Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

 By: F2F Guyana Volunteer, John Tiedeman - Redding, CA My assignment with the F2F Guyana program was from Jan 15 - 29, 2023. The focus was to introduce drip irrigation on prison farms to increase food production for people experiencing incarceration. An additional goal was to provide training to prison staff and the people who were incarcerated. The conditions for drip irrigation on orchard and vegetable crops at Timehri prison were well-suited for drip:   sandy soils and limited water supply. Due to lack of regular irrigation, crops in full sun were stunted or dead. Hand watering and portable lawn sprinklers make it difficult to maintain consistent, uniform irrigation required on sandy soils (low water holding capacity). We set up a small gravity-fed drip system to demonstrate the uniform application possible with drip irrigation. Other methods attempted (flooding, small holes drilled in pvc pipe) have proven unsuccessful. Our next step was to measure both pre...

  By Tasha Prados After fifty years of violence, many farmers in Colombia were trapped growing illicit crops—the coca used to make cocaine. In 2014, one farmer in Otanche realized he needed a change. Don Pedro ripped out all the coca from his land and planted cacao (the seed used to make chocolate). It was a risky move: it takes 30 months for cacao to mature. As Don Pedro and others grew their cacao production, they formed the Cooperativa Integral de Productores Agropecuarios de Otanche (Cipaotanche). Now, nearly a decade later, the Cipaotanche cacao association has 70 members and produces bean-to-bar Quincha chocolate . When Partners of the Americas reached out to me to support Cipaotanche with their marketing strategy via the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer program, I was skeptical. I was doubtful that two weeks was enough to generate impact, and I was sure that there were Colombian marketing specialists who were also well positioned to support Cipaotanche. However, I was excited t...