Winrock International invited me to volunteer in Bangladesh as part of the Farmer-to-Farmer Program funded by USAID.  In Bangladesh, the Farmer-to-Farmer program engages skilled American volunteers to provide training and technical assistance to support youth entrepreneurship in the agriculture sector and to strengthen agricultural education and training institutions.  My assignment was to visit local beef cattle fattening farms and locally available feed sources to assess the existing status, practices, problems, and opportunities to improve practices of beef fattening activities in the community, and to conduct two 3-day trainings on improved beef fattening for the host staff and youth group members with a focus on youth entrepreneurship development.  The Rural Reconstruction Foundation (RRF) hosted me, as part of its mission to seek and accomplish “the comprehensive development of underprivileged men, women, youths, and children towards understanding a civil society with respect of full democracy, liberty, equality, justice, peace, and solidarity”.

This was my first Winrock volunteer experience, my first visit to Bangladesh and my first visit to Asia. I enjoyed Bangladesh since the day of my arrival in Dhaka City.  During my assignment, I visited farms, worked with farmers, and participated in the two three-day training for the youth beef fattening group members.  I value and admire the great interest shown by all participants to enhance their beef fattening knowledge and make of it a mechanism to improve their lifestyles. All farmers that we visited were very attentive to our recommendations on how to improve their production system. They wrote the recommendations on animal management, feeding practices, and animal comfort.

Visiting local beef farmers at Jessore District, Bangladesh

The RRF technical staff and the beef farmers showed a great attitude during the 3-day training sections. All participated actively during the training, asking many questions. The RRF staff showed critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, especially during the ration formulation exercises where we used local feed resources to formulate beef cattle diets.

Training RRF technical staff in beef cattle diet formulation using local resources

RRF Beneficiaries – Beef Fattening for Youth Entrepreneurship Development

Professionally, I will share this experience with my colleagues from the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico and encourage them to volunteer in this type of activities.  I will also share this experience in the classes that I teach to undergraduate and graduate students of at the University of Puerto Rico. It is very important for the student population to know about how volunteering aboard can improve the livelihoods for so many youths around the world.

In closing, I really appreciate the new relationships I have acquired with people from the RRF and Winrock International. My special and personal gratitude goes to Mr. Badal Golder, Project Manager Specialist, Winrock International, and Mrs. Shahnaz Begum, Assistant Director, RRF, for their friendship and professional support during the activities. This experience, working with Winrock International in Bangladesh, has enriched my life and I feel it has empowered my career.  After 22 years of teaching Animal Sciences, I believe that a higher education degree is not complete without the experience to be a volunteer and have the ability to help and transfer to people the knowledge that we have had the opportunity to acquire during our life.

Preparing for a Farmer-to-Farmer assignment, my third in Mali and twelfth overall, created a sense of excitement and anticipation. Bara Kassambara, Winrock Country Director for Mali, is a F2F professional who makes every aspect of an assignment go smoothly for volunteers. Over time, Bara and I have become very good friends, beginning with my first trip to Mali in 2011. Bara was even able to visit me here in the U.S. in 2012. Perhaps the greatest value for a Winrock volunteer is the relationships formed while on assignment.

Bara & Doug in Arkansas in 2012

The Scope of Work for my 2017 Mali project used a smart, efficient approach, called Train the Trainers. This approach greatly leverages the knowledge and skills of any volunteer. In 2016 a similar approach was used by me on a previous assignment in Senegal resulting in regional trainers for all of Senegal being trained in one location. This model of training is very cost effective and reaches farmers and small business owners more rapidly than other methods.

The 2017 Mali assignment took my team of pros to four training sites in the south of Mali. At each of the 4 sites, the basics of “Marketing of Agricultural Products” was taught over a 2-3-day schedule, depending on electricity. Crops included cowpeas, par-boiled rice, sesame, and fish. Packaging and branding are almost non-existent for the cooperative members in Mali. Samples of foreign produced products were used to show the impact of packaging, branding, and logos. Without these basic marketing functions being met, advertising cannot take place. Trainers were trained in the basics of sales forecasting, record keeping, costing, pricing, profit & loss calculation, and preparation of a Business Plan to be used for sourcing financing.

Outcome success is measured by evidence of the development of modern packaging, branding, and logos in the marketplace. I cannot give enough praise to my teammates Bara, Fatou, Fatouma, and Hadey. Because of Winrock, I feel more connected to the world and have gotten so much out of volunteering. Americans have so much of what we have been given to give to others.

