The director of the Urubamba Agriculture Office referred us to Ing. Ciro Palomino Rivas, an expert in organic agriculture. After sending him an email on Tuesday, I received a very warm response the following day. Absolutely incredible after what I've come to expect when attempting to contact professionals by email. Saturday morning Daniel and I went to meet Ing. Palomino Rivas at his organic agriculture store in Cusco. We told him about our project in Media Luna and how agriculture had appeared as one of the most pressing problems in the community. The fact that the high price of chemical fertilizer and the damage it does to the soil entraps the residents of Media Luna, and other agriculture based communities for that matter, in a vicious cycle of spending more and more of their earnings on chemical fertilizers whose amounts need to increase every planting season to produce the same crop yield.
He gave us an introduction to the process of restoring the soils of the Sacred Valley to an organic state and also provided an overview of his products. Such products, he claims, work to restore the soil in one planting season rather than the five-year process discussed by other agriculture professionals. However, there is a high initial cost to switching to his products because the first year demands a large amount of product to treat the soil. Each following year the amount decreases and saves money in the long term compared with the use of chemical fertilizer. A primary difference between his products and chemical products is that improving the quality of the soil is the objective of organic fertilizer rather than individual crop growth. So instead of designing products that are crop specific, the organic alternative aims to restore the soil to a state that would benefit all crops.
Although the information he provided us is useful, it was surprising that there may be such an efficient way to convert the fields of Media Luna to organic fertilizers. So surprising that we know we need to find case examples of such transitions to ensure that the products really work that well and that he's not just saying what's necessary to obtain Media Luna as a major client.
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