ECHO Global Food and Farm Festival a learning experience
The annual ECHO Global Food and Farm Festival returned to its roots this past weekend.
After several years of expansion to the point where is became a weeklong event, it retuned a single day event where ECHO opened its farm to the public and featured tours, food tastings, and workshops for the entire family.
Despite the gloomy Saturday morning, people from all over came to the farm on Durrance Road in North Fort Myers and got to experience the farm, what it does and how it has helped save hundreds of millions of people worldwide from starvation by teaching small-scale farmers how to do more with less.
Elliott Toevs, deputy director at ECHO, said they were excited to hold the festival again and hoped visitors would come to understand the challenges small farmers worldwide face and perhaps volunteer or help ECHO in a financial way.
“Every year it’s something a little bit different with different vendors and different demonstrations,” Toevs said. “Overall, the spirit is the same. We try to engage the public. It’s the one time where we can open our doors to the community and engage people.”
Guests spent the day exploring the 57-acre farm, took part in tropical rainforest demonstrations, discovered approaches to alternative energy such as biogas, and experienced hands-on learning for just about everything.
Everyone had a chance to taste, touch, and explore their way around the world while learning about global hunger and the practical solutions that make a difference.
Guests could wander the farm at their own pace, enjoy educational activities such as kids having their passport filled out by ECHO volunteers for visiting certain demonstrations, and take in a full day of discovery.
Among the things visitors got to check out was sugar cane and peanut butter tasting, wool spinning, microscope exploration, tomatoes, seed saving, regenerative practices for edible landscapes, compost building, cooking shows and more.
The event wouldn’t be possible without the more than 80 volunteers who lend a hand in one way or the other.
Haley Briggs was a volunteer who manned the sugar cane press so people can taste the juice that comes out of it.
“The cane was harvested yesterday by friends from Gordon College. We came here on our spring break to help ECHO,” Briggs said. “It doesn’t take much besides effort and it’s easy to make. This press is from Cambodia.”
Lenorah Wonga, another volunteer, put out samples of the meals people from around the world eat. Rice and beans are a staple in many parts of the world.
“We have starfruit pure grown on the farm and we have rice and beans that’s also grown on the farm,” Wonga said. “It’s a dish you’d find in tropical climates. It’s a standard dish along with vegetables.”
The traditional first demonstration was coffee and how it’s roasted from the people at Bones Coffee. Raul Cotto, sales director for Bones Coffee, and Oscar Clough said the idea was to teach how coffee is roasted and how they help ECHO.
“We’re environmentally friendly. We recycle our chaff and burlap bags,” Clough said. “They use the chaff for their compost and mulch. The bags are a wheat barrier and they’re getting great results. We give it to them instead of throwing it in the trash.”
There were also a lot of vendors displaying their wares.
Brad Campagna, owner of Blend Lab Café, was selling his blended drinks and protein balls. He is mainly online now, but hopes to have a store in Babcock Ranch soon.
“We have a limited menu because we’re still online. Cold-pressed juices are easy to make, squeeze and deliver,” Campagna said. We have mocktails when we do events like this. We want to have a store in the summer so we can expand to smoothies and protein shakes.”
Visitors seemed to love it. Karen Quinlan from Naples was coming for the first time and said it was amazing, even if she came for landscaping purposes.
“I should have anticipated all the outreach, but I came to see all the different fruit trees,” Quinlan said. “I put a food forest in my yard a year ago and I’m going to put more in soon. I get to see what I’m planting.”
ECHO is an international organization that “introduces sustainable plants, techniques, and technologies to farmers around the world who are struggling to feed their families. We go out into the world to provide training and resources that empower small-scale farming families to thrive.” It’s regional impact centers provide training and resources to empower small-scale family farmers in Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, North America, East Africa, and West Africa.
For more information, to volunteer to to make a donation visit https://echonet.org/.