One Ear at a Time

At SOIL, we are always looking to learn and share knowledge. That’s why every quarter we work with agriculture students from local universities who come and do an intern project with us.

The training helps the students finish out their education and move from studying theory to actually having hands-on practice. They work on an experimental garden project and produce a final report that is not only helpful to SOIL, but required for their course work and graduation for their degree of Bachelor of Agricultural Science. As one of recent interns, Aline Pierre, noted in her research proposal, “This study will produce research and a final report that will provide knowledge that is very important for this region.” SOIL is working with local farmers to introduce organic compost to the market and to provide some possible solution around the various problems faced by producers of agriculture in the country.

Aline (R) gathering data for her corn experiment

Aline’s research focused on a local variety of corn and how it responds to different levels of compost. Although we’re still anxiously awaiting Aline’s corn results, we are already preparing for our next batch of students, who will be studying eggplant and peanuts.

Kernals from the harvested corn are dried and weighed to provide data for Aline’s experiment.

This is a great collaboration for SOIL, as we get to see the value of our compost in action, and more people learn about our activities and system of EcoSan and agriculture cycle.

Stay tuned for Aline’s final results, along with our on-going work with our Agriculture interns. As our interim Agricultural Director Job Etienne said “It is important for us to share our knowledge with the next generation of Agronomists, and we learn in the process as well.”