Not your average vegetable patch
ECHO's gardens are filled with innovation for developing countries

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO EVAN WILLIAMS Mark Maerten at ECHO

The lush organic plant life at nonprofit ECHO in North Fort Myers is as beautiful as any Greek garden. That beauty has not escaped Executive Director

Stan Doerr, but for him it's an afterthought, a natural byproduct of his and ECHO's mission to collect new, sometimes surprising and better ways to help farmers in third world countries feed themselves and their communities.

"We don't have ornamentals," he said. "It's not about collecting pretty plants. Everything here has a use."

ECHO's gardens, or "Global Demonstration Farm," represent six areas found around the world: semi-arid tropics, tropical monsoon, hot humid lowlands and highlands, tropical rainforest, urban gardening and herbs.

Along one path, a sweet variety of habanero peppers grow out of a bed of old soda cans; the pepper's roots grow towards reservoirs of water collected inside the cans. It's one of many soilless techniques for growing food. Elsewhere, Nubian goats stand in a shelter built above the ground. When they urinate or defecate, it drops through the floor and fertilizes the soil below. On top of the shelter, another garden.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO EVAN WILLIAMS Mark Maerten pulls some weeds out of a bed of soda cans where a sweet variety of habanero peppers grow.

ECHO networks with community leaders or philanthropic organizations such as the Peace Corps, already at work in places like Africa, to help bring such inventive agricultural methods to people there.

"Because people live in such a variety of climates, we're going to show you all the different options," Doerr said.

"We're giving options to the poor, and the poor have precious few options."

About 33 staff members, and many volunteers - who donated more than 53,000 hours to ECHO in 2007 - keep the programs in operation. Individual donations made up 63 percent of ECHO's more than $5.5 million in assets, including cash and equipment, last year. If you donate $1 to ECHO, 81 cents goes into the farming program itself, while 7 cents returns to fundraising efforts and 12 goes to manage the operation.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO EVAN WILLIAMS ECHO

There is also a group of interns, often seen perusing the gardens, maybe taste testing a mango or winged bean. They are college graduates who train for one year at the farm, before being dispatched to locations worldwide, where they serve that community.

Ultimately, ECHO's staff members, volunteers and contributors have a huge goal: to end world hunger. Unfortunately, satisfying that need is more complicated than simply giving hungry people food, Doerr said, or even innovative ways to grow it.

"If world hunger were just caused by lack of food, it could easily be solved," he said. "If it were just a matter of technology, no problem. But often the problem is more human than technical. It's often a matter of culture, of 'We don't do things this way.'"

Some cultures, he said, shun certain plants because they imply low social standing. Others have long traditions in farming which, like a favorite but flawed family recipe, make farmers reluctant to change. Political red tape afflicts some; for example, officials in some countries support companies that manufacture chemical fertilizers even if their farmers can't afford them. And because of factors like global warming and changing weather patterns, "the rules that apply to previous generations no longer apply," Doerr said; third world farmers have to be willing to look for fresh options.

But there is scant room for error in places where people are already starving, he said. If a crop goes bad, people die. That's why Doerr encourages these farmers to put aside a portion of their land as an Agricultural Recourse Center, to test seeds and growing methods. In places where the same methods have been used for hundreds of years, Doerr's suggestions are often met with polite skepticism and sometimes laughter.

In Cambodia, for example, Doerr introduced a new method of growing rice, which he said uses less water and less seed, but produces more rice. Most of the farmer's in that area balked at the plan when he first presented it. But one man, named Farmer Darah, discovered that he could use only 10 percent of the seed and grow 25 percent more rice. Now all the farmers in that area use the method, a change that hadn't been seen there for centuries, Doerr said, and maybe a change that will last for centuries to come.

All of ECHO's innovations, from soda cans to the rice to the Nubian goats, are ideas culled from every populated continent, making ECHO a vast repository of agricultural information.

"These ideas come from all over the world," Doerr said. "If we find an idea in Southeast Asia that works in Central America, we want to use that...I've lived on the other side of the pond long enough to know what we do really helps third world countries."

Just a few examples of the places ECHO appeared last year: in the Ukraine, helping an orphanage to create an organic garden; in Mozambique, where information on rooftop gardening was shipped; in Cameroon, a new crop of pigeon pea and disease resistant papaya was introduced to the Mbengwi Area Food Crop Cooperative; in Madagascar, a teacher there who is implementing a poverty relief program at a local college, was provided with educational material on a highly nutritious tropical mushroom.

For curious members of the public, ECHO invites you to take their tour, and explore how these gardens "echo" a world where technological innovation sometimes means a new type of bean or way to fertilize a seed, instead of a cell phone or laptop.

"People love coming here," Director of Communications Mark Maerten said. "People say, 'you've taught us to use things we've spent our entire lives ignoring.'"