June 14, 2010

Armando Huaroto writes through his host farm’s newsletter, the Soil Born Digest:

It’s amazing how much I am learning, living and working at Soil Born. When I applied to the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA) Program, my goal was to find an American farm where I could learn new tech-niques in organic agri-culture, and then return to my hometown of Ica, Peru and show them to small farmers, However, when I got here, I real-ized that Soil Born is more than I expected it would be and I feel very lucky to be here.

Soil Born isn’t just an organic farm, we also teach people how important it is to care for the environment and reconnect with the land in so many ways. We teach youth how to grow their own food and eat healthy. We help small farmers to sell their products at farmers’ markets. We produce organic food for many families through our CSA boxes and the Saturday morning farm stand. Soil Born is part of a local food system, which reduces gas emissions that cause global warming… Be-fore coming here, I thought that I would return to Peru with information about new methods in organic farming. Now I realize that I can bring more because of all I have learned through this experience about Soil Born’s approach to sus-tainable agriculture, food access and education. I try and live every day to the fullest so that I can take all that I can back to Peru.