Getting Puerto Rico 100 Food Sovereign?

➡ Marjorie Wellcraft, founder of Huertos Rincon and the Grow Network, is working to increase food sovereignty in Puerto Rico, where 85% of food is imported. Huertos Rincon organizes educational events, plant and seed swap parties, and community gardens to teach locals about sustainable farming and resilience. They also run the Almond Project, aiming to utilize Puerto Rico’s abundant wild almond trees to meet the island’s almond consumption needs. However, they face challenges in efficiently harvesting and processing the almonds.
➡ The text discusses two main projects. The first is about improving the process of almond harvesting by using machines, which will speed up the process and reduce manual labor. The second project is about a serious issue of contaminated soil being sold as organic soil. This soil is filled with harmful chemicals and metals from human waste and is being used by farmers. The author is testing a method using minerals and microbes to cleanse the soil of these harmful substances, with promising initial results.
➡ The text talks about a Puerto Rico-based initiative aiming for agricultural self-sufficiency. They accept donations through Zefi, which doesn’t take any cut, and Donate PR, which takes a 10% fee. They also accept cash and cryptocurrencies. The initiative organizes monthly events and aims to make Puerto Rico a model for organic, local food sovereignty. They invite people to join them, donate, or simply connect with them.

Hey, this is a quick presentation about the work that’s been going on with Huertos Rincon, which is a small nonprofit community-based organization in western Puerto Rico. So Huertos Rincon is all about food sovereignty for Puerto Rico. And there’s one thing everybody agrees on here, and that’s a damn shame that Puerto Rico imports 85% of its food. My name is Marjorie Wellcraft, and I live in Rincon, Puerto Rico, and I’m the founder of Huertos Rincon. But as you’ll see, there’s a lot of us that are involved with this. My main daytime job is I’m also the founder of the Grow Network, which is a large online website community of people dedicated to growing food and making medicine, becoming more resilient and building community resilience.

Just a few things, so you get a little background. I’ve hosted Mother Earth News Homesteading Summit, listed in who’s who for having inspired so many backyard farmers. And Reuters gave me an award for sustainability media. There’s a lot more. I’ve been doing this for quite a few years and they add up. Written quite a few books. The most famous one though is called The Grow System, The Essential Guide to Modern Self-Sufficient Living from Growing Food to Making Medicine. Yeah, pick up a copy. Give me a five-star review on Amazon. When you write your book, that’s what you’ll be saying.

So I’ve been here and building community resilience since 2020. And we do educational events, plant and seed swap parties, community gardens, the almond project, and the minerals and microbes. And again, those last two have both island wide and the last one has also complete United States mainland impact. So just whip through some of these community educational events. So here’s this was one of our most favorite and well attended was the three bucket worm farming system. We’ve had Maria Benedetti, who is a very famous herbalist here on the island several times, teaching wild plant medicines.

This was a workshop where this was actually the flattest area in the yard. And we were talking about there’s a lot of slopes like this. If you live in Puerto Rico, you know it. And we were talking about how do you grow food on really steep slopes, if that’s what you’ve got in the backyard. Anilda, we do community outreach. This was a by the way, all of our workshops and all of our materials are bilingual. This was a starting from seeds workshop. Here we were doing a wetlands, we happen to have a wetlands expert come in.

And so we were doing some soil samples and discussing wetlands and wetland plants. We’ve done a lot of veggie gardening classes. And I think this is actually the Caribbean Agroforestry Institute’s flyer, but we do a lot of backyard meat production. By the way, if you’re looking at these different flyers and you’re going, they’re all different. It’s because just whoever or whatever volunteers we had at the moment to make the flyers made them up. So you’ll see all of our flyers are totally different. And actually, I need to get somebody to help me.

We need to make a logo and probably just get some consistent colors and fonts and branding because I don’t know. We also do the booths at the farmer’s market or on the side of the road or information, just rallying community, preparing your garden for dry season. So we also do a lot of plant and seed swap parties. This is Puerto Rico. Everything needs to center around a party. I’m totally good with that. And intercambio de planta ismías. We’ve had a lot of them. Have a lot of fun. Just all kinds of people show up every age and all the race and color and whatever.

