Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

 Farmer to Farmer volunteer Charles Ruffner with Dominican producers Last month, the community of El Cercado, San Juan in the Dominican Republic received a visit from Charles Ruffner, a Forestry Professor at Southern Illinois University. During his visit, Charles worked with the San Pedro and Pablo Federation, a nongovernmental organization of 21 farmer associations and 600 subsistence farm families that helps producers implement agroforestry practices on their farms. Agroforestry is a farming technique that involves planting fruit, nut, and woody trees on the farm with a variety of crops. Charles’s role during his week-long visit was to help farmers map and plan these planting schemes so they could not only lessen the environmental impacts of their farming practices but also improve their incomes.  Smoke in the mountains - a result of slash-and-burn agricultural techniques Agroforestry is being promoted as a farmer-friendly way to reduce the negative impacts of swi

Tom Hebert, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, beekeeper and English teacher who resides in Intibucá, Honduras, spent the month of July working with beekeeping associations in 6 of Jamaica’s 14 parishes. This was Tom’s second visit to Jamaica – following his first Farmer to Farmer (F2F) assignment in July 2012 – and the 8th F2F assignment focused on low-cost, sustainable beekeeping in Jamaica in the last year. Tom’s 11 hands-on training sessions focused on building top-bar hives, hive management, and making home-made pollen traps and foundation molds – skills identified by the associations as areas where they needed to increase their capacity. Of the 72 recorded participants, 66.6% had attended a previous F2F beekeeping training, and just over 25% were present at Tom’s first session in 2012. Two summer interns at Yerba Buena Farm in St. Mary parrish accompanied Tom to his trainings and conducted a survey of the 72 participants to gain a better understanding of why they were intere

 Pond-side discussion of duckweed-based feeds at the Trafalgar Union Fish Farm  Former Associate Professor of Aquaculture at the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff, Dr. Peter Perschbacher, traveled to Guyana from May 30th - June 18th in response to a request for training by the University of Guyana - Turkeyen Department of Agriculture & Forestry. The University of Guyana - Turkeyen Campus, located in the capital city of Georgetown, asked Dr. Perschbacher to provide training in sustainable aquaculture to students and faculty, as well as interested farmers, government extension workers and entrepreneurs. The goal: to prepare a pool of aquaculture technicians and researchers, as well as to prepare a lecturer to succeed an outgoing aquaculture professor. The highly prized and priced hassar food fish  Dr. Perschbacher's nearly 3-week visit included a 2-day session attended by 33 participants, a 5-day session attended by 10 participants, and 4 days of field trips to e

Amelia Canilho and Jean Tice recently returned from a Farmer-to-Farmer   assignment in Nicaragua. Both Canilho and Tice are educators and residents of Wisconsin. The team complemented each others skills in teaching and assisting over 100 Nicaraguan youth and adults with tips on home gardening, square foot gardening, family nutrition, food preservation, new food product development, and value-added processing and marketing. They worked with five community learning centers near the cities of Managua and Rivas, and also attended portions of the EXPICA Agriculture Expo and the National Cattleman's Congress. Discussing a healthy snack program at local elementary school At each learning center the team got a tour of the farms and facilities. They then conducted a general needs assessment through a short questionnaire and discussion with leaders of the center and active members. Together with the groups they developed activities for the following day that addressed the center's

Sean (center) with family of new beekeeper (left) For two weeks in July, Washington DC resident and beekeeper Sean McKenzie volunteered in Haiti to put on the first ever Beginner Beekeeping Class conducted by the Farmer to Farmer Program. This course has been a long time in the making, satisfying the demand to bring new beekeepers - especially more women and youth - into the trade. With this training, those who formerly did not have access to this type of training received the information needed to embark on a new environmentally-friendly economic activity, and help revitalize the beekeeping industry in Haiti. Sean McKenzie is a beekeeper, queen breeder, entrepreneur, and beekeeping course instructor at the University of the District of Columbia. Below are photos sent from our field staff: