I had the fantastic opportunity to attend a course in Tropical Agriculture Development at ECHO Inc in Ft. Myers Florida in January.
It was an amazing experience and I was able to learn a great deal during the week-long, full-days course.
ECHO is a non-profit organization that provides education, research, and development resources to farmers, missionaries, Peace Corps Volunteers, and Aid workers.
The vision of ECHO is “Honoring God by empowering the undernourished with sustainable hunger solutions”. They have been accomplishing this goal since the 70’s.
ECHO provides resources with knowledge about plants, practices, and appropriate technologies that can improve the volume and value of small scale farm food production. In addition, and extensive seed bank is maintained at ECHO to provide Development workers with successful cultivars and varieties of plants that will improve production and better disease and climate problem resilience.
Some of the subjects covered in the course included Tropical Soil and Soil Life, Land Care and Soil Restoration, Soil Fertility and Green Manure Cover Crops, Water resources for Tropical Agriculture, Basic Botany, Seed saving, Under Utilized Tropical Crops, Community Development, Tropical Fruit and Nursery Management, and Appropriate Technology.
ECHO has an extensive research library that was available to students for independent study. Staff was available to the students for discussion and meeting periods and this was quite helpful. Optional time for working with plant propagation was also available.
Another great benefit of the experience was the interaction with fellow students. As a result of being able to meet like minded individuals at ECHO I will be doing design work in Sierra Leone in May and South Africa in August!
Anyone that gets near Ft. Myers FL should definately make a tour of ECHO a planned stop.
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