Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

Nick and Agape bagging innoculated sawdust. Agape and Kwao Adams of Yerba Buena Farm in St. Mary, Jamaica, have successfully grown their first mushrooms! Since December 2011, when Agape first requested a visit from a Mushroom Specialist, the Adams have been interested in producing mushrooms as they are one of the only crops that can thrive in the shade of mature fruit trees. Agape reports that most of the land in their area is dominated by fruit orchards; this is great when the trees are in season, however, during the off-season the land is unproductive. In March 2012, the Adams received their first visit from Mushroom Specialist Nick Laskovski of Waitsfield, Vermont. Together, they inoculated various log species with shiitake and oyster mushroom spawn. Unfortunately, the dry season began shortly after Nick’s visit, and the Adams weren’t able to supply the spawn with the amount of water they required. Pests devoured the spawn before the spawn could colonize the logs. ...

First chicken farm visited upon Alexis' arrival in Haiti A month ago yesterday Alexis Malick-Koefoed, a chicken farmer from California ( Soul Food Farm ), found herself on her way to Haiti to conduct her first Farmer to Farmer assignment. A fellow rancher and repeat Farmer to Farmer volunteer had directed her to the Program. She gathered all the information she could and headed to Haiti to see what she would find, and how she would be able to help the farmers improve their odds of success. Her scope of work included assessing the chicken industry, especially analyzing options and nutrition content of chicken feed and working with women farmers to improve their enterprises. With the assistance of Farmer to Farmer and local technicians, the women are trying to increase their understanding of chicken production as a micro-enterprise, which is new to many of them and holds the potential for them to improve their livelihoods. Students stayed for hours and asked many question...

Farmer to Farmer 's volunteers Amy Weeks and James (Jim) H. Kelly Jr. have recently provided technical assistance to beekeepers in Guyana. The volunteers worked closely with beekeepers from the Trafalgar Union women's co-op, the Aliki Amerindian Village and the Mainstay Village giving these small entrepreneurs guidance on hive management, beekeeping equipment and queen rearing, from January 21 st to February 04 th of this year. The volunteers expressed that, at the time of the visit, women beekeepers in the Trafalgar Union cooperative were successfully selling their honey produce to Kingdom Apiaries. Nonetheless, the volunteers observed that the co-op technique for extracting honey was uneconomical as beekeepers were cutting out the honey comb and crushing it to harvest the honey, meaning that bees have to completely rebuild the comb to store more honey. Fortunately, following the recommendation from our volunteers and with the help of our Farmer to Farmer office in G...

Greenhouse vegetable producer, El Cercado, Dominican Republic (photo credit Britt Basel) Today, March 8, is International Women's Day! In honor of all the female volunteers and farmers with whom we work  across Latin America and the Caribbean Region, below are some photos of the talented women who collaborate with Partners of the Americas' Farmer to Farmer Program as well as some interesting statistics. According to the FAO, women make up more than 40 percent of agricultural labor in developing countries, and in some countries, they are as much 80 percent of the agricultural work force. However, women farmers’ yields are roughly 20-30 percent less than male farmers. If gender barriers were eliminated and women farmers were able to match the yields of male farmers, global malnourishment could be reduced by 12 to 17 percent. But improved conditions for women don’t only lead to higher yields – they benefit the wider community as well. - from the Landscapes for People, ...

Dr. Hammond (in the dark blue hat) inspects sweet potatoes in La Vega. There are more than 5,000 small farmers that grow sweet potatoes in the Dominican Republic, largely in the area of San Juan. These producers have been negatively affected by the sweet potato weevil (cylas formicarius) known in the Dominican Republic as Piogan. Dr. Abner Hammond, a sweet potato specialist from Louisiana State University, traveled to the Dominican Republic in January and February 2013 to provide training to extensionists and farmers about the management and control of the sweet potato weevil. In addition to his teaching at Louisiana State, Dr. Hammond has also worked as an Extension Specialist in Sweet Potato IPM for 15 years and his recent research is concentrated on developing strategies to integrate new technology into insect pest management systems for sweet potato and sugar cane. Through Farmer to Farmer  collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Junta Agroempresarial Dom...