Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

A report recently released by the Climate Institute – "A Brewing Storm: The climate change risks to coffee" – uses existing data and compiles information from a variety of studies to indicate that climate change will have a strong effect on the global coffee supply. Rising temperatures threaten farmland, reducing the land area suitable for coffee farming. Extreme weather like worsening drought and heavier downpours also impact yields. Climate changes are intensifying the prevalence of diseases and pests like coffee rust and coffee berry borer, which contribute to millions of dollars in lost coffee beans every year. Additionally, farmers and laborers exposed to rising temperatures experience heat related illnesses that affected their long-term well-being, as well as their productivity. Complicating matters is the fact that the coffee market is currently saturated and producers are subject to price volatility. Because the majority of the world’s 25 million coffee producers a...

López (top left) giving the Benchmark email marketing seminar to CONAGAN and CANICARNE participants. About a year after his first visit to Nicaragua, Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Volunteer Eddy López returned in July 2016 to update and reinvigorate the branding and promotional efforts he previously developed with several beef and dairy organizations and small-scale producers. Over the course of his three week assignment, López reconnected with three national organizations, the National Livestock Commission of Nicaragua (CONAGAN), the Nicaraguan Chamber of Dairy (CANISLAC) and the Nicaraguan Chamber of the Industry for Beef (CANICARNE). With CONAGAN, López created new promotional materials to increase the organization’s visual presence and garner attention for their upcoming VII National Livestock Congress. He also developed branding proposals for their new national training center and for their regional congresses. Reuniting with CANISLAC allowed López to redesign their logo and stre...

When you think of the Dominican Republic (DR), you probably imagine endless fields of bananas and rice. However, there is another agricultural sector booming in the northwest region of this Caribbean nation: greenhouse vegetable production. By 2014, the DR exported more than US$111.6 million of greenhouse vegetables, making it one of the most dynamic sectors in the agricultural industry of the country. Currently, there over 930 million square meters of greenhouses throughout the DR. Dr. Liburd (far right) meeting with researchers from the agricultural research center One of the key organizations in the greenhouse sector is the Cluster de Invernaderos de Jarabacoa, or the Jarabacoa Greenhouse Cluster. The Jarabacoa Greenhouse Cluster was established in 2002 and is comprised of over 100 member farmers in the Jarabacoa region who produce vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplant for local consumption and for export. The Jarabacoa Greenhouse Cluster offers techni...

Mike Doherty serves as Illinois Farm Bureau senior economist and policy analyst. He spent two weeks as a F2F volunteer in Nicaragua with Partners of the Americas. Below are his reflections:  Mike Doherty in the field Nearly all the growth in demand for Illinois’ agricultural production is in developing countries, also known as “emerging markets.” As the U.S. Grains Council has noted, the cattle-producing areas of southern Mexico and Central America represent a significant potential market for distiller’s dried grains from Illinois ethanol plants as well as other feed grain products. Most of this new demand will be from households that are generating income sufficient to afford daily meat consumption for the first time. I had an opportunity to learn something about that process of rural income generation, and hopefully help accelerate it, via a Farmer to Farmer (F2F) volunteer assignment in Nicaragua last year.  Although I felt well prepared and supported (thanks to the...