On February 9, 2018, Farmer to Farmer (F2F) volunteer, Teresa Morris, arrived in Abuja, Nigeria on her first visit to the country and her first F2F assignment; to provide a training-the-trainer workshop in Developing Curricula and Training of Trainers in Farm Administration and Management to Nehemiah Foundation International.

Dr. Morris is a soil scientist who works with the Natural Resource Conservation Services (NRCS), USDA as an Organic Farming Area Specialist. She also works as an Adjunct Professor at the Saint Louis University; teaching beginning soils to graduate and undergraduate students for the Earth and Atmospheric Science Department. Dr. Morris was kind enough to write the below about her experience: 

I was thrilled when I received an email inviting me to join the volunteer team of Winrock International. My credentials matched me with a volunteer position in Kaduna, Nigeria working with small acreage farmers interested in sustainable farm management. The Host for this project was Mr. Emmanuel Nehemiah of the Nehemiah Foundation.

As I learned more of Mr. Nehemiah’s vision for local farmers to support Kaduna’s community I became excited about the development of the training. The focus of the training was agriculture that incorporated ecological principles with the development and building of organic matter related to on-farm money. I refer to this method as “farming as a banking system” and soil organic matter is the currency. I began the training by showing the farmers the actual nutrients and money associated with 1% organic matter. This idea caught their attention and from there the training was off and running.

During the four day training, we visited local farms and discussed methods of farming that would retrain and build soil organic matter. The farms were beautiful as were the farmers. I was honored to learn from them and share what I have learned from my career as an agriculturalist and as an educator in soil health and ecological farming. The challenges these farmers faced was tough. Lack of tools, weather, seed, and working with pastoral grazing were just some of the everyday tasks on their list and yet they produced a crop every year.

Back in the classroom, I showed slides of soil science technology and ecological farming methods. As the day progressed, we as a group discussed the science as well as the methods to assure everyone understood how farming using soil ecology was cost effective and would save them money as well as restoring their natural resources. Each day of the training was filled with lively discussions regarding how Kaduna could adopt ecological farming and work together to provide produce to the local community. It was wonderful.

The whole experience was life-changing. I truly enjoyed working with the farmers and the Nehemiah Foundation to formulate a practical manual for guidance on ecological farming. I also enjoyed showing the farmers how the production of soil organic matter would save them money.

Upon leaving, my new friends of Kaduna welcomed me back in the future, which I would enjoy!

Very Best,

Teresa Morris, PhD

March 20, 2018 marks National Agriculture Day, a day to celebrate the abundance provided by American agriculture. Under the USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer program, U.S. citizens have generously volunteered their time and shared their agricultural expertise in development activities around the globe. Their experiences have helped farmers, extension agents, and university professors in developing countries fight hunger and poverty and provide valuable skills to the next generation of farmers. Today’s blog gives a glimpse of the volunteer experience from the eyes of a first-time F2F volunteer.

I arrived in Dakar on December 2, 8:00 AM. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I felt the “vibe” of Senegal – the warm breeze, the energy of the people around me, and I could hear a faint musical rhythm coming from the terminal. This was my first trip to the African continent, and I was truly excited to be in a new place, surrounded by people talking a different language, living a different culture. I was prepared to see life through a new lens.

The first person I met was Mr. Youssouph Sané, a member of Winrock’s staff who would drive me around for the next 2 ½ weeks. After brief introductions, he took me to the Ambre D’hôte for my first night in Dakar. He set me up with a cell phone and told me who to call if I needed help, and loaned me 10,000 African francs because it was Sunday and the money changers were closed. Then he left me until 9:00 AM the next morning. I was exhausted from my flight but was wide awake in a new place. No way I could sleep.

After unpacking a few items, I walked out into the streets of Dakar. I just soaked it all in, the warm sun shone down on me as I walked for several blocks to the shore while the city carried on around me; traffic weaving through roundabouts, people walking everywhere, horse carts, motor scooters, colorful buses crammed full with people, shops and restaurants, tents and walled courtyards,  the colors, and styles of the garments,  the art studios, and the architecture, and the entryways into the courtyards….It was a beautiful tapestry of life, one I had never seen before, and it set the tone for the rest of my time in Senegal.

The next day, Mr. Sané picked me up and drove me to the Winrock Offices. There, I met Ndeye Mama Toure, the Winrock Program Director in Senegal, and my translator, Mamadou Diouf. They briefed me on the socio-economic realities of Senegal, why the program was created, and the details of my assignment.  The Farmer to Farmer program in Senegal is designed to help alleviate some of the food insecurity in rural areas, as well as to provide a career path for young people interested in agriculture. As it is, Senegal has lots of available land and water, and a climate that is perfect for growing vegetables. However, many farmers do not have formal education or training in agriculture, and they do not have much capital to invest in infrastructure and supplies.

