It is a bittersweet post today, as we wrap up 5+ years of inspiring and impactful work with Farmer-to-Farmer in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar. In these five years, Winrock volunteers have completed 313 volunteer trips and donated over 6,300 days of time to train and assist 19,184 farmers, teachers, extension agents, entrepreneurs, and youth. This work has resulted in new and improved training and degree programs, increased access to nutritious foods, improved livelihoods, and stronger agriculture sector leaders. And it has built bridges and lasting relationships across borders.

I have seen and heard the impacts on the ground myself, during site visits and focus groups over the last several years. I met livestock farmers in Bangladesh who improved their animal husbandry practices and are now earning more income – which helps them feed their families. I talked with teachers at schools in Bangladesh and Nepal who are newly empowered and now implementing improved pedagogical techniques in their classrooms, to better motivate and prepare students for careers in the agriculture sector. I listened to the aspirations of women and youth in Bangladesh and Myanmar who are now starting new businesses after participating in Farmer-to-Farmer training. And I sat in the homes of Myanmar farmers who are proud to have started to grow – and in some cases, export – high quality agricultural products, previously unaware of the income generating potential of these crops. In all cases, those who participated in Farmer-to-Farmer training have become leaders within their organizations and communities and are sharing information with others. Likewise, I continue to hear how the American volunteers continue to stay in touch with their host organizations and take their Asia Farmer-to-Farmer experiences back to their jobs, community work, and families. Both sides are forever changed, and the ripple effect – on both continents – continues to grow.

Winrock’s Asia Farmer-to-Farmer team has worked tirelessly over the last five years to identify on-the-ground needs, design and implement volunteer assignments, and ensure that our volunteers are well equipped and safe throughout the duration of their work in country. Over the years, we have shared many memories with our staff and volunteers and will truly miss implementing the program in this beautiful region of the world.

We are so grateful to our Asia F2F field staff and to all of our wonderful Asia F2F volunteers! Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for all that you have done and all that we know you will continue to do. It has been a pleasure and an honor to work together.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead

We will miss these smiling faces!

August 17, 2018. It was a rainy day in Yangon. Winrock’s F2F staff, from the head office and Asia region, and volunteers hugged each other and said ‘bye’ from their hearts in the Yangon airport lobby. I remembered the day I finished my final examination in University; all the friends were happy as we had faced the biggest challenge of our life, however, we were so sad from deep within our hearts as we had to be apart after 5 years of friendship under the same roof.

After just as many years implementing USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer Program in Asia region, mainly in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal, Winrock is going to hand over the program to another implementer at the end of September. We are hugging with great happiness and pride for accomplishing the 5-year program successfully, wishing each other to have bright futures after. However, I felt everyone’s sadness from their eyes for the separation and being away from Winrock’s roof where we had lived for 5 years together. Yes, it was  similar to my last day of university life. It was  bite-the-bullet time. We have to accept the things we cannot change, haven’t we?

Each and every host country in the Asia F2F program conducted a learning event to review the program’s activities we worked hard on, successes we accomplished, impacts we made, challenges we faced and opportunities we have to improve. We discussed those things in the regional workshop conducted from August 15 to 17, 2018 in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State. Within 5 years, we, Asia F2F program assisted 19,184 people in 3 host countries through 330F2F volunteer assignments in the areas of rural development, agricultural education and training and youth entrepreneurship. We have done a good job for the people and for the host countries, of course including my motherland. We were not just focusing on productivity, but we also considered food safety. We were not just improving the quality of agriculture products, but we also alert on resilience and constantly thought about sustainability. Our focus was not only on agriculture but also on people; how they live their lives, how they work together to improve their livelihood and business.

I tried to shift my emotional thoughts to technical analysis. F2F has reviewed itself, how about me? What did the past 5 years of my life as a Winrocker mean? How much did I improve? Who was I, and who am I right now? I analyzed the baseline and impact of my bio-data.

OMG! I found that Winrock and F2F changed my life a lot. I changed from a vet who only thought about Foot and Mouth Disease all the time to someone who is advocating integration of livestock and crop productions. F2F changed me from a lab technician who was worrying about the bacterial contamination of baby hamster kidney cells in which virus replicated to produce FMD vaccine, into a man who is worrying about the safety of the food for the people of the whole world. I should not show-off that I changed from a specialist to a generalist. However, I have the confidence to say that the F2F program and its volunteers helped broaden my view from the microscope to the globe.

As a Winrocker, F2F impacted not only my vision but also my career life. The knowledge gained from F2F volunteers, field trips, and management work, helped a lot in my other life as a freelance writer.

Working in the field translating from volunteers’ scientific information into farmer’s language was the most pride filled l part of my job in the F2F program. If the technology and science were the gods, F2F and I as an F2F technical officer will be the messengers. Without farmers, there is no world. Without scientific and technical knowledge, the farmers cannot grow. Without the messengers like F2F, the farmers lack  that knowledge.

