Permaculture in Costa Rica, a sustainable model for transforming the productive landscape

Monteverde (Costa Rica), Sep 5 (EFE) - Permaculture is a sustainable model that seeks to transform the productive landscape in Costa Rica. Beyond being an agricultural technique, it is presented as a system of efficient design and management of natural resources, working alongside nature to generate benefits for both communities and the environment.

The main objective of this model is to replenish and enrich the earth, both for human use and for nature. Therefore, through the observation and understanding of renewable natural resources such as the sun, water, wind, and earth, an interaction is created to create a unique design that can generate either food or energy.

"It's a method of landscape and ecological design based on a cultural method, where we work with natural resources and not against them," says permaculture guide Cris Rojas, who adds that the proposal uses natural resources to achieve their best performance, "which means that if I have a lot of sun in a certain area and I know how the sun behaves on the earth, I can harness that energy to produce food, so it's a great solution for the productive landscape," she adds.

Permaculture co-founder, Australian David Holmgren, defined the model's 12 principles as: "Thinking tools that, when used together, allow us to creatively redesign our environment and behavior in a world with less energy and resources."

The twelve principles are: Observe and interact, capture and store energy, achieve efficiency, self-regulate and accept feedback, use and value renewable resources and services, produce no waste, design patterns in detail, integrate rather than segregate, use small and slow solutions, use and value diversity, use edges and value the marginal, and creative use and response to change.

Permaculture applied in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, the Valle Escondido Nature Reserve, located in Monteverde, which combines a seventeen-hectare nature reserve with an organic farm, offers tourism and educational experiences that integrate hospitality, using this practice to create a connection with nature and a healthy lifestyle in its visitors.

According to Rojas, Costa Rica—with its vast natural wealth and tradition of environmental policies and forest protection—offers an ideal setting for implementing permaculture as a strategy for rural development and sustainable production.

As part of their efforts, they use small greenhouses called Jonah's Tubes in the reserve, made from repurposed truck tires, where they grow some of the food for their restaurant. They also use rainwater collected from buildings by gravity to help fertilize the plants growing in the area, which is in line with the principle of achieving yields.

"We use rainwater to irrigate some of our green houses, and we also reuse gray water, such as laundry and kitchen water, to filter it. We also use it to irrigate all our aromatic gardens, which allows us to save an incredible amount of water and resources," Rojas explains.

Along the same route, the reserve's crops are organic. "We're free of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, and we offer them in our organic restaurant, that's farm-to-table," the guide explained.

Another proposal is the implementation of the soldier fly eco-technique, which consists of using organic waste, especially chicken manure, as an input for the larvae of this fly to decompose. This reduces organic waste by preventing it from ending up in landfills where it generates greenhouse gases and transforming this waste into nutrient-rich compost.

However, permaculture shouldn't be limited to the design of productive landscapes or the management of natural resources. "We need to broaden the concept a little further and not see it just as a design method, but as a lifestyle. And how can we achieve this by following some of the ethical principles and values ​​in our daily lives? From caring for the land, caring for people, buying organic products, and reducing the amount of waste we produce—these are small steps," Rojas points out. EFE