Update from Arimae

The plantain nursery in Arimae

Note: This update was originally posted on the loan page for Arimae on Kiva.

Since our loan was funded on Kiva, Liriano and the crew have begun the process of growing the plantain trees. The first step was to build a nursery to incubate the plantain seedlings, so they can be transplanted to the planting site with minimum mortality. In the nursery we can control the water, sun and temperature during the most vulnerable state of the seedlings’ growth. The plastic covering over the nursery raises the heat in the greenhouse, which promotes faster germination. The women from the village of Arimae have taken a leading role in helping to establish and maintain the nursery.

We’re working with a seed called semillas de agua--water seeds--which are high quality. To ensure the highest quality and quantity from the plantain trees, we start with unbruised, two pound seeds with no leaves.

At the prep site, we trim off all the skin from the plantains seed to ensure a large surface area is exposed, then treat them for about 20 minutes with a fungicide and nematicide.

Then we place the seeds into the nursery. The seeds sit on a 1" layer of rice husks, and we surround all the seeds with an organic fertilizer mix containing, rice husks, gallinaza (chicken excrement), dirt, and biochar from our timber projects. The plantain seeds get daily watering and plenty of TLC to encourage rapid growth. As of this writing, they are just starting to sprout leaves.

The average plantain stalk produces three good plantain harvests, or about one per year. Once the plantains are harvested from one stalk, we cut that stalk, and leave the strongest new stalk to regenerate from the same root system as the mother stalk. Or, we can harvest that stalk as a seed for planting and propagate it.

Originally, we thought that the seed incubation would take a month, but it looks like we’ll have to transplant the fastest growers at three weeks. The next stage is planting the seedlings, and we’ll cover that in our next journal update. The community looks forward to planting the seedlings and expects a strong harvest.

Forest Carbon Map of Panama

Overview of creating Panama's forest carbon map. Video courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science

Last week the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) announced that a team of remote sensing scientists had completed a forest carbon map of the entire country of Panama.

This is the first carbon map of an entire country, and we hope will lead the way to assessment of forest carbon stocks in other countries. The map helps to demonstrate more tangibly a critical service provided by the forest: the storage of carbon, which becomes CO2 when trees and vegetation are burned.

The map could also be a valuable tool for indigenous communities, including our partner community Arimae, if the REDD program becomes a reality in Panama. The map will help them to understand the financial value of the carbon in their remaining forests. REDD program payments represent an additional income stream for Indigenous communities, in addition to revenue from the tropical woods and plantains we’re growing.

The CAO team flew over parts of Panama using a sensor called LiDAR to gather data and then combine it with satellite imagery to create the new map. Greg Asner, lead for CAO, collaborated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) to collect the field measurements. STRI is working with many Indigenous groups, including Arimae, to teach them how to do the field measurements that are used to further calibrate the LiDAR readings. This National Geographic article gives a good overview of his work.

Panama is lucky to have this asset, and we hope that policymakers and the Panamanian Ministry of Environment put it to use for the benefit of Indigenous communities.

Kiva Loan for Agroforestry

Two weeks ago we closed a loan on Kiva, a website that enables individuals to contribute to loans to help communities and projects around the world.

The $8,000 loan, raised from more than 200 individual Kival lenders, will fund the cultivation of four hectares of plantains with our partner community Arimae. The community will plant the plantains between rows of cocobolo trees, which they planted as part of the UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme project. The loan covers the costs for seed stock, fertilizer, tools, labor, maintenance, and harvesting costs for the plantain project, and Kiva lenders will be repaid from profits on the plantain sales.

This was a milestone for both Kiva and Planting Empowerment because it was the first Kiva loan ever in the country of Panama, and represents a new source of financing for agroforestry projects that strengthen food security, create employment, and generate income for rural communities.

Kiva acts as a bridge between responsible lenders and projects that need financing. Founded in 2005, Kiva has facilitated more than $400 million in loans from more than 900,000 lenders for projects in 68 countries. With the closing of our agroforestry loan, Panamá became number 69.

As sustainable agroforestry projects gain support among rural communities in Panama, we expect to continue using Kiva as a way to fund projects and help improve evironmental and social conditions. We expect to list another loan on Kiva in the coming months for $35,000 to plant tropical woods and plantains with the community.

A big thanks to everyone at Kiva who worked with us to make this happen, and we look forward to continue working together!

Read the full press release ›

Biochar, Part Deux

Liriano regulating the biochar burn in ArimaeBuilding on the lessons we learned during our biochar training in February, we spent the past couple of weeks experimenting with producing biochar in our Arimae location. Biochar has been used for thousands of years as a way to increase soil fertility and crop productivity, something the soils in the Darien province really need.

The key with producing biochar is controlling air flow to the burn—permitting as little oxygen as possible from reaching the flame. For this reason we used a pit burning method for our first batch of biochar.

Check out all the photos from the burn »

We spent a couple of days chainsawing waste logs and digging a big hole to contain the logs, then fitted the hole with a bamboo chimney to regulate air flow to the burning logs. Once we ignited the stacked logs in the pit, we covered the fire with some wood and zinc, to further restrict air from reaching the burning logs. Unfortunately, we realized that our chimney was much too narrow for sufficient air flow, so not much wood was burned. We then extinguished the fire with water, and let it cool overnight for collection the next day. The next morning, when we came to collect the biochar, we realized that we hadn’t totally extinguished the fire the day before. All that was left in the hole was ash.

Learning from this setback, we didn’t use a chimney or covering for the pit for our next couple of burns. Good results. To collect the biochar from the toasted logs, we whack the log with a shovel or a machete, the biochar chips right off, and we re-stack the log on the fire and re-ignite it to produce more.

During the last burn, we decided that we were losing too many small chunks of biochar in the soil of the pit, so we tried to burn a pyre in the open. By separating the embers from the logs as they burn, we are able to really control the fire and collect the charcoal before any of it burned to ash. Even though a torrential downpour attempted to thwart our fire-building efforts, the flames were so hot, they burned through four hours of constant rain and actually dried us as we collected the charcoal and attended to the fire.

All told, we produced six big sacks of fertilizing biochar—that’s about 300 lbs. of yield-increasing, soil-enriching goodness! If we continue biochar production, we plan to build a simple hut to protect us from the elements; since it seems the wet season has arrived, we’ll need it.

Learn more about our impact in sustainable forestry.