As a Winrocker, I am very proud to be the one who understands farmers lives, the one who serves  the farmers , the one who has the vision to feed the world, the one who fights for resilience and sustainability of agriculture, and the one who is working hard.

Mr Kofi Annan, who is former secretary general of United Nations and passed away recently, once said, “To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there”.

I was a Winrocker and F2F technical staff. Yeah, I am sure I chose it very very well, five years ago. And it was right. It will be one of the best choices ever in my life.

As the Asia Farmer-2-Farmer Project comes to a close after 5 years, we sent a volunteer to facilitate a Learning Workshop with some our amazing hosts in the country of Bangladesh. Below are some of Dr. Henderson’s Lessons Learned: 

In August 2018, I traveled to Bangladesh to facilitate an in-country workshop as part of the final-year impact and lessons learned analyses for the Asia Farmer to Farmer (F2F) program funded by USAID and Winrock International. I had the opportunity to work with the Bangladesh F2F team located in Dhaka, the capital of the country. Eighty-four participants from different government organizations, universities, national and international NGOs, donor-funded projects, and private sector agribusinesses attended a “Host Learning Workshop.”  The primary objectives of the workshop were to A) summarize successes and innovations, as well as ongoing challenges, and discuss lessons for how to sustain and build on F2F impacts/ initiatives and B) enable participants to hear and learn from each other and to make connections/network with each other. The F2F team did an outstanding job of organizing the host learning workshop; I was very impressed with the dedication and professionalism of Dr. Kabir and his staff; they were a joy to work with! It was obvious that the team had spent many hours preparing for the workshop; their attention to the little details that ensure a successful program was evident. Through my volunteer assignment, I strengthened my ability to serve as a “master of ceremonies” for a workshop; gained a better understanding of Winrock’s F2F Program, including a general overview of the program and the specific work in Bangladesh; and acquired new friends and colleagues.

Facilitating the Panel Discussion

Dr. Henderson surrounded by Asia F2F Team for Bangladesh

We were fortunate to spend two weeks in Nepal working with Professor Binayak Rajbhandri and HICAST University, helping them to enhance their Masters in Agribusiness curriculum that will help develop entrepreneurship skills in their students.  We were both drawn to the program due to our collective experiences in entrepreneurship, higher education, and agribusiness.  Over the two weeks, we met with HICAST students, faculty, and staff as well as local business leaders to discover the gaps in the current curriculum and make recommendations on new courses and content that would help to develop a spirit of entrepreneurship within the institution and student body.

Kate and Frieda consulting with HICAST Agri-business students

Through the assistance of Winrock staff, Chhan Bhattachan and Dr. Vrigu Duwadi, we were able to speak with several students within the program to hear their opinions and discover ways they thought the program could be more applicable to the real-world business environment and not solely on theory delivered via textbook and lecture.  Since most students work full time and appreciate the idea of applied learning their feedback was helpful in understanding the gaps in the current curriculum.

Kate and Frieda final presentation to HICAST senior team

We were also lucky to meet with members of Kathmandu’s agribusiness community to better understand the knowledge and skills students traditionally lack when entering the workforce.  Business owners believe that graduates lack real-world experience and struggle to convert the theories they learn in school to the applications needed in the workplace. They want to see graduates come out with more real-world experience and applicable knowledge.

Kate and Frieda with Dr. Binayak in assignment planning meeting

Lastly, we met with several members of the HICAST faculty to comprehend the courses they taught as well as the delivery method of the content.  We learned that faculty in Nepal universities are not full time, rather they work in full-time jobs and often teach classes on the side.  As a result, they rarely have time to make curriculum changes, spend time on paperwork or facilitate educational opportunities outside the classroom.  These time constraints pose a considerable barrier to implementing a more robust curriculum dependent on experiential learning, which we deemed necessary to create a more entrepreneurial system.

We presented our findings to the HICAST leadership during a lively discussion. We acknowledged that some of our recommendations could be implemented immediately and that some would involve a much “bigger lift”, including cultural change and a new way of doing things throughout the institution. On the more immediate side, we recommended focusing on class discussion, using real-world case studies, and including current technology in the classroom. We also suggested including course content such as leadership, creativity, value chain analysis and a regional business environment class.  All of which would help to develop the critical thinking skills that are necessary for an entrepreneur. On the longer-term side, we recommended the creation of two applied to learn courses, one that would involve students creating and running their own businesses and one that would involve students solving real business issues for real clients.

Dr. Binayak (middle of Kate and Frieda) in group picture with HICAST team

Since Nepal is a relatively risk adverse country when it comes to business, we hope that our recommendations can help students become more comfortable with risk and consider starting their own businesses.  At the center of economic development in any country is the development of new business which creates jobs and in turn puts more money back into the local economy. For the right individual, Nepal has a lot of entrepreneurial opportunity within the agribusiness industry.  We hope that our recommendations can help HICAST develop a curriculum that gives students the skills and confidence to create their own business which will contribute to the development of Nepal’s economy.

