ECHO

Last week I went on a trip to ECHO: Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization. Echo's goal is to help improve the abilities of workers in assisting poor farmers by providing and teaching useful information and skills in planting and growing crops and food sources. With that, that also grow "hard to find" food and plants. An example of this would be exotic or tropical foods and fruits. The workers of ECHO work to make farmers more effective at growing/ producing food and crops in harsh conditions.

For the first time in my life, I saw what an actual banana tree looks like.

I was unaware of what the large purple thing in the middle was. I asked and it turns about to be the flower of the tree. I did not know that there was such things as a flower on a banana tree. It was quite interesting. They had many exotic and tropical foods at ECHO.  They had Avocado trees, Barbados cherries,  Star fruit,  Figs, Guava, Jack fruit, and many many more.

During the tour we were able to experience how they grew there food sources. An example is the rice beds. The had dry rice beds compared to wet rice beds. The wet rice beds were in an almost giant puddle like environment.

My personal experience at ECHO was eye opening. Mainly because I have never seen so much "home grown" food in one area. They also had a way of connecting everything to something else. Like the manure of the ducks was food for the tilapia in the pond and so on. It was raw, everything done by hand. There were no big machines or an endless amount of workers. There was even a demo on how to clean water so it would be drinkable. It was very eye opening to see so much agriculture, and to see it still growing. Someday, I hope to grow a small garden and see where it takes off.