At Mano a Mano’s Center for Ecological Agriculture (CEA), one of the main goals is to provide training to Bolivians that improves their food security and agricultural outcomes in an environmentally-friendly way.
Learning How to Build a Biodigester
Yesterday our agronomist Camila Yavira Garcia was teaching a group of students how to build a biodigester, which is used to convert livestock manure into methane, which can then be used as fuel.
Mano a Mano’s co-founder Segundo Velasquez is currently traveling in Bolivia and visited the CEA yesterday, which is showing impressing results:
We did see the CEA biodigester operating beautifully. Big, blue and white flames burning at max capacity because we have way too much manure.
[Mano a Mano volunteer] Frank and I toured the facility and we were impressed at every turn. Even in full winter, new crops are planted and already growing.
CEA Workshops this Year
The CEA has had 92 visitors so far this year – 38 in 2 workshops, and 54 visitors. In addition, students from Aldeas SOS regularly visit the CEA for learning workshops; so far there have been 5 workshops with SOS students in the following subject areas:
- Ecological production
- Integrated management of plagues/blights and sickness
- Dry bathrooms
- Protected cultivation
- Making organic fertilizer
We will be having many more visitors as the year progresses; we will also have a number of student groups from Cochabamba that travel to the CEA as a field trip, as well as many visitors traveling from elsewhere (like this group from Minnesota that participated in a Food and Farming Trip to Bolivia in March; check out pictures from their trip HERE).
We are very excited for the growth and progress of our CEA program, which addresses a huge need for rural Bolivian farmers to improve agriculture in their communities.