The mission of Winrock International’s agriculture unit is to develop partnerships, pilot new ideas and advance solutions to strengthen communities through resilient farming and food systems. While our impact is global, sometimes we get to enjoy the benefits ourselves.

This February, two important events for Winrock converged in Washington, D.C. Winrock’s international agriculture programs held a strategic planning retreat, bringing together colleagues from Little Rock and across the country. Concurrently, Farmer-to-Farmer meetings provided an occasion for representatives from Winrock’s five country programs to travel from Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal. The rarity of having colleagues, friends and family from across the world gathered at one time required a proper feast. Enter the goat, provided by our friends at Browse and Grass Growers Cooperative.

Grilling goat legs in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol building.

Cooking to such divergent tastes requires some creativity. For the West African guests, the goat leg was rubbed with Tavia spice rub, braised and served with rice. For guests from the southern United States, the goat was grilled and roasted and served with cheese grits. The combinations were enjoyed by all.

High quality, sustainably sourced food is not only essential for feeding future generations and protecting the environment, it’s an occasion to gather and strengthen bonds between cultures.

“I appreciated the goat you prepare for us, it’s a special meal for important guests in West Africa,” said Papa Diagne, program officer for Winrock’s Farmer-to-Farmer program in Senegal. The meal, and especially the goat, provided the perfect centerpiece around which to honor guests and create stronger ties.

Farmer-to-Farmer Country Director Ibrahima Diallo, Program Manager Gelsey Bennett and daughter Sadie.

Winrock International and the Browse and Grass Growers Cooperative partner to implement the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer West Africa program in Mali, assisting local organizations to integrate climate smart practices and develop income-generating opportunities to support rural livelihoods. Farmer-to-Farmer fosters information and cultural exchange by fielding American volunteers to share expertise. Winrock and Browse and Grass Growers are working together to increase economic opportunity in Mali.

This article originally ran on the blog Common Pastures.

As Asia’s newest tiger economy and host of the Trump-Kim Nuclear Summit on February 27-28, Vietnam has been the subject of amplified international attention recently. Yet the roar of press coverage about the country’s impressive post-war transformation has failed to highlight the example Vietnam has set for balancing economic development with climate goals.

Since 2012, the USAID Vietnam Forests and Deltas Program (VFD) has been helping the Government of Vietnam develop and operationalize a national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) program that has already directed over USD $400 million to forest owners as financial compensation for maintaining forest cover. For example, Vietnam’s hydroelectric power plants now reward upstream forest owners whose trees keep soil in place, avoiding the sediment buildup that drives up operating costs. Winrock has been a key partner in refining policy, developing monitoring frameworks and ensuring that payments are secure and transparent.

Last week, Vietnam’s prime minister issued the green light to pilot an expansion of the Carbon-PFES (C-PFES) program, in which Vietnam’s largest emitters (coal-fired powerplants and cement producers) will help finance reforestation and forest protection programs that absorb some of their emissions.

C-PFES is an expansion of a program that has already directed over USD $400 million to forest owners. Photo: Nguyen Minh Duc

Beyond serving as one of Vietnam’s strategies for meeting its 2014 Paris Agreement commitment to lower national greenhouse gas emissions, C-PFES is a signal that the reality of climate change is of serious concern at the nation’s highest levels. As a densely populated country of 95.5 million with 70 percent of its population living along coastlines, Vietnam is ranked by the World Bank as one of the world’s top five countries most vulnerable to climate change. Meanwhile, its economy is booming, growing at a rate that rivals China’s. Vietnam must meet the energy demands of its 21st-century cities and produce enough cement for the expanding infrastructure, industry, housing and hotels driving this growth.

Options for lowering emissions in Vietnam cannot rely on a rapid pivot to climate-neutral energy production or industrial processes. Building a low-emission economy takes time and substantial investment, even under the most politically conducive circumstances. While recognizing the need to reduce emissions from all sectors, Vietnam is ensuring cost-effective short-term results by offsetting emissions from the energy and industrial sectors through forest enrichment.

