Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

Solanum quitoense , known as lulo in Colombia and as naranjilla in Ecuador and Panama is one of the most popular and loved fruits by Colombians. In February 2020, Isaiah Wunsch volunteered with Farmer-to-Farmer in Colombia to train and work with staff and associates from a smallholder farmer association that produces this beloved fruit. Isaiah has a B.A. in Public Policy and a M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Resource Economics and spends five to six months out of every year working at an apple farm in Michigan and the rest of the year working as an agricultural consultant. His experience in marketing fresh produce, introducing new packing systems, creating financial models, handling customer relations, and opening new markets made him the perfect volunteer to support APRHOSEPAS.  APRHOSEPAS is an association of 70 lulo producers, located in the El Dovio municipality of the Valle del Cauca department. They sell their produce together to big supermarket chains in the country but ar

The food, the music, the beautiful landscape…. everything about Guyana is memorable and unique, especially the beekeepers! I have had the wonderful honor and privilege to complete my third trip to Guyana in February 2020, working with the beekeepers there to continue to monitor the health status of their bees and to support them, as they continue to develop their industry. My Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer team-mate, Nathan Weber and I traveled to many of the regions of Guyana (by bus, boat, and plane) to inspect hives, collect honeybee samples and to encourage and train beekeepers along the way. The landscape is breathtaking but what I found the most precious is the friendships created among those we worked alongside.  This 3-week assignment was a bit longer than typical because of all the travel and logistics involved to accomplish the goal of a true nation-wide honeybee survey. During these hot, hard-working days we encountered complications, rain, a few bee stings, and m

The Farmer-to-Farmer program provides technical assistance to farmers, entrepreneurs, cooperatives, associations, universities, and private enterprises around the world. Since 2014, the Guatemala field office, under Partners of the Americas, has fielded more than 150 volunteers to work in its Rural Enterprise Development and High-Value Horticulture strategies. Yogi Super Foods is one of the many businesses that has received support.  In 2014, Marco Barbi began to prepare Kombucha at home and shared it with his friends. Later, he developed recipes and packaging for this and other products, expanding his offer. As a result, he founded “Yogi Super Foods (YSF)”. "Super Foods" is a popularized term that refers to foods that can have health-promoting properties such as reducing one's risk of disease or improving any aspect of physical or emotional health. They tend to have an unusually high content of antioxidants, vitamins, or other nutrients, and are packaged wit

In Jamaica, changing climate and weather patterns have diminished forage production and availability, which has been detrimental to the ruminant industry. A reduced access to nutrition means farmers must supplement feed with costly grain-based products and other ingredients. Hence the need for technical assistance from Partners of the Americas’ Farmer-to-Farmer Program to Jamaica’s Rural Agriculture Development Authority (RADA). In June 2019, Robert Spencer volunteered to serve as a Pasture Nutrition Specialist in Jamaica to evaluate current farming practices and provide suggestions on opportunities for improvement. During the first week of his assignment, Spencer met and worked with in-country staff from the host, RADA, Bodles Research Station, and numerous farmers at their farms. Bodles Research Station, whose focus included meat and dairy animals, played a great role in Roberts Trainings as the site has multiple forage plots and uses irrigation, so he was able to observe best

Brian Foster was the second volunteer to go to the Dominican Republic in this cycle of the Farmer-to-Farmer program. He supported Service for Peace (Servicio Para la Paz or SFP), an NGO that works to break the cycle of poverty by engaging communities to identify and address their own development priorities. As part of their strategy, they invite international volunteers to support the communities in their efforts to improve their quality of life.  SFP works in rural areas of the Dominican Republic. The past two years they’ve been focusing their efforts in the mountains of Villa Altagracia county within the province of San Cristobal, just 45 minutes northwest of Santo Domingo. SFP embraces the idea of community-driven development, in which people and their institutions are treated as assets and partners in the search for sustainable solutions to development challenges. This approach emphasizes local empowerment and capacity-building.  Brian Foster, a charismatic and ex

Jillann Richardson-Rohrscheib travelled to Colombia in November and December 2019 to train and work with staff and associates of ASOMUSACEAS and ASOPPITAYA on business plan development. Jillann holds a Masters in Intercultural Administration, International Development Management and Training and a Bachelors in International Affairs and Latin American Studies. She has been a F2F volunteer in Guyana, Haiti, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Tajikistan.  Both ASOMUSACEAS and ASOPPITAYA are smallholder farmer associations that are being supported by CorpoValle, a non-profit development agency focused on planning, evaluating and implementing agricultural development projects in Colombia’s Valle del Cauca department. CorpoValle works with 54 smallholder agricultural associations by strengthening their business and technical capabilities. It reaches 1,700 fruit and vegetable growers in 29 municipalities, impacting 3,300 households or approximately 12,0

Over the last three months, the Coronavirus took the world by storm and shook it up in a way that perhaps no one alive now had seen before. It appears that every country has suffered from the effects of this pandemic. This includes Guyana and rest of the Caribbean and Latin America. Beverely Coppin helping with the garden Because of the historical, geographical, cultural and economic linkages with the USA, many families in the Caribbean and Latin America have lost loved ones who used to live in the US as a result of COVID-19.  The Joseph / Coppin family from Linden, Region 10 and West Coast Berbice, Region 5 in Guyana is no exception. They lost three relatives who used to live in Brooklyn, New York, to COVID-19. This has been very difficult for the Joseph / Coppin family, particularly for the older ones, not only because of the death of their loved ones but also because of the fact that the family did not have access to the bodies to say the customary final goodbyes. 

Guatemala is a land with a multitude of cultures, languages and traditions woven tightly and colorfully together like the patterned textiles on display in every market. The Farmer-to-Farmer program matches volunteers from the U.S. with agricultural partners in countries like Guatemala to train locals on different topics.  The Asociación de Cooperación al Desarrollo Integral de Huehuetenango (ACODIHUE) is an agricultural association that supports smallholder farmers. It offers training and fair wages for indigenous people, equal opportunities for women, and social services. ACODIHUE works with coffee and honey producers in the mountains of the department of Huehuetenango and provides them with financial and agricultural training and assistance to ensure they get the most fruitful harvests possible. The coffee produced is both for export and domestic consumption while the honey is for domestic consumption only. As a second-level organization, and because of its ethnic div

Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer  Dave Roberts  agreed to participate in a cattle handling training assignment with  Minard Estates Farm staff in 2019 . H aving  completed several assignments in the  t ropics and  with a  considerable amount of  experience in tropical livestock production, he was a  great fit for the Minard  t eam.    Most of  the train ing  was conducted  through physical  demonstrations  i n the farm s  so the workers could see the reactions of the cattle after  certain  techniques were done.  Dave  did several demonstrations using different herds which had differing temperaments . For example, Jamaican Red and Black  cows  were docile while Brahman were more excitable.   Through these demonstrations, he  c overed  topics like  her d  handling and  sorting ,  cutting cattle out of a herd, and  animal restrains  using ropes and chutes.  During his assignment, Dave also  c reate d  a Minard Estate manual for proper cattle handling techniques  and  carri