In September of 2007, four Level Ground employees, agronomist Juan Valez, former Famicafe student Liliana Franco, Famicafe director Julian Toro, and coffee farmer Jaime Marin toured the Andes mountainside to visit Jaime Vargas on his farm in Andes, Colombia.
Jaime Vargas has been farming without agrichemicals for seven years. He has three acres of coffee and food crops such as yuca. He uses organic fertilizer from 20 pigs and three cows. Recently, with the financial help of Level Ground Trading, he installed a biodigestor which produces an average of 6 hours of gas per day for cooking in his house. Jaime is one of the most progressive members of Café San Miguel's TOP (Traceability to Origin Project) which seeks to improve organic farming methods in Colombia.
Jaime's gentle and humble nature is reflected on his farm. He tends just 2.5 acres of coffee trees interspersed with plantain, sugarcane, guava, banana, and guama trees. His farm is rich in diversity, and his soil—blanketed with arvenses, a non-competitive erosion controlling weed—is rich with nutrients.
Determined to return the land to its natural state, holds strong to his conviction that "man disrupted this equilibrium, and we can recover that. If we go back to the way we used to farm, this can be profitable again."
His farming practices alone are admirable, which makes his bio-digestor remarkable.
Largely a Taiwanese design, with a few Colombian modifications, the biodigestor converts human and pig waste into manure and methane gas, an inexpensive, renewable, enviro-friendly form of heat and fuel source.
Jaime estimates that in 50 days 35 kg of waste—one pig produces approximately 3 kgs of waste per day—can be converted to 35 kgs of manure and 12 hours of methane gas.
The entire system cost Jaime 400,000 pesos ($400 CAD) and took a total of 2 days to build.
In the future, Jaime has plans to attach the system to a water heater as well so that they can take warm showers.
Level Ground Trading would like to find avenues to support other organic coffee farmers in the development and purchase of biodigestors.