The plan is to design a transparent program that collects revenue from large emitters and direct it to communities and private land owners who can then invest in sustainable forestry, reforestation and forest protection activities. As an expansion of the existing PFES program, C-PFES will encourage and offset costs of activities that pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in forests.

C-PFES offers a rare win-win-win opportunity that helps forest owners, companies and the Government of Vietnam. It is a relatively cheap and simple way to lower emissions. It provides financial incentives for land stewards to invest in forests. And it’s delivering environmental, economic, cultural and social benefits to help communities confront the realities of a changing climate.

Named in honor of Winrock’s former president, Robert Havener, and his wife Elizabeth, the Havener Endowment Fund provides agricultural education and training for African women. The fund is piloting an internship program for recent female graduates and providing additional resources to women farmers living in cocoa communities engaged in the U.S. Department of Labor-funded Mobilizing Community Action and Promoting Opportunities for Youth in Ghana’s Cocoa-Growing Communities (MOCA) project. Betty Adjei leads the Havener Ghana Female Extension Pilot.

When I began my career with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) in the western region of Ghana, I became acquainted with the plight of women and how they are sidelined in extension service delivery and agriculture generally. Women farmers are often taken less seriously because they have few resources to implement extension recommendations. Even with the creation of a Women in Agricultural Development Division to deal with these gaps, we still must rely on male extension agents to reach female farmers because there are so few women in Ghana’s agricultural sector.

This means that with a predominantly male agricultural extension service, training and technical assistance often targets men (on days and times when women cannot attend) and female farmers are deprived of essential information, which affects their productivity.  In the cocoa sector, for example, women’s lack of access to extension support hampers their contribution to the productivity, quality and sustainability of the cocoa supply chain. This is in addition to their limited access to land and financial support, which also makes it harder to take advantage of larger markets and trade opportunities.

Within MOFA’s cadre of extension agents, there is a serious gender imbalance — only 23 percent are female, according to a 2017 study.  And there are few women going through agricultural programs at Ghanaian universities. In 2018, no women graduated from the agricultural extension program at the University of Cape Coast.

To overcome both these challenges, I’m leading the Havener Ghana Female Extension Pilot, which builds the capacity of women to provide critical agricultural extension services to female farmers in the Western and Ashanti regions. The pilot works in partnership with the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension at Kwadaso Agricultural College. The eight-month internships provide selected graduates with practical experience, building their capacity to become community-based extension agents.

Over the past eight months, the four recent female graduate students have been running supervised training projects with adult female farmers. The interns are training the farmers in new agricultural techniques and in small enterprises such as snail harvesting and soap making. By improving their agricultural production and boosting their household incomes, families become more self-reliant and less dependent on child labor.

Through the interns’ initiatives, many female cocoa farmers have been officially recognized and registered as cooperatives by Ghana’s Cocoa Board. As a result, the women involved have the same access to input as men do and have already been supplied with fertilizer, improved cocoa pods for their nurseries, and chemicals to control diseases and pests. In the Sefwi Wiawso District in the western region, the interns are working with MOFA to support women farmers in vegetable production as an alternative livelihood activity.

The internships provide crucial experience to recent graduates, which is increasing the pool of qualified and experienced female candidates to serve within government extension agencies. Linda Osei, an intern in the Atwima Mponua District, said that through her work with the Havener project, she has learned more about adult learners and working with women groups. “Normally, when women are in the midst of men they feel shy to voice out their problems,” Osei says. “With the Havener approach, we have grouped the women separately so it is easy for them to talk and share their problems. In fact, if not for the project, I wouldn’t have known that women are very active in adopting new ideas. They always want to practice what they are learning and it is very interesting. The women are highly motivated to learn because they have seen that I show concern about their problems.”