Class in Session: How One University In Costa Rica is Saving Earth’s Future

“Isn’t every day Earth Day?” It was a question put to me by a five-year-old kindergartner while substitute teaching a lesson on Earth Day last year. I didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t lead to a dozen more questions, so I just shrugged.

Five months later and no longer substitute teaching, I visited Earth University, a place where no one needs a holiday to be reminded of earth’s abundance. In fact, it’s that abundance – namely bananas – that funds the University. If you’ve ever bought Costa Rican bananas at Whole Foods Market, you’ve made a contribution.

How does buying a banana – specifically, a banana certified by Fairtrade International and the Rainforest Alliance, among others – have this kind of impact? The answer starts with the University itself.

Set in the humid tropics of one of Costa Rica’s poorest areas, Earth University is a private, non-profit University focused on achieving human and environmental sustainability through agriculture. Its students, 80% of whom are recruited from marginalized communities primarily in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, are trained in advanced fields including peri-urban farming and biodynamic agriculture.

Each year’s studies begin in January and end on the third week of December. Daily classes commence Mondays at 6:30am and end late Saturday afternoon. As part of their coursework, students establish their own businesses centered on a particular area of interest. Past businesses have involved energy conversion, agri-tourism, and innovations in organic pest control. Following completion of the Earth University curriculum, students graduate with credentials akin to a Master’s Degree.

But while impressive, this is not what makes Earth University unique. Rather, it’s the University’s mission – to “Prepare leaders with ethical values for sustainable development of the tropics and maintain a commitment to construct a prosperous and just society” – and how it undertakes to achieve that mission that set it apart.

Next up, the role of banana production in education and agricultural sustainability… [pagebreak]

“The unique thing that we do here is how we recruit students,” says Earth University President Dr. Jose A. Zaglul, who points out that applicants from poorer communities are at a disadvantage when it comes to standardized entrance exams and other common admissions criteria. “Kids that don’t have the best professors in the world, they would take that exam and would not score high, and it’s not because they are not intelligent. It’s because they do not have contacts and resources.”

To illustrate the point, Zaglul describes a day in the life of an impoverished child: “He had to walk an hour and a half to school, and he had to milk the cows before he went to school, and [his home] didn’t have electricity, and he had to do homework by candlelight. How can he compete?”

The solution was to forego entrance exams and, instead, meet with prospective students face to face. Says Zaglul: “We go where no one has ever gone.”

As a result, most Earth University students hail from remote agricultural regions. Half of them – an average 70 students per year – receive full scholarships. To date, the University has awarded more than $1.1 million in tuition money. It’s the profits from the University’s banana plantation that support the scholarships.

But that wasn’t always the case. In 2002, more than a decade after its first academic year, Earth University continued to struggle financially. Though 50% of the world’s biodiversity is located in Costa Rica – “We are millionaires in terms of biodiversity,” says Zaglul – the operational costs of maintaining faculty, conducting research, housing and feeding students, and providing scholarships were difficult to meet. Enter Whole Foods, with whom the University established a strategic partnership to export and sell the bananas produced at its on site plantation.

By the end of the partnership’s first year, Whole Foods had exported 38,400 boxes of bananas. By 2013, Whole Foods was exporting more than 700,000 boxes: 500,000 went to its stores in the U.S. and 200,000 went to local and alternative markets.

Click through to learn about the human and environmental successes of the partnership… [pagebreak]

The partnership’s benefits have extended beyond scholarships and into the University’s neighboring communities. Its creation yielded the first Whole Trade Program, wherein Whole Foods works with third party agencies to certify production. Among these agencies are Fair Trade USA and the Rainforest Alliance. The former focuses on community development, assuring, for example, that a portion of the profits from banana sales are given to a workers’ collective that decides how to distribute the money among community members. The latter specializes in working conditions and environmental security. (The plantation received a 100% score on its most recent Rainforest Alliance audit.)

Establishing the infrastructure required to meet each agency’s stringent certification standards was no small task. The challenges facing sustainable banana production in the humid tropics are many, and ensuring the proper treatment and compensation of employees was and remains paramount.

To reduce environmental impact, Earth University Professor Luis Pocosangre employs innovative field methods: ground cover to prevent erosion; specialized plants in drainage ditches to filter and clean water; bags treated with chili and garlic to protect bananas from sunburn and pests; composting rejected bananas and stems; and cultivating efficient microorganisms that control nematodes, release nutrients, and minimize the need for chemical fertilizers. On the latter, Whole Foods and Earth University spend $1,000 per year per hectare – $340,000 per year to cover the plantation’s 340 hectares – which is nearly three times the amount it costs ($350 per hectare each year) to control pests using inorganic chemical compounds.

“The relationship we have with Whole Foods is one of respect, good values, and better practices,” says Zaglul, “and we think that we can have a better world.”

The plantation’s staff is comprised largely of local community members – a recent survey concluded that its positive economic impact extended to more than 1,100 families – all of whom are provided job training, medical coverage, and access to educational resources. The workweek is Monday to Friday, the average wage is 20 to 50% higher than industry standard, and bonuses are awarded for performance and attendance.

Continue reading to learn how you can make environmental change… [pagebreak]

Though banana plantation workers in Costa Rica are more organized than many of their Latin American counterparts, the above benefits, most of which are presumptive in the U.S., are not standard. This is because shipping and distribution companies (versus production companies) claim the majority of profits generated by banana sales; at present, shipping a box of bananas from Costa Rica to the U.S. costs an average $6, whereas producing a box of bananas in Costa Rica costs $7. This disparity is one of several reasons why many banana and other fruit and vegetable producers in Latin America and elsewhere are not Fair Trade certified. In short, paying a fair wage and providing training and medical insurance cuts too deep into profits that are already being squeezed by shipping and distribution firms. Still, Pocosangre, who typically relies on his work to speak for him, remains hopeful: “If people can pay just a little more for the bananas, it will be better for the workers.”

Erik Aguilar, Commercial Manager for Variedades del Tropico Humedo (Humid Tropical Varieties) and Earth University alumnus, stresses the importance of things like knowing the names of staff and including them in the production process and its goals. “The most important thing,” he says, “is that they know the reason for what they are doing…all the different tasks are to accomplish the final goal of scholarships.”

According to Aguilar, the scholarships create “Changing Agents,” which he defines as students who “are going to change how things happen in their communities.”

It is thus here, at the intersection of education and economics, that Earth University’s mission is actualized. It is here that tomorrow’s leaders in agricultural sustainability are born; here where the road between the earth we inherit and the one we leave behind is walked; here that one learns how spending a few cents more on a Whole Trade certified banana can fund a scholarship that awards an education that yields a big idea that changes the way we live. And it is here that the answer to the question asked of me one year ago today – “Isn’t every day Earth Day?” – is a definitive and resounding, “yes.”