Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

The Ever Win Coffee Factory is a Myanmar coffee company that produces 12 types of coffee products and provides training on coffee making. They wanted to develop new products to become more competitive in the coffee and tea markets, and thought of producing a new line of black teas, as they have the raw ingredients available. To expedite this product development, a F2F volunteer was requested to help Ever Win staff develop formulas and processes for the creation of black tea products, advising them on the processing and the ingredients to be included.  The recruited volunteer was Mr. Manik Jayakumar. He is originally from Sri Lanka but has been living in the USA since 1989. In Sri Lanka, he managed six award-winning tea estates and helped pioneer organic tea farming. In 1994, when he was living in California, he founded QTrade Teas and Herbs which is now the largest importer of organic tea in North America and one of the largest tea producers in the USA. He has worked at QTrade f...

Banelino is an organic banana association located in the province of Montecristi in the Dominican Republic, very close to the border with Haiti. It was founded in 1996 and is made up of more than 335 smallholder farmers who own an average of three hectares. They recently developed a sustainable chicken production inside of their banana fields to promote biodiversity and diversify farmer incomes. In August 2020 they requested a F2F volunteer to help them design a logistical plan to transport the live birds from the farms to be slaughtered and processed, and for the chicken meat to be delivered to consumers.  The chosen remote volunteer for this assignment was Dr. Jacqueline Jacob. She has a BSc in Poultry Management, an MSc in the sudden death syndrome in male broiler chickens and a PhD in poultry diets. She has widespread experience in poultry extension in the broiler and egg industries, youth, small flock, and alternative poultry production enterprises (including organic productio...

Una de las estrategias que el programa Farmer-to-Farmer Guatemala ha empleado para llegar a los agricultores y productores agropecuarios en esta situación global, es la implementación de webinars con organizaciones de productores donde el interés por aprender sigue estando latente. Es claro que el campo sigue produciendo y por lo tanto la necesidad y el entusiasmo por crecer siguen siendo constantes.  En Guatemala, uno de los modelos de organizaciones que más ha mantenido su auge es el de las agrocadenas. Desde marzo del 2020, el programa Farmer-to-Farmer en este país ha apoyado a la Agrocadena Caprina de Guatemala, posteriormente a la Agrocadena de la Tilapia y ahora a la Agrocadena Ovina.  Los participantes de las conferencias han agradecido el apoyo que el programa Farmer-to-Farmer, en conjunto con las agrocadenas, han brindado, adaptándose a horarios en los que les es posible a los productores tener un espacio para aprender de forma virtual. Es por eso que el pasado 4 de d...

Rios de Chocolate is a cacao association comprised of 185 families, located in Santander, Colombia. These families do not have a common buyer and therefore sell individually. Their goal is to obtain a homogeneous fermentation of their cacao beans to be able to export their products together. Currently, they produce fine flavor cocoa, dry cocoa beans, chocolate liquor and chocolate. In June 2020 they requested a F2F volunteer to help them understand the opportunities and risks of selling to the U.S. market. Sharath Patil, a lawyer and supply chain management specialist with extensive experience in international trade, was the chosen volunteer. He started working remotely with Rios de Chocolate in late July and met with them virtually ten times. During the assignment, Sharath trained them on topics such as:  Understanding the U.S.-Colombia Trade Relationship The U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement Trade Flows and Market Access U.S. Destinations of Colombian Cocoa Exports Value of...

Mr. Michael Fraser is the founder of Delhana’s Family Farm in Guyana’s Mahaica-Berbice region. He is a retired social worker who always had a passion for agriculture. Without having a technical background in science, he was still eager to pursue his passion, no matter what. After retiring, Mr. Fraser thought that it was time to bring his dreams to reality.  In 2017, he organized his children and grandchildren, and together they launched Delhana’s Family Farm. Delhana’s Family Farm is a medium-size farm that employs ten people from within the community of Mahaicony, Region 5. They produce soursop, peanuts, passion fruit, black eye peas, bananas, and plantains; all of which are marketed within the community and at supermarkets.  One of Mr. Fraser’s visions is for his farm to become organically certified. However, there were areas that called for some improvements, including the production of compost and organic pesticides, and integrated pest management. Bearing this in mind, Mr...

