Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. From the Andean highlands to the Amazonian rainforest, Ecuador is home to a variety of climates and ecosystems. Coco, Coffee, and Quinoa are all grown in Ecuador – the country’s “best-sellers” found in shelves all over the globe. We visited the bio-wonderland in a week-long bootcamp, learning about contextual agricultural practices but more importantly: sharpening our eyes.

Our journey started with a visit to a women’s community in Guamote, a small village in the remote Andean highlands about an hour-drive from the Ecuadorian capital Quito. The community is supported by Maquita, a local civil society organization, from whom the women have learned in workshops how to grow quinoa in a sustainable way, and use natural fertilizers and crop rotation to ensure healthy ground. Even guinea pigs are bred and sold by the community, which we found to be our lunch menu for the day. What seemed exotic to us, was a meal reserved for special occasions for the community of around 30 middle-aged women, all dressed in their festive, traditional costumes. Everything the women did was done by hand, from cultivating the fields to harvesting quinoa, employing a business model that gives back to every member of the community.

Our next stop brought us to Pucara Tambo. Framed by volcanos on a remote mountain top outside of Riobamba, the community project offers lodging in order to support the local community, in particular the 480 elderly people living alone in the community. We visited Manuela, a woman in her 90s living in a small, hardly accessible hut in the midths midst of the Andes. Manuela lives on her own, as her children all had to move to Quito to find work – a phenomenon very representative for most of the rural areas of Ecuador due to the lack of economic incentives. Projects like Pucara Tambo try to engage their visitors and integrate them in the communal work – which meant for us: building a roof for Manuela’s cooking shed. The at first random, but rewarding experience was a small task for us, but a big improvement for Manuela’s daily life, being barely agile and having to step outside the rain every day to cook her lunch.

In a conversation with the local university of Riobamba, ESPOCH University, researchers from agronomy and forestry confirmed that a crucial challenge in local agriculture is the ageing population among farmers. Most of the University’s students were not interested in returning to the farms, and focussing focusing on continuing their involvement on a regulative level instead. According to Rosa, a teacher and researcher from the Natural Resources program, the overall gap between academia and agricultural practice is a challenge for the university, not being able to bridge research and application due to the universities’ lack of authority in the industry. With the help of Maquita, the university thus tries to initiate micro-entrepreneurship in different fields to tackle this challenge, especially in forestry where a lot of the bi-products remain unused.

Initiatives in the form of micro-entrepreneurship are supported by Maquita all over the country, which supports communal projects in 18 out of the 24 Ecuadorian provinces, including the rainforest. Near the city of Tena, we met the Shandia community, an indigenous Quechua community who is collectively running a small lodge for tourists in the rainforest, as well as growing cocoa beans, yuca and platano bananas. We spent the day with Enrique, who manages the lodge, his parents Isak and Gloria, and his sister Veronika. Isak is the head of the community of around 120 families and explained to us that everyone in the community takes an active part for the greater good. From working on the fields and harvesting cocoa, juca or platano, doing artisanal works, or keeping maintenance in the lodge – every community member is engaged in one of the community’s entrepreneurial projects.

Even though most of the communities we visited were living in the most basic huts, it was obvious that this way of life was a conscious choice. It is easy to fall into a categorical thinking when coming from a developed to an underdeveloped world. To think that the way we do business, the way we do agriculture, the way we do life – must ultimately be the right one. We all have an idea of how things are meant to be, until we are quickly convinced by the contrary. Visiting different indigenous communities in different climates and ecosystems has shown us that good things can sometimes be small and simple.