Back to work at Fuente Verde. Today Vick and another volunteer, Taylor, came to help Derick and I. Another Ipe resident, Topher, also came. While we were working the topic of volunteer farming came up and I think I finally realize why WWOOF here doesn't really work.
The idea of WWOOF is to allow people to learn about organic farming through working at various farms around the world. All the farmer has to do is provide food and a bed for the WWOOFer. So, if he or she is a good teacher, he or she almost gets slave labor. Since the volunteer is learning, the volunteer does not mind this situation at alll. Everybody wins and the system works very well.
This normally works very well in developed nations such as Austrailia, European countries and the US. However, in Costa Rica, in can cost as low as $1/hour to hire a local worker. These workers are experienced and may give 5 times the work output of a volunteer. Therefore the energy expended to teach the volunteer may seem like a net loss the the farmer. Thus a lot of farms here CHARGE to volunteer, a concept I originally thought ridiculous. It should also be noted that the work ethic of a volunteer may be extrememly variable and they may output little to no work and take lots of energy. Not to mention that mistakes that volunteers make can cost the farms a lot of money.
This is not to say that WWOOFing has sucked for me. I have received the true experience I sought and much more. I simply finally see that in an area where labor is cheap it may be looked on as unfavorable to accept volunteer workers.
Howeer, I still hold that a properly run volunteer program is beneficial to farms though it takes some effort. It is also beneficial to the future of humanity since we need more people to learn how to farm once society changes (a discussion I may leave for a different blog altogether).
-Ravi
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We hosted 2 boys, once, and will never do it again. In fact, we left the wwoof community as a result of our experiences.
They arrived with sandals, suntan lotion and sun glasses, and were surprised they were expected to work.
As 1st time hosts, we weren't savvy enough to send them packing immediately, and let them gobble up every bit of food ($600 worth) over 10 days before they walked out (I sure wasn't driving them anywhere).
But that kind of experience turns you right off--and it did us.
So we don't recommend wwoofing unless you can screen, screen, screen, and have specific projects that you can test them on to see if they have the skills required to actually complete them.
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