Growing Knowledge & Building Partnerships

The Sabaneta Women’s Group is an association founded in 2013 by the community of Sabaneta, in San José de las Matas, Dominican Republic. It is currently composed of 10 members, who usually meet once a month to discuss key points, work on sustainable communal projects and reforestation, and organize interesting lectures. They also have a small savings group that includes children, youth and men. Since the beginning, they have grown and developed several coffee products and in 2019 decided to start a project focused on strawberry and vegetable production to diversify plantation areas. They allocated approximately 1,000 square meters of land in a greenhouse to strawberry production.  Strawberry cultivation is very dynamic that has many variables. Quality fruits can be grown in a period of eight months, between 800 and 1,300 meters above sea level, with optimal conditions taking place between October and May. In mid-2019, the Sabaneta Women’s Group requested a Farmer-to-Farmer voluntee...

Campesino Specialty Coffee is a Colombian company sourcing specialty coffee directly from smallholder farmers in Antioquia. To fulfill their mission of providing long-term solutions to coffee communities, they have a direct relationship with producers, providing complete transparency and upholding sustainability at the farm level. They started in 2016 in the town of Jericó, Antioquia with five dedicated farmers and have grown to over 120 producers. By focusing on quality, they have been able to increase the return to their producer partners and provide a higher-quality coffee to their roaster partners, creating a sustainable business operation for all parties involved. To further increase the impact in the community, they have launched a Coffee Education Center in Jericó, to provide continuing coffee education to their producer partners, their families, and the coffee community  To improve their financial situation, they requested a local and a remote F2F volunteer to evaluate t...

The demand for honey in Guyana has rapidly increased as people seek healthier sweetener options, causing a shortage of beekeepers in the country relative to market demand. To accelerate the entry into beekeeping for aspiring Guyanese farmers, a F2F volunteer was requested by the Guyana Livestock Development Agency (GLDA) to help them train its personnel in disease management and apiary inspection.  The GLDA is the single institution mandated by the Government of Guyana to implement and coordinate the implementation of livestock development activities. It aims to promote greater efficiency in the livestock product industry and the control of animal movement into and within Guyana to prevent the introduction and spread of animal diseases.  Dr. Michael Goblirsch was the volunteer selected for this assignment. Dr. Goblirsch holds a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of Minnesota where he oversees the Technical Laboratory of the Bee Research Facility and teaches various subjec...

El 18 de diciembre de 2020 se llevó a cabo el segundo webinar con la Agrocadena Ovina de Guatemala, donde el tema fue "Beneficios, Ventajas y Mercado de Carne de Oveja en el Mundo y Potencial de Producción en Guatemala".  Las conferencias fueron impartidas por los voluntarios de Farmer-to-Farmer Roberto Castillo, Licenciado en Zootecnia y Máster en Energía y Ambiente de la Dirección de Desarrollo Pecuario del Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganadería y Alimentación de Guatemala (MAGA); Homero Salinas, Doctor en Ciencia Animal y Especialista Estatal en Pequeños Rumiantes de la Universidad de Lincoln en Missouri; y por Jorge Maldonado, Investigador Titular del Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP) y estudiante de Postgrado del Colegio de Postgraduados Campus Montecillo de México.  Se contó con la participación de productores caprinos, estudiantes y organizaciones interesadas en el desarrollo de la caprinocultura en Guatemala. Estos webinars...

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...