20 Years of El Silencio: The Colombian Farm Pioneering the Future of Livestock Farming

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Viewed from above, it might seem like a spider extending its legs to connect everything. In the 114-hectare Colombian farm El Silencio, in San Francisco, Cundinamarca, there are 1.6 kilometers of rows of trees and shrubs that link various parts of the Andean fog forest and the oaks surrounding it. “Everything is interconnected,” says Berenice Granados, one of the farm workers, while pointing with her hand to the long, dense green patch behind her. She stands on a fenced pasture, where ten cows leisurely graze, waiting for artificial insemination in the coming days. Despite being a cattle farm dedicated to milk production, El Silencio is crossed by native species, orchids, and other wildlife; created through trial and error, it has been experimenting for over 20 years on how to reduce its environmental impact. Every tree, every fence is a deliberate decision.

Twice a day, Andrea Coronado, Berenice’s daughter and the farm manager, moves the fencing where the cows graze by three meters. This allows the area behind to recover faster and the animals to have new food to try. They also planted elderberries around, a “second-tier” food as they call it, which guarantees not only more protein in the milk but also serves as a backup plan when the grass burns during droughts. Alongside this herd, only a small percentage of the 83 cows on the farm, there is a garden with carrots, parsley, lettuce, and spinach. When the cows see any of the seven workers enter there, they approach and poke their wet noses in curiosity. “What’s left over from the garden is given to them, which is why they come to see what we’re doing,” explains the daughter.

All of El Silencio follows a pattern: between the pastures—some resting and others with livestock—stand portions of thick, fenced vegetation, cared for and nurtured. Young forests they have planted themselves to restore part of the ecosystem. Thus, they have regenerated 20 hectares while maintaining another 42 in conservation. It’s an atypical farm that provides clues about how food should be produced in a future—or already present—marked by the triple environmental crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, managing to overcome dichotomies such as livestock versus the environment. El Silencio is a farm and a Private Natural Reserve where 610 species of vascular plants, 110 species of birds, and ten species of dung beetles have been identified. Thanks to a project with the organization Arasarí, which involved placing six camera traps in the biological corridors between 2023 and 2024, moving them every two months, they learned that the cows coexist with ten species of mammals, including the porcupine (Coendou vestitus), opossum (Didelphis pernigra), jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi), ocelot (Leopardus tigrinus), and the páramo rabbit (Cuniculus taczanowskii).

Forest Teas

The most challenging part to change is the psychological aspect, agree mother and daughter. When they decided to stop using chemicals over six years ago, it all seemed to push them toward inertia. The grass began to turn yellow, a sign of pests. “That scared us, and we had the urge to use chemicals.” But it was a matter of patience. One, two, three months later, the vegetation grew normally, even stronger.

Stopping the use of chemicals was an ethical decision, Claudia Durana, the owner of El Silencio, explains via video call. “We got involved in a participatory research project with CIVAP [Center for Research in Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems], and we realized that many insects died from pesticides while only two or three pests were affected,” she asserts. At that time, a biologist who exclusively bought El Silencio’s milk to make Greek yogurt suggested they shift to organic production and advised them on creating a series of products to prevent pests and fertilize the land.

Thus, El Silencio serves as a kind of artisanal laboratory. Next to the stables where the 23 horses rest, there are two long beds of soil and worms covered with black plastic tarps. There, the manure from the horses ends up and, after various processes, it becomes one of the diverse types of fertilizers they produce. Of course, there is the solid compost that comes from the simple treatment generated by the worms, but also the leachate, the water that drains from the soil beds, which they collect to, as the zootecnic Coronado says, conduct their “experiments.”

In one barrel is the “liximax,” a stronger version of leachate, which they mix with other substances like molasses and rock phosphate, keeping it sealed from air for days to activate it. In other barrels is the “forest tea,” named so because it is similar to a hot beverage. In a large bag, they place a substrate with bacteria and fungi collected around the farm, which has settled with other natural products, and soak it in the liquid “to release its essence.”

“The truth is, we have the freedom to try things,” confirms Granados. A few months ago, without telling Durana, they stopped feeding concentrates to the calves. And similar to scientific experiments, where the one measuring the results doesn’t know if it’s a placebo, when weighing them, the farm owner didn’t notice any weight loss. “They surprised me,” she says. This has happened with several practices. They initiate change, measure it, and then decide whether to keep it or not. Moreover, there are five scientific publications from studies conducted at El Silencio. “We’ve realized that many external inputs sold to us under the livestock model aren’t as necessary, and we’ve gradually phased them out.”

At El Silencio, knowledge has been created based on empirical evidence, which is why it is also one of 56 demonstration farms in the Paisajes Futuros project of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). “It’s a global program, but in Latin America and the Caribbean, it aims to regenerate three million hectares in Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia,” explains Mariana Jaramillo Thomas from TNC. “We’re seeing that what this farm does is possible, profitable, so we want to address the big question of how to scale it.”

That, being profitable, is what keeps many producers from making the decision to transform. Durana, however, has diligently collected data proving the opposite. With between 750 and 800 liters of milk daily, they currently produce the same amount they did in 2014, when they were involved in a livestock intensification program largely based on excessive pesticide use. Now, she comments, the milk has 10% more protein, they save on external products, and they have reduced the amount of concentrate they need to feed the cows. “It has become a joyful farm,” is the term she uses to describe what she now sees at El Silencio. “When you stand in the middle of a pasture, you see the bees, the butterflies. I don’t know, I feel the farm is happy.”