When we finally surfaced for air, Xime took one look at me and started laughing. My face was streaked with dirt, my hair askew with sticks in it and my backpack which had come unzipped was littered with spiders, ants, coffee cherries and branches. Xime and I had been crawling on our knees under the thatched branches of the coffee, lost inside the dense maze of plants. Dead ends and steep slopes kept us going in circles trying to find our way to the shade tree in the middle of the plot.
It was my fault.
Falcon On-Farm is a collaborative project that brings together experts and stakeholders from across the supply chain to figure out what regen ag techniques work best for smallholder coffee farms in specific regions. Sam brings the expertise in regen ag techniques and design and implementation. Siruma brings the agronomy, sustainability and training experience.
And I, as an ecologist and research scientist, bring the desire to measure and count everything I can. And, thankfully for this trip, I made it through security with all of my gadgets for field measurements.
We need reputable data to be able to actually understand the impacts of these new techniques on things like crop productivity, soil health, pests and diseases, biodiversity and costs. We did interviews with the participating producers to learn about their management practices and motivation for transitioning to regen ag. We took vegetation measurements and soil samples in each of the farms.
We also set up camera traps to give us an idea of what kinds of animals may be passing through or using the coffee farm for habitat and how that might change over the duration of the project. We have a few different ways of measuring biodiversity that I’ll talk more about in a separate post. We will be sharing our findings, stories, successes and failures throughout this project. So stay tuned for more…
So that was not the original tree I spotted for the camera trap…the original one was in the middle of plot, the one that Xime and I had to crawl on our knees to find. But it wasn’t until we finally made it out to the tree, that I saw how steep the terrain was which wouldn’t give a good angle for the line of the sight for the camera trap…and I was like – nope, that tree won’t work and we had to backtrack and find our way out of the coffee maze. (We made it.)
| Successes | Challenges |
| Solid team | Soil samples that we 2-day express mailed to the lab for biological analysis, took a detour through Panama and got to the lab 7 days late and may not be viable |
| Great farms | |
| Found good spots for the camera traps | Made Xime scamper like a mouse under the coffee plants with me for no reason |
