What green my school is

Two studs believe the tara can improve the life quality of a whole school, a town… or even a macro-region.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo. Photographs by Mako Fernandez and Ronald Zevallos.

TUMÁN, Lambayequé – What do you do if you have a school about 660 feet away a factory expulsing smoke almost all the day, and the soil is mostly sandy, also being in a depression prone to floods? The answer may be waiting for anything, or worst, until once upon a day, an institution decides to move a whole town to break a world record… and it gets it.

 

Tumán is the capital city of the also-named district created in 1998 by the today convicted former Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori, inside Chiclayo Province, Lambayequé Department. The territory Surface is 50.2 sq mi, where about 27,000 people live. Tumán Town concentrates more than 23,000 inhabitants.

 

The most district’s territory is covered by sugarcane, about 27,182 acres entirely managed by empresa Agroindustrial Tumán (EAT), which the local economy and some problems related with that we use to call… progress… depend on.

 

What? Did they grow up?

On June 4th, 2010, Peru Government’s AgroRural (AR) encouraged Tumán people to plant the most quantity of tara plants(Caesalpinea spinosa) in just 5 minutes purposed to break a Guinness Record. After indecisions of local political authorities, the promoters found –literally—a fertile field in Tupac Amaru School, where about 5000 people got to plant more than 27,000 individuals with the support of Lambayequé-based Pedro Ruiz Gallo National University (UNPRG, as its initials in Spanish) and EAT workers.

 

Everything had left in the pictures and the press coverage unless the own people had the initiative to feed water and care the little plants. Surprisingly for the own AR, the most part of them survived so they compensated by donating them a drop-irrigation system.

 

Alive… by a miracle

Mako Manuel Fernandez Guerrero and Ronald Zevallos Muro were some mischiveaous Tupac Amaru’s students, where they graduated from in 2004 for entering the UNPRG’s Agronomy College. In August 2012, both were to visit the school and felt curious about the destiny of the 12.4 acres of tara planted a couple of years before. The pplants survived.

 

The dudes’ preliminary  diagnose established the plants had no longer lifetime unless urgent cultural works were to do. “They lacked irrigating and pruning,” Mako remembers. “I’m sorry to see a plantation in that state,” Ronald adds.

 

But that requires investment and here their odyssey starts, and for both, this is a run against the time because the taras can die. About US$ 24,600 can make the difference.

 

Beneath their shadow

According to Mako and Ronald, the tara can be useful 60 years old, and after giving intensive care for 2 years, the plant can give until 2 annual harvests for over than half-a-century. The tara is a legume that gives a 3-to-6-inch-length sheathwhich fruit has diverse uses from tannery industry to medicine passing through the food industry.

 

The guys’ hypotheses establishes if at least 80% of plants, the school could fund its operations because of the crop management due to it currently receives a subside by EAT that allows to pay payroll and services. “The tara gives a harvest per year since the fifth year, then you can get two harvest per year when we give a right handle,” Mako explains.

 

Open the curtain!
To get sugar, there is to burn the cane and that smoke goes in collision course to Tupac Amaru’s, located about 660 feet to the southwest. Students would be the main affected. “The key of the project is that as the factory is less than 660 feet of Tumán, this can turn in a curtain blocking this smoke to enter,” Ronalkd explains.

 

Lambayequé’s environmental Health Direction and Tumán Municipality found 1041 mg/m³ of polluted air were expulsed to the atmosphere. The allowed minimum is 150 mg/m³. Tupac Amaru’s Sciences, Technology, and Environment Area teacher Lorenzo Lalupú Silva thinks the tara project will help to reduce the negative impacts of this problem.

 

“Our goal is reducing 125 tons of carbonic anhydride  (Co²),” he comments us. Next to Mako and Ronald, he’s trying to call the attention of authorities and funders to pull the taras recovery.

 

There are still doubts about who and how to ask for funding to recuperate 1400 plants., but the Mako & Ronald’s project doesn’t stop in the agronomical handle. “We’re targetting to an ecologic handle not using chemical insecticides neither fertilizers, especially if the plantation is in a school,” Mako observes. “The sale of organic production can Benefit the school.”

 

“The other 50% (of the project) is the production that is 100% profitable – the benefits will be seen at 2 years,” Ronald forecasts remembering us that the tara is a perennial crop.

 

Sustainable gains
“The same gains make it sustainable,” Ronald says. “We are one year or two, then the Project runs alone,” he assures. His dream is waking up the scientific curiosity of the students and engaging them into the project for them to continue handling the plantation. “The type of handling is organic and we’re working with the students community,” he repeats.

 

Part of the plan includes to speak for sensitiveness and training to students purposed to inspire them. “We have thought to speak weekly every classroom, we have faith they feel curiosity about we do – that will give us a cue to introduce them the concepts of ecosystem or biodiversity,” he ddreams.

 

Coming up, it Will look for develop a students volunteership. “The idea is they go involving little by little in maintenance works and that leads them to love what they have because they are going to be the beneficiaries,” Ronald sustains. As much as he and Mako learned, there are not similar initiatives across Lambayequé and still across Peru’s Northern macro-region.

 

“We have faith of from that school, agronomical, forestal, or environmental engineers come out,” Ronald adds.

 

Exporting life
Also, what they hope is going to come out the walls of the campus and collaborating with the austere landscape of Tumán. In fact, they are now looking for fallow lands where they can plant more tara. “What we can do is pulling the biodiversity and increasing the green areas level,” Mako explains. In Tupac Amaru’s experience, it’s already possible to look at pigeons and owls nests hanging in some branches of taras.

 

Although it’s a mostly Andean tree that develops better between 3300 an11,500 feet altitude, it’s been adapted to lowlands in some way and it flourishes in sandy and rocky terrains, and low altitude. Tumán is just 114 feet above sea level.

 

“The tara can grow up in any type of soil although the production can ddeplete if the terrain is not proper as clay because it doesn’t require much humidity in the soil,” Mako underlines. Even when his top is not too leafy, and it doesn’t grow up beyond 16 ffeet, the roots can penetrate very deep into the land so they are efficient fixers of soil and humidity.

 

“When green areas appear, you improve the micro-climate, hold more water, and fight the erosion,” he adds. And as well as the tara contributes to regulate the local micro-climate, it’s possible to associate to other species in reforestation plans, most if we talk about a native species.

 

For now, the world requires about 500,000 annual tons of tara which just the tenth part is covered. From that proportion, Peru gives 80% what turns it in a market leader. Could it be aspiring more? For now, bets are concentrated in this sort of pilot that could work as well, as the studs say, anywhere with similar conditions.

 

“We don’t have any inconvenient in take out the experience to other places,” Mako warns. “I’d like getting out here but I want to leave something for my district,” Ronald ends.

 

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