Between November 23rd and 25th, 2020 the Farmer-to-Farmer program in Guatemala held an online certification training on Preventive Control for Human Food, the second of this type in Guatemala. This online workshop will certify 11 young professionals from Guatemala and two members from the Haiti government as Preventive Control Qualified Individuals (PCQI).  This online certification is part of a food safety assignment with Guatemalan host Yogi Super Foods (YSF), which wants to obtain an organic accreditation to sell in the US market. YSF is a Guatemalan social enterprise that specializes in superfoods and has been in business since 2014. The workshop serves as a roadmap for YSF to use the new tools and resources received during the training such as worksheets, workbooks, templates, and manuals to outline its own food safety plan.  The certification was facilitated by Dr. Aliyar Fouladkhah, an Assistant Professor at Tennessee State University, who is also the Director of the Pu...

From June 15 to 26, 2020, F2F Volunteer William S. Nichols completed a Marketing and Branding assignment with the Hopone Coffee Cluster under the Myanmar Coffee Association. He trained its affiliated producers to use marketing strategies and branding to expand their consumer network and improve their coffee promotion. There were 27 participants; 18 men and nine women who work as managers, community facilitators, marketing staff, processors, etc. The training included an introduction to marketing, promotion, negotiation skills, branding, and finding prospective new customers.  The Hopone Coffee Cluster is comprised of four companies/cooperatives: Green Gold, Indigo Mountain, Mudra and Naung Kham Kaung Ron since December 2018. The objective of the Hopone Coffee Cluster is to produce high quality, unique and natural coffee and share market information with its affiliated members.  F2F Volunteer Bill Nichols has more than 30 years of experience teaching and working in marketing ma...

In February, the Farmer-to-Farmer program in Jamaica received the last in-person assignments before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a disruption in operations due to travel restrictions. One of the last two in-person assignments in the island country was with Minard Estates, a large cattle breeding operation that specializes in Jamaican beef breeds like Black, Brahman and Red Poll. Minard Estates is run by the Agro-Investment Corporation, an agency under the Ministry of Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries located on 160 acres of an old slave estate in the parish of St. Ann. They have increasingly found that the effectiveness of their operation has been hampered by the lack of operating tractors and equipment. They wanted to know if the repeated mechanical failures of the tractor were due to the workers’ lack of skills to operate and maintain the equipment, and therefore requested a F2F volunteer to train the staff at Minard Estates in the correct operation of tractors and h...

In May of 2020, an association of Dominican rabbit breeders wanted to broaden its rabbit-based products, apart from rabbit fillets. To help them explore new value-added goods, a F2F volunteer was requested to train the breeders in the value-added processing of rabbit products. CEPROR (Centro de Educación y Promoción Rural) is an education center located in Villa Tapia, La Vega that was first founded as a mother’s club and in 2009 became an association. It currently has approximately 40 members who work on its goat, rabbit, and duck farms; some of whom also teach technical courses for the students that attend the public school right next to it. The chosen volunteer for this assignment was Mr. Robert Spencer, a small-animal specialist and rabbit breeder from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Spencer could not travel to the Dominican Republic and had to complete this assignment remotely from his home in Alabama. During this four-month assig...

In September 2020, after two months of work, we finished our first remote assignment in Colombia with Crezcamos and Kyla Persky. Crezcamos is a microfinance institution that advocates for the financial inclusion and training of low-income populations in Colombia. Their products and services are divided into two types: financial services and protection solutions. Crezcamos also offers training services on basic finance and smallholder farming to its clients. The aim of the assignment was to help Crezcamos improve its use of technology to capture, manage, and analyze its client data.  Kyla Persky is a Fintech and microfinance specialist that helped the host with their digital transformation. Kyla analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the digitalization of their products, ran a pilot to help Crezcamos communicate with new clients via WhatsApp, and worked with their call-center staff to outline and streamline the digital process. At the end of the assignment, Kyla submitted a co...

  The Guyana Innovation Prize Start-up Bootcamp provides farmers with training in the Lean Start-up Method for agribusiness and business development, helping them develop business skills in addition to their high-level farming experiences. A F2F volunteer was requested by the Guyana Economic Development Trust to support the Bootcamp’s instructors alongside staff from the School of Business and Entrepreneurship (SEBI) at the University of Guyana to help participants develop an agri-business plan/model.  The chosen volunteer was Gaston Tsompo, who holds a BS in Economic and Quantitative Techniques, an MBA, and is currently a candidate for a Ph.D. in Business Administration Project Management. He works for a company that works towards increased US trade relations in Africa, and before that worked for an NGO in partnership with stakeholders in Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean where he prepared business plans utilizing Logical Framework tools.  Gaston met virtually w...

