By David Dell

A Gnobe worker leaves the potato field and heads home. Cerro Punta, Chiriqui

In 1933, James Hilton wrote his famous novel, Lost Horizons, about a civilization  in a magical valley, where the people didn’t grow old, but crops grew wonderfully.  The Cerro Punta and Guadalupe area of Chiriqui, near the town of Volcan, could almost be a film set for Hilton’s mystical and magical community.

Recently, I stood on the brow of a hill a thousand feet above Volcan and the view was breathtaking.  High above were puffy white clouds almost artistically placed in a deep blue sky.  The hill sloped sharply down to the Volcan plateau and sixty miles away in the distance was the outline of the Punta Burica Peninsular and the Pacific Ocean.  To my left was the towering rock fortress of the 11,400 foot high Baru Volcano and at my feet were acres and acres of bright green, spring onions.  Driving up to the small town of Cerro Punta there are dozens of roadside stands selling a multitude of vegetables – their bright red, green and orange colors glistening in the morning sun.

Rocky mountain high, Panama style

The combination of bright sunshine and mile-high altitude produce a wonderful euphoric feeling that exhilarates your entire body  medically, it’s called anoxia or lack of oxygen.  Too much, you could have a heart attack, just a little and you feel like the king of the world.

The Cerro Punta area of Chiriqui is the breadbasket, or more correctly, the vegetable basket of Panama.  According to Antonio Fistonic junior, this area produces ninety percent of all the fresh produce in Panama.  The company founded by his Croatian born father, Stefan, sends out a forty-foot container full of vegetables every day of the week. The Fistonic farm grows 16 different varieties of produce everything from lettuce to potatoes.

The Europeans came, they saw, they planted

Swiss born Luis Martins, can be credited for starting the horticultural success story that is the Cerro Punta of today.  It was Martins that saw two impoverished Yugoslav carpenters on the docks of Colon and offered them a temporary job in a place he owned on the other side of the country.  When Esteban Berros and Antonio Fistonic first set there eyes on the Shangri-La valley, they both said, “This is where we stay.”  Stay they did.  They married local Panamanian women and today their sons and daughters carry on a great tradition of feeding their entire adopted country.

Later, Luis Martins brought in fellow Swiss Pablo Berard to start a Swiss cheese factory.  Today, the Berard name is not only on cheeses, but on all kinds of prepared meat in supermarkets and delicatessens across the entire country of Panama.

Creative financing and risky harvests

Although Luis Martins had considerable capital behind him, the Fistonic, Berros and other families had to finance themselves with some risky and creative financing.

The process went something like this: They would go to bank number 1, and borrow money based on their land holdings and the hoped for first harvest of the year.  Then they would go to bank number 2, and borrow against the second harvest of the year.  If the first two harvests went well then they would go to a third bank and borrow again and pay off the loans to banks numbers 1, and 2.

The Cerro Punta success story involved people from all over Europe.  The Irish couple, Lydia and Mathew Shannon, in the late 194′s are credited with growing the first peaches and tomatoes under plastic.  This first crude greenhouse project was so successful that many other growers use this system to this day.  The organic clay soil of the area which is rich in humic acid, is perfect for growing another Irish type crop, that being the humble potato.  Mae Jones, wife of prominent Boy Scout leader Russell Jones, discovered the waste potatoes she discarded in her backyard started to sprout.  Soon after that, another prominent crop was added to the Cerro Punta inventory of vegetables.

The environmental cost

The green revolution that is the Cerro Punta and Guadalupe success story of today has not been achieved without some major costs to the environment.  In conversation with grower Vicente Berros, he admits that because of the high humidity in the area the use of chemicals is almost compulsory.  This use of necessary chemical fungicide and pesticides has resulted in the loss of the local bee population.  The problem with these types of chemicals is that they leach through the soil and pass down the water chain.

Horses and tractors

In 1963, six Benedictine monks came to Volcan and started an agricultural school called San Benito.  Brother Alred Wetli, a World War Two veteran of the Pacific campaign  taught the locals how to use horses to plow the land.  Later, modernization came in the form of the first John Deere tractors.

Man cannot live by vegetables alone.

For most of us the day doesn’t begin until we have consumed at least two or more cups of coffee.  Thanks to the volcanic soil and shady slopes of Chiriqui, this wonderful stimulant can be grown in abundance on the hills and valleys around the Shangri-La valley.  Again the Europeans were the first growers of this breadbasket item, Alois Hartmann came to Chiriqui in 1912 and after several failed attempts started a coffee farm that still sells and exports fine coffee to this day.  Swedish born Carl Janson came to the area in the 1920′s with just $20 in his pocket.  His coffee farm today is one of the biggest and most successful in all of Panama.  Panamanian coffee has risen to the ranks of being the world’s finest.  The Geisha coffee variety from nearby Boquete, has been voted as the best in the world for three years running by the international specialty coffee association.

Chiriqui’s mountains are also home to a major part of Panama’s milk and beef cattle industry.  Leading edge in-vitro fertilization and super ovulation techniques mean that Panama’s beef and dairy herds are amongst the best in Central America.  The cooler highland temperatures and year-round abundance of grass mean that Chiriqui will continue to keep the steak houses and restaurants of Panama City well stocked for the foreseeable future.

If you are sitting and reading this article in a restaurant in Panama City, the chances are the steak and vegetables on your plate and the coffee in your cup came from the Chiriqui region of western Panama.  If your travels allow you, drive up to this area early in the morning.  The view alone will be more than worth the trip.  Located in the Cerro Punta and Guadalupe area of the highlands of Panama, the Shangri-La Valley is just a short distance northeast of the town of Volcan and just a few miles down the road from heaven.

The author was born in Cardiff, Wales, in August 1944.  He has worked for the past 18 years, traveling the world as a writer and video journalist.  He lives with his wife of 28 years in their home in Volcan, Chiriqui.