Oh, and one of the great things about hosting this is I often get first dibs on whatever’s coming in. So sharing seeds and plants and genetics and information. Super important for the community and then having those of us that are growers gathering and getting together. And you can see sometimes I just did pictures with people. They’re just so happy with the plants they got or I have them pick up their favorite plant that they got. So a lot of, we’ve been doing these. This is every other month, January, March, May, July, third Saturday of the month, 9 to 11 a.m.

Come on out sometime. They’re just really fun events. Again, you can see every kind of flyer under the earth made up. There I am. There’s Maria Benedetti with me and then another gentleman, Raymond, who’s been a big supporter throughout the years. Now, community gardens. And I will say gardens. Right now, we only have one. We had built another one. Actually, Shannon Francis was taking the lead on that. And then the church decided, no, we think a parking lot would be better. We also had a quarter acre food forest that the owner decided, no, we’re not going to do that anymore.

And I want to sell that lot. He destroyed everything. But hey, this is non-profit doing what we can with what we have type thing. So Simply Greens, operator of the business there in Italia, super friendly and like-minded. And here is the lot that the area that we got to start with. And then I’m not sure how many weekends it took us to build this, three or four weekends. And then everybody donating either money or cinder blocks or soil, cardboard and gathering resources and building the beds, filling them up with stuff and working at it.

And again, just really fun times. A lot of different people, a lot of different groups coming together. And then of course, we had to do this hokey photo right here. And then as soon as we started it, everybody wanted it and you’re like, let’s do it again. It’s fun. I took this shot just a week ago to show you how that particular area has transformed. We’re just loving it and producing food. I’m regularly out there at the cafe and people come by and it was wonderful. I was with this family. Basil just grows like a weed here.

And I said, hey, and they were visiting, this is a tourist town. And I gave them a bunch of basil and I’m like, you guys know what to do with this, right? And they’re like, uh, and I’m like, well, you can take the fresh leaves and put it, you know, on, on your food, you know, like you would when you’re cooking. Or if you dry the leaves out and crumble them up, you put them in a little jar and that’s exactly what you buy. And when I said that, it was astonishing how their eyes just opened up and they go, Oh, this is basil like we buy in the store.

And I’m like, yeah, we got a lot of work to do. Anyway, the almond project is another project I’m super passionate about. So Puerto Rico imports about 670,000 pounds of almonds each year. That’s a few ounces per person. Sounds about right, right? It takes 1900 gallons of water to produce one pound of those California almonds, which are mostly the almonds that we’re importing. But a thing you may not know is that Puerto Rico has wild almond trees growing everywhere. I mean, everywhere. And they’re wild. Nobody’s like watering them or fertilizing them or doing anything.

I mean, and there they are just producing bunches and bunches of almonds that are laying on the ground rotting. This is a tree right out near the Econo here in the big supermarket in Rincon. There are these trees lie in the streets everywhere in Rincon and on the beaches. They’re all over the Puerto Rican island. We are absolutely certain that we have more than enough wild almond trees to provide all of the needs for Puerto Rico’s almond consumption. Our almonds are genetically different, but they taste and look the same little skinnier, but they really are essentially identical.

The biggest challenge we have is hauling them. So to get an almond machine, it’s either on the scale of the commercial stuff. Most of them are in like they’re assuming you have a thousand acres, 10,000 acres, or some kind of California farm. Those machines are just way inappropriate for the neighborhood or island scale production. But through some generous donations and a lot of community support, we found a smaller machine that processes the almonds and managed to buy one. It costs about $20,000 to get it here with a little bit of finagling to get the fundraising and again some really generous support.

So we’ve been collecting and experimenting. You have to dry them first when they go through the machine. So we were drying them for a while on some racks on the ground. Here we’re building some air racks. We’ve been trying all kinds of stuff. I don’t have all the photos. One time we had it in a trailer that we were taking in and out of the rain. Anyway, at this stage where we’re at is it takes, let me get my thing out of the way so you can see Karina here working on the machine.

To get about 10 ounces of almonds right now, it takes about four hours of work, which is clearly not a sustainable business model. But every business you start out with, you’ve got to start somewhere. So we’ve been working, the manufacturer of this unit, he’s also working with some other tropical countries that are wanting to do similar things. He says he’s improved the bearings. He can double the speed. If we had two of the machines working in parallel, because this is an adjustable machine, you have to use one adjustment to take off the outer hull and then you use another adjustment to shell it.

