At the beginning of the year 2020, the COVID pandemic took the world by surprise. Ecuador was no exception: hundreds of businesses closed, thousands of lives lost, and millions of jobs destroyed.
In our effort to minimize the impacts of the virus on our surroundings and to continue generating income for our farmers, our collaborators, and our clients, we have taken extraordinary measures outside of our usual scope. These have included constant testing of personnel, training in biosecurity measures, and the organization of safe HOME camps.
These three actions have helped us keep our company in operation and increase production in this peculiar year with so many negative impacts on the country’s economy and the world. As human beings, we have been forced to develop skills we didn’t know we had, such as being educators, internet technicians, cooks, and more. In the case of Agroapoyo, we have not been the exception and have had to immerse ourselves in knowledge beyond our usual scope. When experts and the healthcare system are overwhelmed and insufficient to keep us safe, we have had to research and stay informed about something even the experts don’t fully understand. Despite the uncertainty, we have had to make decisions to maintain our work and the best possible situation for those around us.
Our latest initiative – a bit unusual in our field – concerns the HOME Camps in which we have organized work groups so that they work for two consecutive weeks – after a negative Covid test – and then have an equal amount of time off. This forced us to first rent a neighboring hotel, and later to build a safe camp within our facilities.
To implement this latest initiative, we contacted the organization Better Shelter Int, from which we purchased at cost, quick-build thermal metal structures. We have assembled them and now have our base camp that houses our own staff. With this, we aim to contain the virus, stay healthy, and continue generating employment and work.
It has been a completely new and challenging experience for us, as we are not experts in health, lodging management, or logistics… and yet, we find ourselves learning every day how to handle the situation so that this cycle continues to turn and we can contribute with what we know, which is making food. As always, this response has allowed us to bring out the best in us and discover that the resilience and innovation that have always characterized us go beyond producing «tasty», «healthy», or «beautiful» products. Innovation is about seeing opportunities and finding answers where others haven’t seen them before. And that’s what we do and will continue to do because it’s in our DNA. Agroapoyo will always innovate responsibly for a better Ecuador.
