Ms. Neelam Canto-lugo, adjunct professor at Yuba College in California, signed the agreement with EnerGaia on May 12, 2019, to provide financial support that will help develop women contract farmers for household production of spirulina in order to generate new income opportunities and empower women in rural Bangladesh. EnerGaia is a private company focusing on spirulina production, processing, and marketing of fresh spirulina and value-added spirulina products to Thailand, Singapore, and India.

Ms. Canto-lugo came to Bangladesh multiple times in between 2017 and 2018 as a volunteer to help the youth entrepreneurship development initiative of Winrock International’s Asia Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F, 2013-2018) Program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She conducted training on soft skills development, women empowerment, and curriculum development to build the capacity of the trainers and youth beneficiaries. She was also a recipient of Farmer-to-Farmer Volunteer of the Year Award. 

After the Asia F2F project closed in September 2018, Ms. Canto-lugo kept in touch with the Winrock staff and her past hosts. She traveled to Bangladesh using her own funds to follow-up on the progress of the organizations and their beneficiaries, as well as conducted further training.

During one of these follow-up visits, Ms. Canto-lugo connected with the staff of the USAID Feed the Future Asia Innovative Farmers Activity (AIFA, 2015-2019) project, implemented by Winrock. Through those connections, she met with EnerGaia Bangladesh representatives and visited their spirulina research lab at the Department of Horticulture of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka. She learned about EnerGaia’s initiative to implement spirulina contract farming focused on providing income opportunities for rural women. Impressed with the potential benefits for the rural women, Ms. Canto-lugo promised to provide financial support for EnerGaia.

AIFA’s main mandate is to source, validate and market innovative agricultural technologies and practices for improving the lives of rural farmers. EnerGaia was selected competitively as one of the companies that would have its spirulina production technology tested and validated in Bangladesh’s local context. The AIFA project supported EnerGaia’s expansion into Bangladesh to benefit communities in need of more nutritious food and additional income opportunities. The project also worked to find funding opportunities for EnerGaia to establish a pilot spirulina production village in Khulna to empower women through improved livelihoods. Currently, EnerGaia is establishing a Spirulina Production and Training Center in Batiaghata Upazilla, Khulna District to train and develop spirulina contract farmers.

In May 2019, Ms. Neelam Canto-lugo returned to Bangladesh using her own funds and signed the agreement with EnerGaia to provide financial support. She visited the location of the spirulina production training center and met with the local women. Ms. Canto-lugo’s support will help develop 30 women spirulina contract farmers in Batiaghata under the EnerGaia contract farming model. These women will receive hands-on training from EnerGaia and a system consisting of 20 tanks (for each person) along with other essentials to produce spirulina. EnerGaia will provide technical assistance to the contract farmers for the production and buy back 80% of the production and encourage the rest 20% for family consumption. The initiative could change the lives of the women and their families and empower them with their own sources of income.

As Winrock bids farewell to the Asia Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program, we would like to share the learning and impacts of the program in Bangladesh.

Dr. Janet Henderson summarized her experiences facilitating the Bangladesh F2F Host Learning Event in Dhaka in August 2018. The workshop was designed to summarize key hosts’ successes and innovations, as well as ongoing challenges, and discuss lessons for how to sustain and build on F2F impacts and initiatives; enable hosts to hear and learn from each other and to network; and identify recommendations and lessons to improve effectiveness of future F2F programs and other agricultural development efforts.

A key aspect of this workshop was to learn directly from the hosts, the recipients of volunteer technical assistance, what were the things that worked, didn’t work, and could be improved. Panel members, guest speakers, and breakout groups provided the following lessons learned for a successful F2F program:

• Provide practical, hands-on training; skills and knowledge participant can readily use
• Encourage networking among host institutions and organizations
• Emphasize the economic aspects of agricultural production enterprises, such as marketing
• Be realistic about what a short-term assignment can accomplish; establishing “doable” objectives
• Build the capacity of youth-oriented organizations to support youth directly

Listening to the panel

Guest speakers, panel members, and breakout groups offered the following ways they are sustaining the efforts of F2F volunteers:

• Creating teaching materials, such as posters and flipcharts
• Incorporating information into course syllabi and curricula
• Developing specific courses and modules on training received
• Replicating F2F trainings for others while also developing new trainers
• Maintaining contact with the F2F implementers and volunteers for additional assistance

Winrock has had the honor to implement Farmer-to-Farmer in Bangladesh for 22 years. We wish to thank all of our staff in Bangladesh, our volunteer, and hosts and partners for their commitment to this program and to the development of the Bangladeshi agricultural sector.

Breakout session

Mr. Ihtesham B. Shahjahan, Managing Director, Quality Feeds Limited

We started the feed company in 1995 and then I met Winrock. We were looking for buyers to start our project. Actually, I met with many U.S. organizations, but Winrock was the only organization that met my project goals in many aspects. F2F has helped our farming sector a lot and helped our economy. Had it not been F2F, my company would have never reached the heights that it has today.

Mr. Michael Roy, Advisor, Shalom

We have received assistance from three Winrock F2F volunteers beginning in 2015. The volunteers worked with tribal communities in three areas of Bangladesh on mushroom, banana, and pineapple production. We started with 40 farmers, now we are working with 400. The farmers’ incomes have been raised and are expanding every day. The use of organic fertilizers is an example of growing something without harming anything. The F2F volunteer professors from the U.S. have continued to contact us and provide assistance. The screening of Winrock F2F volunteers for the “right” person made the project successful.

Dr. Wais Kabir, Executive Director, Krishi Gobeshona Foundation

I have seen Winrock primarily focus on making the agribusiness sector more organized. Our collaboration with Winrock encourages cross-country experiences and volunteers in a country like Bangladesh also bring networking opportunities. I believe that the continuation of such services in our country will add value.

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!

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

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.