Organic in Guatemala

Ten years ago, the international food scene in La Antigua, Guatemala was quite narrow. Caesar salads were made with iceberg lettuce because romaine was impossible to find. Italian restaurants relied on spicier local basil rather than the classic Genovese variety associated with pesto and Caprese salads for the same reason. Arugula, baby greens, kale, lemongrass, edamame, rainbow chard, free-range eggs, fennel and radicchio were nowhere to be found.  But Antigua became popular with expats and medical tourists and missionaries and backpackers, new residents who started looking for diverse, healthy food options. Alex Kronick saw a unique business opportunity and opened Caoba Farms in May 2004, where he began to grow fresh, organic and slightly exotic (for Guatemala, anyway) produce.

Kronick, a lean and tanned man in his early-30s, wasn’t always drawn to gardening. He grew up in Antigua, but at 14 he left to attend boarding school in Colorado. Students were required to do work-study, but assignments were based on seniority. Because he was a freshman and didn’t have stellar grades, he was assigned to the gardening crew, where the mothers of day-students ran an organic garden that provided the school with some of their produce. He tried several times to switch his assignment, but always ended up back with the gardening moms, and eventually he began to like it.

It wasn’t until Kronick graduated from college with a degree in entrepreneurship that he delved into farming headfirst. He took over a small plot of land lent to him by his family just inside Antigua town limits, as well as the salary of the one attendant working there. The land was previously used to grow roses and coffee, but Kronick had been speaking with local restaurants about their needs, and he immediately set to work growing romaine, Italian basil, and arugula. He knew he wanted his products to be organic because of his early gardening experiences, and because he saw what a movement organic was becoming in the United States. Plus, he ate from the farm as well, and he didn’t want to put out a product he didn’t feel good about consuming.

Next, Kronick talks about the future of organic farming…

But Kronick made a conscious choice not to become certified, feeling that the process detracted from overall organic principles. Speaking from Caoba on a particularly sunny day, Kronick – scratching his stubble as he surveyed his fertile three-acre plot – told me,

“At first, I thought organic was no pesticides, no fertilizers, and that’s part of organic, but now there is organic farming and organic products. They’re two different things and I think that’s something people don’t understand. There are all these huge corporations that do organic, but they don’t do organic farming, they do organic products. Wal-Mart has organic products; Whole Foods is now full of organic products. Organic product doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for the environment or it’s low impact. You could grow a whole mountain of bananas and just not spray with chemicals or fertilizers but it’s not sustainable, it’s not low impact, you’re taking advantage of the community, you’re not a part of the community, you’re abusing the area. And yet at the end you still call it an organic banana.”

While Caoba might not be a certified organic farm, Kronick practices organic farming 100% of the time. “When you practice organic farming, you’re trying to be as sustainable as possible, you’re trying to be involved with the community, you’re trying to be diverse, you’re trying to be very low impact, then at the end of all that comes an organic product,” he said. He prefers to grow a variety of crops (he has 150 varieties in his seed bank, and grows up to 75 at one time) so he doesn’t exhaust the soil. He never sprays with harmful chemicals or pesticides, instead choosing to use his own compost mixtures and holistic concoctions, like worm urine, to fertilize the soil and ward off pests. “I’d rather buy organic from my neighbor, I know who he is, I know his moral values, I know what water he’s using, what chemicals he’s using and not using, and knowing all that, decide whether or not I want to buy his product rather than buying some unknown [certified] organic product from China.”

Today, Caoba consists of the original farm, plus two other larger plots outside of Antigua. Walking around the grounds, growing vegetables idle patiently in neat rows and the air smells grassy. Sprays of color like fresh-lettuce-green and deep purple and snow white and lipstick red catch the eyes of visitors as they tour the farm. Today, Caoba employs 22 people, grows 80% of its crops from its own seeds, and 100% of everything grown on its property is organically farmed. It has organic chicken and duck eggs, sells free-range organic meat from trusted suppliers and has plans to start an organic rainbow trout farm, and sells to over 100 restaurants in Antigua and Guatemala City. Whatever doesn’t sell Kronick turns over to local restaurants to process into non-perishable goods like pickles and jams, feeds the excess to his animals or turns it into compost, so nothing goes to waste.

In the last ten years, however, Kronick believes the biggest impact of the farm not in the way restaurants think about organic, but in the way his individual customers, families, think about organic. The farm and its owner have opened Antigua residents’ eyes, both tourists and locals, to the benefits of an organic lifestyle. He’s seen his individual client base grow from just a handful of expats to over 200 individual clients. At first Kronick attributed this to his convenient delivery service, but he suspects there is another reason. “It’s more because of the organic practices here, and I’m now a part of the community. [Customers] can come here, I let them in, they see the workers, they walk the farm, they see how everything is grow, we’re not hiding anything from anyone, they want to meet me, and we’re very open.”