the highlands of Nepal, so...you know...’

is likely to be overheard in the local grocery cooperative (which I was a member of, by the by).

I’ve been at this organic work here in Cameroon for about 18-months now, and I’m starting to wonder if the people I work with will ever adopt that somewhat separatist/elitist/hipsterish/environmentalist attitude that is so tightly connected to the organic movement in the US. Frankly, it would make my work a lot easier if the farmers who took on the organic title took the organic worldview along with it. As it stands, I can give a list of rules and make sure that they are being followed, but there is still something intangible missing from the culture of our group of farmers.

I’m sure that my own approach to organic production isn’t really helping nurture this sub-culture. My motivation in this endeavor leans more towards the economic (you can get more cash per kilogram of coffee if it is certified) than the environmental. Obviously, I don’t ditch the later but as an illustration of how I straddle that line, last month in our training meetings I discussed weed control, devoting significant time to describing the health hazards associated with herbicide use. At the same time, I couldn’t resist devoting additional time to discussing the safest and most responsible use of chemicals (herbicides included) which did lead a few people to wonder where exactly I stood on herbicide use. (In my defense I made sure to say the exact phrase, ‘Organic growers are never allowed to use chemical herbicides of any kind, ever, without exception’ at least four times in each of those meetings, so I felt like I was being pretty clear).

A different organizer would have probably run those meetings a different way, perhaps ignoring the potential use of chemicals all together and using the training time to try to galvanize farmers’ minds against the idea of herbicides. As I write that sentence, I certainly see merit in that approach, maybe more than I did a month ago, but I just wouldn’t be able to run it that way. The galvanizing approach would probably lead to that organic sub-culture much more quickly than my own hedging method. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to think about how to punch up the status and raison d’etre of organic production, at least in the minds of Oku practitioners.

We are allowed to use some chemicals...just don’t make a big deal out of it

Two posts ago, I was describing the problem we have with fungi in our coffee nurseries. We pretty much followed the path I described, though there was a little more delay in getting the fungicide spray than I expected. The garlic was crushed and applied the same next day and we figured out after about two days that we could use a product called Nordox (Copper Oxide) to try to solve our problem.

Here’s a rundown of how that process works:

Step 1: Check your own expertise for options of controlling fungi organically. For me, when there is an actual problem, this kind of starts and stops with stuff like garlic or papaya leaves. To be fair, a well run healthy farm should be protected from fungi in a more preventative way (good sun/shade balance, healthy/well-fed crops that can protect themselves, maybe a compost tea spray, etc.) so when a fungus is obviously out of control as was the case in our nursery, botanical methods kind of fall short. Philip and I agreed quickly to reach for something stronger.

Step 2: Check the National Organic Program (the USDA’s list of practices for organic production) for what synthetics are allowed. And I quote:

205.601   Synthetic substances allowed for use in organic crop production.

In accordance with restrictions specified in this section, the following synthetic substances may be used in organic crop production: Provided, That, use of such substances do not contribute to contamination of crops, soil, or water. Substances allowed by this section, except disinfectants and sanitizers in paragraph (a) and those substances in paragraphs (c), (j), (k), and (l) of this section, may only be used when the provisions set forth in §205.206(a) through (d) prove insufficient to prevent or control the target pest.

(i) As plant disease control.

(1) Aqueous potassium silicate (CAS #–1312–76–1)—the silica, used in the manufacture of potassium silicate, must be sourced from naturally occurring sand.

(2) Coppers, fixed—copper hydroxide, copper oxide, copper oxychloride, includes products exempted from EPA tolerance, Provided, That, copper-based materials must be used in a manner that minimizes accumulation in the soil and shall not be used as herbicides.

(3) Copper sulfate—Substance must be used in a manner that minimizes accumulation of copper in the soil.

(4) Hydrated lime.

(5) Hydrogen peroxide.

(6) Lime sulfur.

(7) Oils, horticultural, narrow range oils as dormant, suffocating, and summer oils.

(8) Peracetic acid—for use to control fire blight bacteria.

(9) Potassium bicarbonate.

(10) Elemental sulfur.

(11) Streptomycin, for fire blight control in apples and pears only.

(12) Tetracycline, for fire blight control only and for use only until October 21, 2012.

Quite a list really. For the keen reader, section 205.206 is basically what I described in Step 1 concerning the mostly preventative best practices. In this case, myself and Philip are willing to attest that they were insufficient.

Step 3: Figure out what you can get in Cameroon. Procuring inputs tends to be a lot trickier here than in the US. I don’t get a dozen catalogs sent to me each month like I did when I was working in a greenhouse. For this, I sent an email to our friendly certifier asking if he could point us in the right direction. He did, giving me the trade names of available hydrogen peroxide and copper oxide.

Step 4: Apply, following all the same safety precautions a person working on a conventional farm would. As you can see in the picture to the left, we did. Now we wait the time prescribed by the label to apply again (2 weeks).

I’m not happy that we had our nursery attacked by fungus (I think it is botrytis, but who knows), obviously. At the same time, I am glad we got the chance to go through this exercise. In the future, the decision to use copper oxide fungicides will be more streamlined. As an Internal Control System, we can put copper oxide on our list of allowable synthetic inputs and permission to use it can come from me or Philip after we assess the situation. Already, some farmers have asked us to use copper oxide to combat coffee berry disease and we’ve denied them because it has never been shown to be very effective and needs to be applied at a volume and frequency we’re not comfortable with. To me, this means that the system works.