After the initial years, the agricultural production at Centro de Conferencias was expanded to include cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chicken, ducks and other birds to provide the kitchen with healthy proteins and fats.
Livestock eventually ends up as food on the table, but until then the animals should be able to roam around, while also being given nutritious feed. Farm animals are healthier when living outdoors. They build up a strong immune system and their meat becomes healthier, which is better for the consumer.
Very few of the animals at the center’s farm become sick, and the only routine prevention carried out is an annual injection for the goats against worms and to provide some vitamins.
Animal feed production
Most of the feed for the animals comes from the center’s own agricultural production.
Discarded vegetables and leaves from the farm provide the goats with 30 tons of food every year. The pigs eat leftovers from the kitchen and sweet potatoes from the vegetable production.
In the beginning, the dairy cattle were fed alfalfa, which was purchased from local producers. Now wheat, produced on site, provides grains and straw.
Wheatgrass production
Some of these wheat grains are used to produce “wheatgrass”, sprouted grains that are rich in proteins. The wheatgrass production takes place in the greenhouse in a set of “gutters” kept humid by trickles of water. The grains sprout quickly and form a “mat” that can be harvested after 8 days and fed to the dairy cattle.
A variety of animal products
Most of the farm’s milk is used to produce yogurt and cheese. Over the years, garden farm staff have learned to produce a number of tasty cheeses and to process meat into sausages, bacon or smoked ham.
Free-range production
The plateau along the coast of the Conference Center consists of old fields that have grown wild over the past decades. A part of this land is now used in a rotational grazing system for the meat cattle and sheep. In this way, the land is grazed, trampled and fertilized by the animals, and then gets a rest until the animals are let into the plot again.
Recycling nutrients and reducing global warming
The manure from those animals that are kept indoors at night, which are the chicken and goats, provides an essential ingredient for the farm’s compost production.
Compost is not only a way of bringing nutrients back to the plants. It plays an essential role as food for the billions of soil microorganisms that benefit the plants and their health – much different from plants grown with chemical fertilizers.
In addition, the soils in the farm do not emit greenhouse gases like the gases coming from chemical fertilizers, which contribute to global warming.
Copying the cycles in nature
The agricultural production at Centro de Conferencias attempts to copy the cycles of nature, where nothing is wasted and everything plays a part. Energy from the sun is harvested in plants, which are then eaten by humans or domestic animals, whose organic waste is subsequently made into compost and put back into the soil to feed the soil organisms.
