Photos from the Field

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Partners Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteers have been out working all over Latin America and the Caribbean, helping to improve agricultural production, processing, marketing, and environmental management. Below are some photos from the field...

In Guatemala, F2F volunteer Ralph Bucca worked on building solar dryers for mushrooms and other crops. He also provided training in handling, packaging, and marketing. The solar dryers varied in size - small ones for home or small business production and larger ones for mid-size groups.

F2F volunteers Allen Mensick and Randy Shumaker worked with goat producers in Haiti on developing innovative ways to improve and expand production and increases access to markets. Their last day in Haiti was spent with agronomy students and farmers in the classroom with a training that included sharing a Rotary International video made for dairy goat production.

In the Dominican Republic, F2F volunteer Dave Lombardo was part of a team who traveled to work with local NGO Plan Yaque in designing an improved agroforestry system that can be used both to help protect the environment and also could be used for business purposes (i.e., the use of cash crops in the system). They aimed to increase awareness on the importance of agroforestry systems in environmental conservation and of potential economically feasible and environmentally friendly systems that are applicable to the area.

Partners has been supporting sustainable beekeeping in Jamaica since 2012, training local beekeepers in topics such as selective queen breeding, construction of top-bar hives, recordkeeping, and value-added products. Here, volunteer Megan Mahoney demonstrates how to inspect top-bar hives to a group of young Jamaican beekeepers.

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