Activities and Outcomes

The first rate of the grant to finance the present project reached to our bank account on April 26th. Previously we elaborated an activity and time schedule for the whole project period of 12 months. As the recently purchased property was not yet in conditions to realize properly any activity in the frame of the project, it has first to be arranged to convert it in a real solar food processing training center.

First of all, the yard of the property had to be cleaned and freed from garbage. Several trees had to be cut to get enough space to make possible the installing of the solar equipments and enough sunlight for their proper operation during most part of the day.

Inside the building were realized various activities. The 2 small neighbor rooms have been converted into one big room eliminating the separation wall between them, obtaining this way an area big enough (31 m2) to be used as a classroom for up to about 30 participants. When we bought the property the whole building had just a concrete underfloor, so that it was entirely covered with floor tiles. Also the bathroom inside the house was covered with floor and wall tiles. In front of the house was built a kind of sidewalk covering it also with floor tiles (total area of flooring: about 100 m2). The next activity consisted in checking and improving where necessary the electrical distribution and lighting system of the building. All these reforming works were financed with part of the funds destined to the item “implementation of technology”.

In August 2006 started in our site a one year training program for 5 young Brazilian technicians, who are members of the so called MST (movement of the landless rural workers of Brazil). The program was financed by the Spanish NGO “Grupo de Cooperación del Campus de Terrassa GCCT”. It was divided into 5 modules (solar water heaters, solar cookers, wood saving stoves, solar dryers and biodigestors). Our role was to teach them theoretical and practical aspects of the construction and use of the different technologies to make them able to replicate them in their respective places of residence in the southern part of Brazil, which are MST owned agricultural schools.

Most of the equipments built during this training program were destined to be used for the solar food processing training center, especially a solar water heater, a family size parabolic solar cooker, an industrial Scheffler type solar cooker, a small size tent solar dryer, an industrial tunnel solar dryer and an underground fixed dome biodigestor. The biodigestor was built in the place of an existing dry well, which has never been used. It will be fed with organic residues coming from the food processing activities and from one of the toilets. To generate sufficient biogas more organic residues will have to be brought from other places, such as manure from pigs and cattle, which can easily be purchased locally. The biogas will be used as backup energy for the tunnel solar dryer and the industrial solar cooker during overcast days and during the night. The 2 last modules of this training program were realized during this first phase of the present project (July and August 2007), so that during this period the activities in the frame of the present project had to be reduced to a minimum.

Besides, this year autumn and winter (April to September) was unusually cold in Paraguay. Normally, the temperatures rarely fall below 15ºC or if so just for a few days.

Since the beginning of May until the end of August it was often cold with temperatures below 15 and even below 10ºC. Most of the times the cold periods are accompanied by overcast sky and drizzle. Since the end of August temperatures have increased significantly but occurred another adverse phenomenon. In the countryside people started to burn their lands to prepare them for the agricultural season. Because of the drought these fires became uncontrollable and are actually destroying huge areas of forests and grasslands. Despite of the lack of clouds almost the whole country was covered during the last three weeks with dense smog. These circumstances made it very difficult to realize solar food processing activities during most of this first project period.

Outlook

From October this year on, once ready the infrastructure of the center and under better climate conditions expected for this period, will be initiated the proper activities of development of solar food products planned to last until January 2008. We have selected 2 different kinds of solar processed food products to be developed, will mean on one hand dried fruits (banana, pineapple and mango), vegetables (tomato, garlic and onions) and herbs (stevia, peppermint and oregano) and on the other hand 2 kinds of sweet bars, one made of toasted peanuts and brown sugar, which is a typical Paraguayan product called in Spanish “dulce de maní”, and another of a new kind made of dried fruits, cereals, bee honey and toasted sesame, which we want to promote as a snack for school children, who get milk from the national or regional government. In Paraguay the months of December to February are usually of a very hot climate and of less productive activities. Schools are closed and for many people it is the period of summer holidays. Therefore the testing and promotion activities for the solar processed food products will be realized during the last months of the project period.