Like many countries, Guatemala has been seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The immediate effects have been more severe on perishable products such as deciduous fruits, which are mostly produced by smallholder farmers in the Western highlands of Guatemala. Several Farmer-to-Farmer hosts have implemented different actions and measures to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on small producers and at the same time facilitate their access to markets.  This is the case of the National Association of Deciduous Producers (ANAPDE) that, given the uncertainty and restrictions of many of their associates to the local and regional markets, decided to host the first virtual peach fair in August 2020. The focus was on the Salcajá variety of peach because it was bred in the region in the late 1960s, and nowadays is being recognized internationally for its quality. There were several activities such as virtual orchard tours, online cooking classes, webinars, and cultural tours. In the on...

In Myanmar, the expanding avocado industry needed technical assistance to improve the drip irrigation and fertigation system designs that affect the reliability of fruit set and high crop yields. To help improve the current state of the industry, the Myanmar Avocado Producer and Exporter Association (MAVO) requested a F2F volunteer to review the current use of irrigation and fertigation in orchard management, and to determine if the trees were receiving the nutrients required for high fruit quality and yields.  Dr. Jonathan Deenik and Jensen Uyeda completed this virtual assignment together. Dr. Deenik has a Masters and PhD in Soil Science and is currently the Chair of the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Mr. Jensen Uyeda has a bachelors and Masters in Tropical Horticulture and is currently an Assistant Extension Agent at the same university. Mr. Uyeda provided training on the practical aspects of irrigation and fertigation systems...

Dr. Roger Ellis, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine who currently works as a field veterinarian for the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, volunteered with the Farmer-to-Farmer Program in Jamaica in November 2019. He taught staff from the Ministry of Agriculture and Minard Estates Farm about Artificial Insemination (AI) techniques, procedures, and skills. During his assignment he reviewed farm plans and handling facilities and carried out theoretical and practical training on reproductive tract examinations, rectal palpation and breeding gun placement  Dr. Ellis also made both theoretical and practical demonstrations of how technology can help the farm and visited supporting institutions such as the AI Laboratory in Bodles St. Catherine to have a discussion with the AI Technician responsible for the parish of St. Ann, where Minard is located. Dr. Ellis had various consultations during his packed schedule to assess the adaptability of Minard to AI and made recommenda...

“ Seeing you reminds me we are not alone. ” That is what one Dominican Republic producer told Dr. Donald Schwartz when he volunteered with Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) in June 2019.  For two weeks in the Dominican Republic, Schwartz worked with the organization, Bananos Ecológicos de la Línea Noroeste (BANELINO), meaning “Ecological Bananas for the Northwest Line” in English. BANELINO seeks “to improve the living conditions of small producers, workers, their families, and the community” by providing technical assistance services to associates, marketing, and certifications. BANELINO now has 336 producers in its membership.  Dr. Schwartz assessed the impact of the last decade of BANELINO’s efforts and conducted a benchmark/gap analysis of the organization’s 2014-2019 strategic plan. He also assisted BANELINO in developing necessary tools and processes to ensure the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the organization. He did this by hosting a workshop, giving an in...

Asopromieles is a non-profit association of panela (raw sugar cane) producers established in 2014, which covers approximately 150 hectares. They are made up of 34 sugarcane growers and panela producers and their families, but collect and sell the panela produced by more than 140 local sugar mills in the municipalities of Apulo, Jerusalén, La Mesa and Quipile, in Cundinamarca, Colombia. Their initial goal was to solve production problems such as lack of quality, product heterogeneity, unsatisfied demand and labor shortage through the construction of a homogenizing honey plant. This honey plant is now a reality and has been operating for more than a year in the municipality of Quipile.  Now that they have the plant, Asopromieles is focusing on growing, transforming, and marketing organic honey and panela products in a sustainable way. Their main goal is to export 50% of their production and bring together 600 local families. In 2019 they started this process by taking Good Manufactur...

The animal nutrition laboratory of the Guyana Livestock Development Agency (GLDA) needed to train its new staff in proper laboratory management. Therefore, they requested a F2F volunteer to improve the capacity of their staff to perform basic functions of the animal nutrition lab. Mr. Francisco Rivera started working on this assignment in July 2020 and completed it in October 2020. He holds a BSc in Crops and Agro-Environmental Sciences, a MSc in Agricultural Science with a Major in Animal Science, an MBA and a Certification in Animal Nutrition. He is currently an Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Agent at the University of Florida, where he plans and executes educational programs that focus on improving the viability of small farm livestock operations.  Mr. Rivera met online with the laboratory staff several times during the assignment. He started by identifying their needs in terms of training, which included help with the use of their Near-infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) ...