Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

This post is drawn from Ashley Conway's trip report about her recent Farmer-to-Farmer assignment in Nicaragua.  This was Ashley’s first time in Nicaragua, and her first time participating in the Farmer-to-farmer program. After serving in the Peace Corps in Zambia as an agriculture extension volunteer, she was eager to combine her background in tropical livestock system production with her M.S. in animal science. With her thesis research specifically studying improving the utilization of low-quality forages with alternative energy supplementation, this program provided an invaluable opportunity to apply her education and experience in a valuable and productive manner. The purpose and objective of the visit was to provide nutritional technical assistance to producers to improve their operational resilience and production metrics. Over the course of the two weeks, the two volunteers conducted approximately 10 site/field visits to producers’ operations or plants. One afternoon worksh...

Father’s Day is a chance to celebrate and appreciate all of the dads around the world. This year, Partners is taking a closer look at the fathers involved in our Haiti Nutrition Security Program (NSP). NSP uses the care group model to spread knowledge among Haitian communities in order to improve the health and nutrition of pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of five. The program’s overall goal is to promote behavior change in nutrition in four geographic focus areas of Haiti in coordination with the Ministry of Health. The majority of the care groups are comprised of Mother Leaders, women who attend training sessions and then pass their knowledge onto other families in their neighborhoods. Men play a relevant role in the majority of development programs, especially at the domestic level. However, health programs and training opportunities typically are not designed to build men’s capacity to be responsible, competent husbands and fathers. To be successful, beha...

There are several approaches to resolving the problems of global food and nutrition insecurity. Partners of the Americas implements the Farmer-to-Farmer and Nutrition Security Programs, both of which work on improving the knowledge and practical skill sets of those participants. Another approach is to address the materials themselves, providing cost-effective equipment that can include even the seeds themselves.  A relatively new and promising strategy to address malnutrition is the biofortification of food crops. Biofortification – in which crops are bred, traditionally or through genetic modification, to be rich in nutrients such as iron, zinc, and vitamin A that the body is able to absorb – is cost-effective and sustainable relative to other supplementation and fortification programs. These qualities make biofortification a viable strategy to reduce the prevalence of micronutrient malnutrition worldwide.  Malnutrition is a greater health risk worldwide than malaria,...

Here at Partners, we have wonderful interns who work alongside our Agricultural and Food Security team! Amanda Quintana, the Monitoring and Evaluation Intern for the AFS team attended a symposium on Extension services. Below is her reflectionary excerpt: After attending the Strengthening Extension & Advisory Services for Lasting Impacts symposium coordinated by MEAS (Modernizing Extension and Advisory Services), I asked myself, what IS ‘extension’ and how is this term changing international development and sustainability? In the context of agricultural and rural international development, “extension” is a resource that influences or transfers activities between organizations and firms to farmers and agriculture. It brings the latest findings in research and science to practices in agriculture, maintains the way farms are kept, and contributes to farmer education. While at the symposium, I learned that a method called ‘Farmer to Farmer’, highlights that working with farmer ...

Plants in repurposed plastic bottles, Colombia Happy Friday! Today is World Environment Day (WED), which is dedicated to the United Nations mission to encourage global public awareness and action to benefit the environment. It’s a day to do something positive for the environment, so that individual actions become a collective movement for the good of the planet. This year’s theme is Seven Billion Dreams. One Planet. Consume with Care. According to the UN WED website , “By 2050, if current consumption and production patterns remain the same and with a rising population expected to reach 9.6 billion, we will need three planets to sustain our ways of living and consumption.” Compost pile, Guyana “Consuming with care” means living within our means as a global society so that future generations have the same opportunities to experience a healthy and diverse environment as we have had in the past. Living sustainably is about doing more and better with less. Our continued pro...

Herds with little access to shade Nicaragua has one of the highest potentials for livestock production in Latin America, but its actual production is among the lowest. The country's national calving rate falls below 50% annually but improvements in cattle management could raise this to 70%. This increase in production could result in an additional 42 million gallons of milk and 200 thousand calves per year, which in turn could increase profitability of the livestock industry by 100 million dollars annually. The low fertility rates that Nicaraguan farmers have been struggling with can be attributed to decreased nutrition, poor reproductive management, and heat stress. The purpose of Katie Pfieffer and Heather Schlesser’s visit was to provide trainings on male cattle reproduction, especially the factors that affect male reproduction. The goal was to try and determine what is affecting reproduction of bulls in Nicaragua and what if anything can be done to increase the reprod...