From the briefing, I learned that the Senegalese government recognizes that successful small-scale farms can be a bridge to food security, good nutrition, and a secure foundation on which to build communities. By supporting programs that educate farmers on new methods and innovations, the Senegal government is building local community frameworks that promotes economic development.

My assignment was to assist in the development of a vocational horticultural curriculum for the Vocational Training Center of Nguekhokh (CFP Nguekhokh), so students and farmers can successfully engage in vegetable production, with an emphasis on food security, innovation, and organic methods of production. CFP Nguekhokh is located in the Theis Region about a one-hour drive south of Dakar near the coast.  The eco-zone is characterized as a sub-Saharan environment with sandy soils, a dry season and a rainy season. My assignment started at the beginning of the dry season, early December.

After my briefing, Mr. Sané, Mr. Diouf, and myself drove about an hour down the coast to the town of Somone, where we checked into hotel Africa6, a small hotel with a lot of character and friendly staff situated right on the beach next to the ocean. Every day for the rest of the assignment, I enjoyed my breakfast watching the ocean waves roll in and out a few meters from my table. These accommodations were the perfect space to experience Senegal and work on my assignment.

Because I was given the assignment ahead of time, I had already started preparing a curriculum in advance, drawing from previously drafted course syllabus and teaching guides. I strived to put together a curriculum that scaled down the normal educational components of vocational horticulture program to 5 lessons that I thought were innovative and/or essential to success in vegetable farming in Senegal. However, after I met some farmers in Senegal, and talked with the teachers and headmaster at CFP Nguekhokh, I realized that I had to change my lesson plans. Most of the curriculum I had prepared before leaving the USA was completely irrelevant to the reality of small-scale farming in Senegal!

I quickly realized that the curriculum had to focus on a homestead-size scale of production, and empower farmers with very limited resources. The participants of the class had various levels of experience in vegetable farming and education. So, the curriculum had to be presentable to a wide audience, and be applicable to the very real issue of food insecurity.  This made my assignment more challenging, and as a result, I had to be more creative in the way I drafted a relevant curriculum. I had to be more innovative in the ways I presented lessons and engage participants.  I was thankful that Winrock had included some extra days in the itinerary for prep-time. I was also very grateful for my interpreter, Mamadou Diouf. Because of his knowledge in agriculture and education, I was able to re-write my lesson plans so they were more applicable to the participants.

I was very happy to find a wonderful teaching resource at the training center. They have at the school a rectangular walled-in garden area for teaching horticulture, I estimate it to be 1/2 hectare.  Within the walled garden they have a small livestock shed, and various scrub trees in the corners and along the edges. Near the entrance, a small clump of taller scrub trees provides just enough dappled light for a seedling nursery.  At the time, there were 100 or so containerized seedlings, and several containerized papaya plants. There was also a big compost pile – black gold! On one side of the garden, I saw cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage, beans, and carrots. On the other side, there were several beds of hibiscus seedlings, radish, and onions, some overshadowed by a canopy of papaya. At the time I was there, all the vegetable crops were in the seedling stage.  In the center was a 2 X 2 meter concrete water pool about 50 cm deep, which was fed by water pumped out of a well near the entrance, and off to the side. Across the walkway from the well was a 5 ft. termite mound.

The horticultural training garden at CFP Nguekhokh

Presentation of the curriculum:

On the first day, with the help of Mr. Diouf and Mr. Sané, I started to present my curriculum. There were 15 participants. These were all the teachers and instructors at the training center. The first topic was “Record Keeping for Small Farms” and objective of the lesson was for the students to be able to set up a basic record keeping system for historical reference, and future planning. Farm production records can help small scale farmers secure grants, or micro-loans, and they can be adapted for organic certification, or food safety. After a brief power point presentation and discussion, students were tasked with creating their own record keeping system, utilizing the gardens at the training center.

Students working on farm records to track use of inputs, harvests quantities, and expenses and revenue

The second day, I felt much more relaxed.  The number of participants increased to 30. They included the original 15 staff from CFP Nguekhokh and 15 more from another training center 300km away. Mr. Diouf informed me they were a very diverse group (some of the participants were full-time farmers and not able speak French, so he would be translating it into Wolof). Day 2 focused on the benefits of incorporating organic matter into sandy soils to improve fertility. The learning objective was simple: Strongly emphasize the necessity to continue building up the organic matter in the soil. In Senegal’s climate, soil’s organic matter breaks down very quickly. Nutrient leaching, symptoms of too much nitrogen fertilizer, and signs of potassium deficiency were a few of the topics discussed. In the gardens that day, there were mutual demonstrations and discussions on how to use compost –  how much to use, how deep it should be incorporated into the soil and its suitability for use as mulch.