And another thing right now, we’re manually sifting through and finding the almonds. So using a bean sifter is a machine that just basically kind of like a little shaker table with several different layers of screens. We know that we can speed this up and we want to do that. Those bean sifters last I checked are about $3,000 a piece and imported from China. So we’re in a bit of a hurry to go ahead and order these because Trump has said his favorite word is tariff. And I’m like, Oh my God, that means the price of everything is going to escalate.

So there is huge amount of interest in this, by the way, not only from everybody who eats almonds on the island, but there’s an initiative in nearby Aguada, John Murray chocolate that is working with a lot of small farmers to produce cacao. And they’re working to make a branded high quality Puerto Rican chocolate, and they actually just reached out to me last month and said, Hey, have you got those almonds already? And I’m like, not quite yet, but we’re working on it. And yeah, your contribution and support and help would be tremendously useful.

Now, the final project I want to talk about, and this has huge impact for every single person on this island and for the greater United States also. So let me ask you a question. If you’re in San Juan, what happens when you flush the toilet? Well, it magically turns into this. No kidding. I’m gonna pull this again out of the way so you can see this organic soil. You’re like, what? Yeah, it’s organic soil. All right, let’s see if we can make there we go. Yep, seriously. Now, I can tell you because I have tested it and sent this into quite a few different labs is not this is the furthest from organic than you can imagine.

This is completely loaded with forever chemicals, glyphosate, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, everything that people flush down or poop down the toilet in the cities. And hospitals, light industry, everything. And they do some composting this they the composting does not get it out. And they’re selling it as organic soil. This is a 40 quart bag, very, very common. You’ll see it in the big box stores, you’ll see it in nurseries, you’ll see it sold everywhere. And on the back of the bag, it says, Yes, you know, use this as a top dressing for your vegetable garden.

You know, use this in your planting. It’s just hugely problem. And the thing is, there’s a lot of people what what do we got in San Juan 2 million or so all flushing the toilet several times a day. And that stuff’s not just being sold in the 40 quart bags to individuals which they are selling. It’s being sold by the truck load and even the container load or even just given away to farmers all over the entire island. And I do know of organic farmers that swear they’re farming organically and they use this and they believe they are because look, it says it’s organic, right? Actually, I was originally thinking this is incredibly fraudulent, but no, it is completely sanctioned by the United States Department of Agriculture and the federal drug and whatever administration.

This is completely sanctioned by the US government and it is a horrendous thing. And it’s not just Puerto Rico. This is going on all over the United States. I mean, every municipality now basically does this and it’s sold like in Austin, they sell it as dillow dirt. And I think in Portland, it’s sold as Organite and I they have these names that kind of sound good. And it’s absolutely toxic soil. And again, they’re giving it away to farmers in vast quantities, they’re basically distributing this everywhere. And again, it is loaded with forever chemicals.

So at this point in my life, I have realized that almost everything I have learned or have been taught, I should say, is a lie. And I’m questioning everything. And so I met some guys that had, they have this minerals and microbes procedure, you know, it’s not a very complicated thing, you kind of make a compost tea out of it that they said would destroy forever chemicals, that it would turn heavy metals into essential fatty acids, and that it would take apart glyphosate. And, you know, all the other things, the pharmaceuticals, and I’m like, I love you guys, I really think they have incredible integrity, but you’re talking about breaking science as we know it.

But again, I’m like, I’m open minded, it’s pretty simple. Let’s test it. So, you know, I do the thing by the cinder blocks and build a garden bed. And we filled it, there’s my friend, Mark, we filled it with reasonably good soil, this is not the what I affectionately call the shit soil. And then I did top it off with this majestic, majestic gardens, biosludge soil, and planted in it and grew some stuff. By the way, there’s netting on it, because this is Puerto Rico. And I did not want the neighborhood chickens and the neighborhood cats adding to the experiment.

Yeah, and then I only did the testing on forever chemicals. And it blew me away, because it they destroyed forever chemicals. So there were seven forever chemicals detected in significantly high amounts. And then after we were done, actually, I only got to do the test for about two months. Explain that in a minute, but two of them were completely destroyed. And of the five that remained, they were significantly reduced on average, about 50%. There’s one that was 85%. And another was about 10%. Yeah, I wanted to run the test for four months.

