Small community projects can serve as a reference for those who are thinking of undertaking similar initiatives.
Real World Radio talked with a member of La Pitanga Composting, Mercedes Iriarte, who talked about her experience working around artisanal composting. La Pitanga, where Mercedes works together with other neighbors, is near Parque Andresito, Rocha department. The artisanal composting plan came up as a project of a group of neighbors of the city, and it has been running for over two years. Mercedes told us about the origins of the project, before she joined.

As in the area "the soil is sand, the people didn´t know how to procure lands". So they got a piece of land that belongs to the Rocha departmental government, they cleaned it and fenced it, and with the advice of an agronomist they started to build the piles with organic matter: pruning by-products, grass, fruits that are not sold and left-overs from a nearby diner", said Mercedes.

"The governmental department helps us by giving us a place for free, with water and electricity. They also helped us with the buying of all tools", she added. Mercedes said that they created a group "La Paloma" with hundreds of farmer families from most departments of the country, which is also doing seedlings and using our compost to plant them. We are doing seedlings, taking them home and the idea is to return those seeds to the bank, to create a seeds bank", she concluded.