The learning objective for the third day was a general overview of horticultural practices. It was a veritable smorgasbord of horticultural tips and advise on how to raise vegetable crops on a small scale. Topics included crop rotations (which they were already familiar with) scouting crops for insect and disease control, sanitation – such as cleaning off tools – to prevent spread of soil-borne pathogens, managing cutworms with plastic cup barriers, managing whiteflies and other soft-bodied insects with homemade soap-based sprays, trellising structures for vine-type crops, companion planting to attract pollinators, and the use of catch crops to draw insect pests away from the cash crops. The participants demonstrated the skills necessary to scout and record pest observations, and plant health. They installed cutworm barriers around seedlings in the garden and built pyramidal cucumber scaffolds.

Students scouting a crop for insects and disease

From my 25 years of experience in agriculture, my observation is that farmers who innovate are the ones who prosper. Farmers must be creative in how they increase yields, with little-added expenses. So, the fourth learning objective of the curriculum was to teach participants that they can improve production methods through small-scale experiments and observations. As a competency-based approach to day four, participants were tasked with scouting the crops, as they did the day before, and note changes. But this time they there asked to observe whitefly populations among the beds of hibiscus in relation to neighboring crops. A lively discussion ensued among the participants as to the variation in whitefly population between a few of the beds.  The crop’s exposure to sun vs. shade and fertility management were discussed in relation to whitefly infestation. We then did a hands-on experiment in water holding capacity of soils, and the final activity of the day was to plant eggplant seeds into containers with potting soils that had been amended with different amounts of compost. The students were assigned the future task of recording observations about the growth of the plants in each media.

A hands-on lesson to observe the water holding capacity of different types of soil/compost mixes.

Throughout my career, I have practiced and promoted sustainable agriculture, and organic methods of farming. But, I’m also pragmatic enough to know that people will feel compelled to use pesticides for many reasons, and pesticides are not going away. Mr. Diouf informed me that pesticides are used throughout Senegal with very little regulatory oversight. Therefore, I included, as a learning objective, some basic lessons on pesticide application. Topics included the use of personal protective clothing, gloves, and closed-toe foot-wear; the proper disposal of pesticide containers; proper time of spraying, and identification of the target pest and its life cycle. The competency-based task that the students were asked to perform was calibration of knap-sack sprayer when pesticide labels give quantity to be used over a given area (Ex: Liters/hectare). This exercise was well received, but I felt the mathematical components of calibrating the sprayer was not fully understood, and my presentation should have been clearer. However, the final lesson on how to make transplantable seed starting containers from newspaper and light-weight cardboard was very well received.

It seems the assignment ended quickly…. too quickly. After the final lesson, all the participants gathered in a classroom, we had some refreshments together and said our good-byes. It felt as though my lessons got better each day as I became more comfortable with the methodology and working around the language barriers. I found that the most useful items I included in the curriculum were homemade “DIY” innovations and simple “garden hacks” – things like home-made sticky traps for controlling and monitoring insect pests, and how to make biodegradable paper transplant pots.

All the participants in the class on the final day

We packed up and went back to Dakar for my last night in Senegal. Myself and another volunteer debriefed our assignments together over a very gracious lunch with Mama Ndeye Toure and her husband, followed by a driving tour of downtown Dakar.

This experience, working with Winrock International in Senegal has enriched my life and I feel it has empowered my career.  It was a very positive experience for me. More importantly, Mr. Diouf translated the participants’ comments and related that they enjoyed it as well and the curriculum was well received. So, I feel I accomplished what I set out to do. If given the chance to go back and build upon my previous assignment, I would not hesitate.

In closing, I would like to extend a very warm thank you to the host, CFP Nguekhokh, Headmaster Mr. Mbagnick Kama and director of the horticultural program Mr. Waly Star for giving me the opportunity to present a curriculum that, I hope, will be the basis for future course development.  I would also like to thank the Winrock staff in Senegal – Ndeye Mama Toure, Mr. Mamadou Diouf, and Mr. Youssouph Sané who were all very professional, and a pleasure to work with. Without them, I would not have been able to complete the assignment.