PRAN/PABL (PRAN Agro Business Limited), a food processor and agribusiness company decided to grow cassava crop for its industrial expansion and needed a volunteer to train the young women entrepreneurs involved in this project. This sounded familiar me, as I was introduced to the production and processing of cassava tubers into gari and tapioca by my mother’s family as a teenager. The transformation of cassava tubers was my mom’s main business for more than sixty years and had enabled her to pay my tuitions. Cassava goods were once staple foods for more than eight hundred million people in Africa, where they were processed and sold by women to make a living till the early 1980s. Thereafter, the disease prone and low yield cassava varieties that had been introduced from South America and cultivated in Africa since the fourteen century were wiped out. Therefore, the improved, disease tolerant and high yield varieties needed to be reinstated in Africa, including Benin (my country of origin). As the Director of Crop Protection Service, I had assumed this task (using multisource funding), essential for the restoration of the agricultural food chain and specifically important to the participation of Beninese women in economic development.

The aim of this assignment was to train Bangladesh women and youths to grow cassava that will be purchased by PRAN/PABL. The tuber part of the plant will be used to make gluten-free starch designated to be transformed into either glucose or flour and used in making juice or in baking industries. Furthermore, starch was vital for the clothing industry that brings in twenty percent (20%) of Bangladesh’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). So far ninety percent (90%) of this needed starch is imported from Thailand and PRAN/PABL had decided to produce it in situ. Thus, the company installed a starch producing plant, is on its way to building the second one and is pushing to scale up the production of cassava tubers. Fallow and empty lands not suitable to grow other domestic crops, such as rice, are being gradually gradually with cassava crop.

Cassava is not a staple in Bangladesh and may not have been cultivated had not PRAN decided to use it as an industrial crop. PRAN funds the producers by providing the input (seedlings, fertilizer, pesticides and technical assistance) and thereafter purchases the cassava when the crop is mature. The tubers were transformed into starch, glucose and flour. The stems are cut and distributed to all potential producers under the control of PRAN technical staff. Waste derived from tuber peels, chaff from starch processing and leaves cut from the plant are recycled and used to either make organic fertilizer or chicken feed for their chicken farms. It could also further be used to make biogas for cooking and ethanol for cars and buses. All part of cassava plant is put to use in industrial development.

Training on Improved Cassava Production for Youth Entrepreneurship Development was held in Modhupur, Tangail from 11/17 to 11/25/2017 and for four hours on 11/28/2017, at PRAN Headquarter in Dhaka. The first training session involved 32 participants (with 3 women) made of PRAN field staffs and producers-head of cassava grower cooperatives. The Dhaka session was for PRAN/PABL personnel (forty in total) only and was part of their monthly meeting schedule. They were trained in Dhaka using one of the training modules designated to produce semi-mechanized cassava crop. Topics such as the need to use cover crops to lower the cost of weeding control and the introduction of new improved varieties of cassava had been debated after the training session.

Cassava is becoming the next best thing designated to change Bangladesh farmers’ lives by boosting their income under this special scheme implemented by PRAN. As for now, cassava farming is at low-cost and more profitable because it requires less irrigation, fertilizers and insecticides. It is also less affected by natural calamities. PRAN wants to keep it that way and had organized this training for both farmers-head of cooperative and its staff to avoid the mistake made by Thailand. Industrial production of cassava had become Thailand’s main export and domestic substance since 2009 until the invasion of cassava mealybug and spider mite in 2014. This country is actually losing more than twenty percent of tuber produced and has less suitable seedlings for subsequent production. Cassava production is so secured under PRAN watch that numerous women have decided to join the program.

My main activities were to:

1. Visit existing farms to assess the status of cassava production, agricultural practices, problems and potential pests

1. Train for four days PRAN staff involved in the cassava outreach program on improved cassava production techniques

1. Train for two days cassava producers-heads of cooperatives assisted by PRAN/PABL on improved method to produce cassava crop.

1. Underline production techniques aiming to increase the quantity and quality of tubers produced and increase the yield of extracted starch.

1. Develop training modules on improved cassava production to be used by PABL and its staff for further trainings

1. Emphasis the importance of cassava crop pests and diseases and set up a surveillance unit

I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and willingness to learn displayed by the trainees. Cassava is a cash crop that could be grown with no major problems and then easily purchased by PRAN. In addition, tuber collection from farms to the factory was ensured by PRAN. The producers take home more than 7000 Taka/acre. This earnings was predominantly used to acquire new land to increase cassava production. Their concerns about harvesting, weed control and flooding of the field were resolved by recommending: a) a semi-mechanized devise to uproot these tubers easily, b) installation of a suitable cover crop and c) plant cassava on ridges.

I am confident Bangladesh will produce the needed starch for its industry.