Offering Bogota’s residents organic food and being a laboratory for agroecological production: the successful project of a Frenchman in La Calera
La Finca en la Nube is a project that was born in 2018 as a pilot agroecological production farm. Since then, it has grown to evolve into a project that involves agroecology technicians and university interns, and markets organic food in and around Bogota.
We spoke with one of its founders, Jean Sutter, a French citizen who settled in the village of Santa Helena, located in the municipality of La Calera, very close to Bogota. There, Sutter is able to work on his organic and agroecological food production project, while at the same time working as a technology teacher at the Louis Pasteur French High School in Bogota.
Sutter outlined the complexities of the project, explained the difficulties it has had to go through and how these challenges led the agroecological production project to the need to weave an important network of organic food producers, capable of providing food to a significant group of families in Bogota and La Calera.
Here are some of the most relevant questions from the video interview, which you can see in full at the top of the page.
Agroecological production is always a challenge, but it is even more so in a tropical country that does not have the help of the seasons in controlling pests and where life is so strong that sometimes it overwhelms. Is agroecological agriculture viable in a country like Colombia?
Agroecology as such is based on the idea that nature itself contributes a lot to the crops. Let me give you an example, at La Finca en la Nube we are in a cold climate. That means that we do have pest problems, but we don’t have the problems that slugs and snails can cause, as other farms in the sector do.
Why don’t we have this kind of “problems”? Because we have a great biodiversity and we respect the ecosystems. I believe that there are many methods, many tricks, many techniques that allow us to cultivate in harmony with nature.
About the viability of agroecology… It is a very difficult question to answer. Being a farmer in Colombia, or anywhere in the world, is a very difficult challenge.
Organic fruits and vegetables are certainly attractive, but their prices drive many away. How much higher is their value and what strategies have you adopted to keep prices affordable?
According to last year’s figures, there was a rise in agricultural input prices due to the crisis in Ukraine. In theory, this should not affect agroecological production, since it is based on closed circuits, such as the production of organic fertilizers, and these costs should be lower.
However, it is true that it is a bit “more complex” to control pests without using any pesticides. The real cost of conventional agriculture is very low compared to that of agroecological agriculture, but this cost does not reflect the environmental cost.
Actually, the cost of production should imply a higher purchase price. What happens is that we have the habit of buying fruits and vegetables very cheaply, but this price does not take into account good working conditions for the workers nor does it take into account the environmental impact.
Moreover, since last year the prices of conventional production are very close to the prices of agroecological production that we find in the markets. This is due, for example, to the fact that many fertilizers came from Russia and because of the conflict, prices exploded. Fertilizer prices went up a lot.
In this situation, resources for agroecological production become much more manageable over time.
However, in Colombia the cost that does increase a lot and affects agroecological production is that of seeds, because in the country seeds are imported.
Can organic products made in Colombia compete with imported products?
I think so, absolutely. There is a diversity of climates, incredible varieties in Colombia. The issue is that we are in a globalized world and, on many occasions, local production costs cannot compete with the production costs of large foreign companies.
As a result, it is cheaper to import the products of these companies than to produce them here.
This is a pity because I believe that a wide variety of food can be produced in Colombia and in a much cleaner way. This would lead to a significant increase in rural development.
You have been working on a platform through which people can buy the organic food you produce. How has this process been and what is the profile of your customers?
At the beginning the project was only productive, but in the middle of the way I realized that it took a long time to reach the expected productivity point. While I was understanding the situation, the pandemic arrived.
When the pandemic hit, many “nearby” producers had no means of distribution, no market, no store, no supermarket for a while. This is why we came in to support them, we put at their disposal a distribution service that we already had working very well before 2020.
Thus, little by little we were achieving a network of 35 producers from La Calera, Guasca, Ubaté, Fusagasugá, Bogotá and its surroundings.
Now we have a website where we make our products available to our customers. Every week people can enter the platform to place their orders, and every Thursday we deliver the products.
The clientele is made up of more women than men, but the difference is very small. I would say that the age range of our customers is between 30 and 60 years old, more or less.
About half of the clientele is, so to speak, expatriates, very close to the Lycée Français, because they were our first and closest contacts.
Little by little, we have built up a Colombian clientele that now makes up half of our total clients: half foreigners and half Colombians. Our idea is that the Colombian clientele will continue to grow.
What products do you sell?
Among the products we offer is a wide variety of fresh and organic vegetables and fruits, such as San Marzano and Monterosa tomatoes, organic lettuce mix, zucchini, peppers, onions, lettuce varieties, arugula, chard, kale, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, shitakes, lulo, mango, tangerines, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, avocados and bananas, among others.
We also sell French-inspired matured cheeses, honey, sauerkraut and fermented cheeses, yogurts and other dairy products, falafels, hummus, chocolate, empanadas, handmade arepas, preserves (soups, sauces, jams, etc.), charcuterie, eggs, meats, breads, pastries and pasta. All these products are selected among the best producers present in the agro-ecological markets of Bogota and its region.
In the next months you will have the first interns with the support of Uniminuto. What is the objective of this program and what will be the students who will be linked to the project?
With time and the experience we acquired we realized that Finca en la Nube is an agroecological laboratory. That is why we are trying to develop many techniques, many methods. Some work, some fail, and this in itself is very interesting.
I am very inspired by what is happening in Canada, the United States and Europe: these micro farms, in the end, become a pedagogical platform, an exchange and training platform for tomorrow’s workers, hopefully.
So, what we are doing, concretely, is that we want to have people in training. For the moment we are starting with Uniminuto, but this does not mean that we are closed to other proposals.
We can offer the students a few months of accompaniment on the farm so that they can discover a little and participate in the laboratory’s reflection on many topics.
We also have connections with other farms, where we can expect the interns to have their first job. So, in this area the farm aims to be an incubator of projects, to give a boost and a technical background to people who want to get involved in these dynamics of organic food production.
As you tell us, La Finca en La Nube has become an agroecological laboratory. What aspects of production are you experimenting with and what results have you found?
Little by little we learned about the difficulties of agroecological production. The objective is to be able to produce and interconnect the production processes so that a “waste” or a waste from one stage is the input to another process. That all processes are interconnected.
For example, we have hens that we try to put at the center of the processes, because they help us not to have waste in the orchard, they produce eggs and also produce fertilizers. So, the hen is like a tool and, at the same time, she is our best friend.
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