Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

Myriam Kaplan-Pasternak is a veterinarian, farmer, agricultural development practitioner and now CEO of Haiti Coffee. Since 1971, Myriam and her husband Mark have owned and managed Devil's Gulch Ranch in Nicasio, California, a diversified family farm that supplies high-end restaurants and wineries as well as educates children about nutrition and food production. Her experience in international development began in Niger, where she was a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1983-85 focusing on nutrition. Since 2007, Myriam has been working with Makouti Agro-Enterprise as a Partners of the Americas’ Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer. Throughout her 16 F2F assignments in Haiti, Dr. Kaplan-Pasternak has used her technical expertise to support the needs of impoverished communities in Haiti for which she received a Presidential Volunteer Service Award in 2010. Her efforts intensified following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which she along with her husband and children experienced firsthand. She...

                                                               F2F Volunteer Dr. John Rushing Dr. John Rushing is an emeritus professor at North Carolina State University’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. During his decades’ long career in NCSU’s Food Bioprocessing, and Nutrition Sciences, Dr. Rushing has advised and directed numerous food technology and food safety programs at various regulatory agencies and private companies in North Carolina, and throughout the world. Currently, Dr. Rushing is an independent foot technology consultant who remains committed to training the next generation of Food Scientists. By way of the annual “John and Kelli Rushing Food Science Freshman Scholarship”, Dr. Rushing and his wife support Food Science students at NCSU with the financial assistance they need to continue pursuin...

By: Andres Varona, Agriculture & Food Security Program Officer at Partners of the Americas La Union, Valle del Cauca (Photo by  Andres Varona) For more than 50 years, large segments of Colombia’s countryside have been the battlefront of guerrilla rebels, paramilitaries, and drug cartels. The violent clash between these factions and Colombia’s armed forces has not only displaced millions of campesinos to the country’s sprawling cities, it has also contributed to the further degradation and neglect of Colombia’s rich agricultural and food-producing regions. With the signing of the peace deal with the FARC, the largest guerrilla group, the government of Colombia faces a unique opportunity to not only forge greater peace and security, but also a chance to restore the environmental vitality of its countryside and the socio-economic well-being of millions of people that been displaced from their lands. As the FARC put down their weapons and other armed groups (e.g. ELN) b...

Written by F2F Volunteer  Jo Anne Cohn    F2F volunteer Jo Anne Cohn       visiting a shop in Antigua which carries DIDART kits This month I had my first opportunity to work with Farmer-to-Farmer and Partners of the Americas. My assignment was to assist DIDART, a small business which makes educational kits for children in Guatemala. My task was to help staff members develop a sales strategy in order to enter new markets for their craft products. First, let me tell you a little about the product. Each kit comes with raw materials gathered by indigenous communities in Guatemala to make a craft. In addition, each kit contains a “passport” with an App to download. Once the App is downloaded, you can visit Guatemala electronically and learn more about the country's diverse indigenous populations and how the raw materials are used to make artisan crafts. Out of my kit which contained pine needles, I made a bracelet! Other kits include mangue...

Dr. Pablo Jordan Soto traveled to the Dominican Republic from March 26 – April 9, 2017 to assess the organic banana production practices of the Banelino Association and the Project La Cruz de Manzanillo and provide them with recommendations on environmentally-friendly technologies and best practices to increase the quality and production of their banana crops. Banelino is an association of banana producers that encompasses over 300 farmer households. Aside from its focus on banana production, the association also manages a number of social, educational, and medical programs for its members, including a youth training program in banana production. The Project La Cruz de Manzanillo is a national project that supports job creation for residents of Bateyes, a community in the Provice of Montecristi. The project has 250 hectares of land dedicated to banana production and employs over 2,000 low-income families. During his trip, Dr. Soto visited 12 farms in Valverde and ...

Written by F2F Volunteer Kathleen Preis Vision Maya is a grower co-op of approximately 25 members with 12 active members growing Oyster Mushrooms from their homes in Municipality of  San Andrés Semetabaj , Guatemala. TEach week, the Oyster Mushroom harvest is collected and sold collectively throughout the community of San  Andrés . The organization is primarily led by the President of the association, Carmela, and the Vice President, Juan. The group benefits greatly from initial Farmer-to-Farmer volunteers helping to improve their various production operations. The Vision Maya growers have managed to take what they have learned and continue to produce high quality Oyster Mushrooms under variable conditions. The growers are primarily female heads of household from the neighborhood of La Barranca . They are a close group of friends and enjoy growing mushrooms to contribute to their family’s income. They primarily grow mushrooms out of their homes. Many of their ...

In March 2017, Dr. Rex Ukaejiofo and Dr. Muamba Jerry Kabeya traveled to Guyana for a two week-long Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer assignment. The purpose of this assignment was to monitor and evaluate the potential that hydroponic and organic vegetable farming can have for underserved rural communities in Guyana. As part of this trip, the pair met with a wide range of stakeholders in the country’s agri-food value chain. Rex and Muamba led multiple key informant interviews with country representatives of leading institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA); the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO); the National Agriculture Research and Extension Institute (NAREI); as well as the Management Committee of the St. Stanislaus College Farm. They also had the opportunity to meet with a diverse array of educational institutions for Guyanan youth, including the Georgetown International...

In March of 2017, Dr. Jacqueline Jacobs, a poultry extension project manager at the University of Kentucky, traveled to Haiti to conduct a USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer assignment with local host SAKALA under Partners of the Americas' Rural Enterprise Development project. SAKALA is an organization that provides technical assistance to groups throughout Haiti and runs a community center in the heart of Haiti's largest underdeveloped area, where youth come together to grow, learn, and play. The purpose of the assignment was to train older students on how to raise poultry and  develop a poultry flock at the community center that can be used as a training tool for the school. As SAKALA supports other communities around the country, the second part of the assignment was to give outreach and technical assistance to these groups. Dr. Jacobs provided SAKALA with several recommendations to assist them in developing their poultry operations. These recommendations consisted of a 6-tier ...