Sobremesa Farm Presents:
Workshop Series 2025: Creating a Biofactoría and Chromatography of Biofertilizers by Jairo Restrepo
Dates: September 2-5 2025
Location: Sobremesa Farm, 4781 N. Mt. Gilead Rd. Bloomington IN 47408
Registration Fee: $350 (includes breakfast, lunch and snacks. Local produce and dairy)
Early Bird Special:
$300 through June 30th, 2025
Limited Availability
About Jairo Restrepo
Jairo Restrepo is best known as an agronomist, agricultural engineer and worldwide lecturer, with over 40 years of experience and a trajectory that has spanned in more than 30 countries, giving workshops, conferences and private consultancies.
Born in Colombia and naturalized in Brazil, Jairo has had a critical impact worldwide, in the development of organic agriculture in Latin America, Europe, Africa and Oceania. Focusing mainly on the development of innovative techniques that recover traditional rural knowledge, emphasizing fertilization and nutrition techniques, recovery and conservation of soils, diagnosis of the soils, and the planning of transition processes for chemically treated farms that want to evolve towards organic agriculture.
Jairo has published 11 books in Spanish and sold over
30.000 copies worldwide.
Description of the workshop:
This course uses both theory and practice to engage participants around two specific concepts of organic agriculture. First, a Biofactoría (Biofactory) is a place where all organic bio-inputs are processed for application to crops, whether applied directly to the plants or to the soil. As an analogy, a biofactory can be considered a kind of kitchen where, depending on the needs or hunger of each crop or soil, one or more organic dishes or bio-inputs are prepared for their satisfaction and nutritional harmony. The second is chromatography, an inexpensive method to qualitatively analyze organic materials like soil, plant tissue, or inputs to understand their health or composition and guilde decisions for improving their quality.
Discussion on the Biofactoría will cover the problems caused by the current model of industrial agriculture, the importance of organic agriculture and its advances at a global level, as well as Jairo’s own experiences in practicing organic agriculture. A functional biofactoría will then be used to walk through its operation with practical, hands-on demonstrations.
The chromatography content will begin with an introductory lecture on the process and its analysis methods. It will then be followed by performing the process on the biofertilizers created with the example biofactoría and practicing the analysis of their results.
Registration:
The registration fee is $350 per person for all 4 days and includes continental breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
Limited scholarships available (email us)
To register click here
Attendees are welcome to camp at our adjacent land to the farm. This would be on a grassy field accessed by a gravel drive. We would ask that you consider an onsite donation to support future educational efforts at the farm.
Cancellation Policy:
– Before June 17th: 100% refund.
– June 17th to July 1st: 50% refund.
– After July 1st: No refund.
Questions can be emailed to SobremesaFarm@gmail.com