Second RUSTICA international workshop at Cali, Colombia

The workshop took place on 18, 19 and 20 of April at the Palmira campus of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (RUSTICA project partner).

One of the objectives of the RUSTICA project is to involve all relevant stakeholders of the agrifood industry in different activities of the project to take into account their concerns and priorities when it comes to waste management in agriculture and bio-based fertilisers.

To this end, among the different activities of RUSTICA, 2 international workshops have been held, one in Europe, which was held in May 2022 in Leuven, Belgium and was attended by mainly European stakeholders and another one in Cali, which has just been held during these past days and has been attended by more than 50 stakeholders from the Agrifood sector in South America.

Meetings and knowledge exchange activities have been held between RUSTICA partners and local stakeholders. In addition, several visits have been made to relevant places for the RUSTICA project, such as the seed bank “Semillas del Futuro”, currently considered the largest in the world. Other visits made during the seminar were:

• An industrial composting plant of the Providencia sugar mill, located in the municipality of El Cerrito, Valle del Cauca, where they make compost using all the by-products of the sugar mill’s agro-industrial process.
• Rancho Alegre farm of the Proacol company, located in the municipality of Calima el Darien, Valle del Cauca. On this farm they grow bananas and avocados, which they fertilise with poultry manure (from their own poultry production), which is composted, and they also apply efficient microorganisms.
• Composting plant of the micro-enterprise HUAO SAS, in Yumbo. They compost agro-industrial waste from fruit pulp packing plants and pruning waste; they also have worm castings and vermicompost.