But yeah, just, you know, we’re a nonprofit doing what we have to do. And I had to move and the landlord I grabbed the samples before the landlord shut the gate, you know, kind of a deal. And then I was like, Oh, my God, maybe this can do heavy metals. And I did run by let me go back to that one second. This is a pace analytical services. They do have offices here in Puerto Rico, they have offices and laboratories all over the United States and possibly other countries. They’re big. They’re absolutely certified by the USDA is in the FDA is to measure forever chemicals.

And, you know, it’s completely the heavy metal stuff, we use Texas plant and soil lab, they were just a little less expensive, the heavy, the PFAS tests are about $450 a pot. And heavy metals are about $350 a piece. So the heavy metals were inconclusive. And so I’m rerunning tests. And actually, here’s a new test, I just got this one planted about two weeks ago. And again, I’m using like these, what are these 2035 gallon planters. And this is completely full of biosludge soil, I’m no more diluting, I’m just going hardcore.

And I’m actually about to start another one in the next couple of days. And I never thought in my wildest imagination, I buy Roundup, but I’m buying a bottle of Roundup just to add to the soil to make absolutely certain that we have high levels of Roundup. It is pretty well known that microbes can destroy Roundup. The question is in this particular kit with the minerals and microbes kit that these gentlemen have, there’s 1000 microbes. And are some of those species the kind that take apart glyphosate, known as Roundup? I’m very confident it does.

And I can just tell you from a personal anecdote, when I was taking these tests, the way you take a soil test is you, you have a shovel that you take in six inches deep, and you lean back, and there’s like a procedure and you take, you know, like six samples per, you know, 16 square feet or something like that. And as I was taking the soil samples, when you get this biosludge soil, it really stinks, it doesn’t stink like human feces, but it stinks like chemical nastiness. And as I was taking the final soil samples, I couldn’t help it.

And I was like, that smelled like really good soil. So we have a lot more testing to do. I’m actually beginning to collaborate with somebody, a researcher, a microbiologist from, I believe it’s a Naval Research Center. She said they are desperate to find a solution for destroying forever chemicals. And we’re working with other groups, but it’s still pretty small ragtag, you know, and we also may get into some interesting trouble because there are apparently forces that don’t want to see this fixed. That’s a whole nother conversation. But anyway, so that’s what we do here with Huertos Rincon, educational events, plant and seed swap parties, community gardens, the almond project, and the minerals and microbes.

So if there’s something that’s interesting and usual, unusual, and highly impactful, we’re on it. So how can you be a part? Okay, so if you just want a 501c3, if you’re still doing that whole kind of stuff, we set up a thing with Zefi. Here’s a link, and I’ll have it linked down below in the description, donation form, Puerto Rico Agricultural Self-Sufficiency, and they take credit cards. If you are here in Puerto Rico with the Act 22 or Act 60 programs, we work with Donate PR. And by the way, Zefi takes nothing.

We get 100% of what they give us. If you’re a Donate PR person, Donate PR takes 10%, which is a fair. They’re a fiscal manager for us. We do take cash. And I’m telling you, I got one, a gentleman came up to me with this, like a stack like this. They were they were 20s, not hundreds. $5,000 in cash came in a paper bag. And I said, do you need a receipt for that? He said, no. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything illegal or contraband or he just happened to have a lot of cash.

And he said, you just need to keep doing what you’re doing. I’m like, thank you. We also accept cryptocurrencies. And for several years, we’ve had people just donate cryptocurrency. Some of them do it in USDC or USDT, but we’ve had other people do Litecoin or Ethereum. So I would love to connect with you personally. You can call me. This is my personal phone number, 737-230-4699. Text me first. That’s generally better. Yeah, I would love to catch up with you. Like, let’s have a coffee together or better yet, let’s have lunch over at Simple Green’s, the cafe.

You can see the community garden. If you go to huertosringcone.com, we’ve got a sign up where we send out newsletters. We’re doing an event at least once a month. So plant or seed parties, educational stuff. We’d love to show you around and get to know you. And I totally envision, okay, stop. I totally envision that Puerto Rico can be completely food-sulfur. I mean, we’ve got more than enough almondries. It could actually be an export business. There’s no reason we couldn’t clean, abundant, healthy food. We can clean up these soils. We can educate people.

We’ve got a 365-day growing season. You know, there’s no reason we could not be a shining example of organic, local food sovereignty. So please join me with this vision. Any support you can help would be totally awesome. And even if you’re not supporting, give me a call if you’re in Rinko and let’s connect up. [tr:trw].