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Permaculture
Ecotourism–An Exploration of Rancho Margot in El
Castillo, Costa Rica
By Scott Cooney
When the area around Lake Arenal, Costa Rica, was
deforested to make room for “McCattle”, little planning
was done for the sustainable use of the land. It’s the
same old story, and one that has played itself out for
decades in central America - demand for cheap beef in
the United States has driven the destruction of much of
the isthmus’ rainforests, and with typically thin soils,
steep topography, and slow growing forests, the land
does not recover after a few years of cattle grazing,
but rather more resembles desert grasslands that are
bereft of the area’s historic biological diversity.
Thanks to ecotourism and perhaps to carbon credits and
offsets purchased elsewhere, many efforts are underway
to reforest much of this land lost to cattle ranching.
Costa Rica’s Institute of Tourism (ICT - Instituto
Costaricense de Turismo) provides guidelines for a
Certificate of Sustainable Tourism. One of
the facets of this certification is that a company or
organization wishing to participate can earn points
toward their certification by reforesting their land and
surrounding hillsides.
6 years ago, the Sostheim family saw a piece of land,
roughly 400 acres, that sat on the bank of Lake Arenal
near El Castillo, and thought they could make some
terrific things happen. Rancho Margot was born: a
self-sufficient ranch, organic farm, and ecotourism
destination. It is completely off-grid, both in terms of
water and electricity, and produces about 85% of the
food that is eaten by the workers, family, and customers
served in the farm’s restaurant. It’s as close to
completely self-sufficient as anything I’d heard of, so
I recently paid a visit to Rancho Margot to see
firsthand the nexus of ecotourism and permaculture.
The ranch is blessed, as is much of Costa Rica, with
amazing natural resources, even despite the historical
destruction by cattle. Perhaps most importantly, the
ranch has a perennial, fast flowing tributary of the Rio
Cano which provides it with fresh water and
hydroelectric power. Two micro-scale hydroelectric
plants divert some water from the stream, and with a
gravity feed, pipe the diverted water into a turbine
that produces electricity and immediately dispenses the
water back into the stream. A fish swimming upstream
might barely notice that half the water volume is
diverted for a short length. Each of these two stations
must have its filters cleaned every 3-4 days to remove a
significant amount of organic debris, mostly consisting
of leaves, twigs, branches, and decomposing soil matter.
The staff at Rancho Margot has worked hard to plant
trees throughout the property. Many of these are fruit
trees: bread fruit, banana, plantain, papaya, mango,
avocado, and the like pepper the grounds of the ranch.
In addition, there are many plants that provide
benefits, such as the Cat Tail plant, which produces
nectar all day, which is good for attracting a variety
of pollinators, like birds, bees, bats, and many other
kinds of insect.
The ranch has dairy cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, a
vegetable garden, and a medicinal herb garden, all of
which are organic and beyond. Great care is taken to use
every “resource” produced by these livestock. Solid
manure from the cows and pigs is brought to a segmented
holding area, where worms have their way with it, and in
2 months it is akin to soil in terms of texture, feel
and smell (yes, I mushed it around in my hand to make
sure…that’s how dedicated your Triple Pundit writers
are). After 2 months here, it is moved to another area
where it is added to the organic waste, such as coffee
grinds, hay, and vegetable clippings. In this area, it
is deposited over 2 kilometers of piping, where water
from the stream flows through the decomposing material.
It’s fundamentally a cogeneration plant, where the water
gets heated for the ranch’s showers, heated swimming
pool, and other uses, but also keeps the compost from
getting too hot, which would destroy beneficial bacteria
and fungi. This creates a lot of work, where workers
have to be careful not to damage the pipes as they
remove an incredible pile of terrific soil from the 2 km
of circuitous piping by hand and shovel. Liquid waste
from the animals is taken to the biodigestor, where
off-gassing methane is gathered and used as cooking gas.
Soap is processed from a variety of resources on the
farm, including byproducts of meat production, and
pumice from the nearby hills and used coffee grinds as
exfoliants.
Two species of pigs, the traditional white pigs, plus
the native black pigs of Costa Rica, provide food for
workers and ranch guests, as do the 300+ chickens on
site, also of two species. The organic vegetable garden,
which contains beets, carrots, celery, lettuce, green
beans, cabbage, and a variety of other crops, and the
medicinal herb garden, which contained three species of
mint, basil, rosemary, cilantro, thyme, and quite a few
more, also require immense amounts of work and upkeep.
To ward off insects, the ranch creates its own insect
repellents. As the guide so accurately described, pests
adapt quickly to pesticides, requiring newer and harsher
pesticides to be developed all the time. The ranch
simply creates these repellents (the guide, also very
accurately, described them straightforwardly as nothing
that kills bugs, it is simply a deterrent) from flowers
and herbs grown on site that have natural insect
repellent characteristics. They make 6-8 types of
repellent and rotate them around the ranch. The guide
said these do a remarkable job of keeping pest damage to
a minimum.
Ranch staff harvest humus from the surrounding hillsides
and breed microorganisms from it, adding water and
molasses as microbe food, and apply this liquid around
the animal pens to help keep ticks and odors to a
minimum.
Not everything produced on site is so Spartanly
utilitarian. Ranch staff enjoy carving masks from the
balsa trees on site. In keeping with the concepts of
permaculture, which provide guidelines for sustainable
living for the entire ecosystem, including human
animals, ranch staff have access to a playground for
their children and a soccer field in addition to the
hiking trails, river, yoga platform, and heated pool.
In keeping with the ICT’s guidelines for sustainable
tourism, the ranch also has an animal rescue center and
a native tree nursery with which its staff endeavors to
reforest the surrounding hillsides. As a committed
Triple Pundit, I was extremely impressed with the
sustainability of the ranch and the social aspects. The
ranch employs 35 full time Costa Rican workers as well
as a variety of contract workers, all of whom seem
happily engaged, well paid, and ecologically savvy.
Multiple generations of the Sostheim family also live on
site.
There is, of course, the third bottom line: is Rancho
Margot profitable? While I didn’t ask directly, it
appeared that ecotourism was bringing in more money than
any other of the ranch’s extremely diverse and
sustainable operations. As co-founder of a green
business incubator, I couldn’t help but see the Ranch as
an incubator of its own: the natural soaps, the natural
insect repellents, the microbe mosh that reduced ticks,
the organic beef, dairy, pork, chicken, eggs, and
crops….it seemed that everything could be a green
business of its own, let alone lending to the
profitability of the farm.
All of these things appear possible for Rancho Margot as
it continues to scale its operations, but external
markets for products are simply not the focus at this
juncture. The Ranch accepts volunteers who have skills
that match the needs of the Ranch. I met several young
American volunteers: farm workers, a bartender, an
architect, ranch hands, and others. Perhaps Rancho
Margot needs a green business consultant to help them
set up markets for external products. Interested
parties, apply here.
Scott Cooney is co-founder of Green Business Village, a
sustainable business incubator, and author of Build a
Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an
Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill). |
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