This week’s blog comes from Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer, Rachel Schattman, a Produce Safety Specialist with the University of Vermont and a post-doctoral fellow with the USDA Northeast Climate Hub. She has worked in agriculture for 19 years, either as a farm worker, farm owner or extension specialist.

I have been working in agriculture, either as a farm worker, farm owner, or Extension specialist for 19 years. Recently, I volunteered with Winrock International in Senegal. I accepted the assignment because I was eager to see how farmers in other parts of the world ran their businesses. I was especially excited to see how people grow crops similar to those I am familiar with in a very different climate and soil type.

I volunteered in the Theis region of Senegal, which spans the coastal area between the national capital of Dakar and the colonial city of Saint Louis. In this region, several thousand vegetable farmers grow a diverse range of crops including peanuts, cabbage, eggplant, tomatoes, cassava, and many more. Many farms belong to cooperatives, and these cooperatives are often federated under a single entity.

One such federated co-op, the Coastline Vegetable Producers Union (UML), has a leadership that works diligently to promote the interests of its members. For example, in recent years, they have attracted international funding for an onion drying facility which allows for some members to export onions for the first time. Since 2015, they have partnered with Winrock International to bring agricultural experts to Mboro to train co-op members on agro-ecological practices. I was fortunate to be the third volunteer brought in by Winrock to work with UML. As part of my assignment, I was asked to develop and give a 5-day workshop, to share what I know with the remarkable farmers of UML and I took the opportunity to learn from them in turn.

Volunteer inspecting compost made by UML farmers

I began my volunteer period in mid-September, 2017 with two-days of field visits. On the first day, Winrock field staff Saliou Ndiaye, Ndiame Sene and I met with the President of UML, Soyibou Diaw, at UML headquarters in Mboro. The secretary of UML, Abdoul Aziz Sow, as well as several other members were also present for our discussion on the assignment and some common practices that I would likely see on our field visits. We then visited the farms of two members of UML located near Mboro (Soyibou Diaw, the President of UML, and Galaye Samb, another UML member) Both farmers showed our team the compost they had made following a previous Winrock training, and were eager to discuss how they were applying compost to their fields as well as the challenges they faced.

On the second day, we visited three farms in Joro, north of Mboro by 30km. Our hosts were kind enough to let me try my hand at tilling with a donkey, which was a first for me. Several plots that we observed were on significant slopes and we observed soil erosion related to rainfall and irrigation. Efforts to mitigate the erosion included redirecting water flow through hand-dug trenches. It was clear from these two sets of visits that the farmers of UML are driven by a desire to improve their production practices, and eager to experiment with new growing techniques.

Volunteer getting a chance to try tilling with a donkey.

After the visits, Saliou and I worked together to develop and translate a 5-day training course on soil health and nutrient management based on my observations from the fields and UML’s training requests. Approximately 30 UML members attended the course, which was held in the Mboro town hall. We started the week by covering 5-principles of ecological agriculture: (1) recycling biomass, (2) managing organic matter, (3) keeping nutrients in place, (4) diversification, and (5) synergy. Each principle was accompanied by examples of on-farm management approaches. In response to questions posed by UML participants, we also discussed the specific nutrient needs of crops grown on their farms, how to calculate the nutrient amounts in purchased fertilizer, and a comparison of nutrient amounts contained in a variety of fertilizers (including compost).

Participants practiced calculating nitrogen (N), potassium (P), and phosphorus (K) concentrations in fertilizer mixes based on the weight of the bag and percentage content in the fertilizer mix. I brought with me a home soil test kit and refill pack to use as a demonstration and to leave with UML.  In the last lecture of the workshop series, I showed how the coast of Senegal around Theis is already impaired by nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, and we discussed the importance of not over fertilizing for the protection of coastal areas.

I hope that the workshop provided useful and usable information to the UML farmers. As a volunteer, the experience of working with UML and Winrock was extremely valuable to me. Having only conducted extension and education in the USA, this assignment allowed me to work with growers in a completely different economic, ecological, and social context. It was a challenging and exciting exercise that forced me to return to the basic principles of agro-ecological agriculture, and apply it to an area that is almost the opposite of where I am from, in terms of soil characteristics and climate.  I was impressed and humbled by the UML farmers; there were several farmers, with whom I spoke at length, willing to try new practices, even in the face of a prevailing social pressure to maintain the status quo. The excitement and enthusiasm of the UML farmers is very contagious.

Farmer explaining to the volunteer how he makes his compost

I was very fortunate to work with a skilled professional, Saliou Ndiaye, who not only provided language translation, but also helped me to understand the social norms and expectations of the farmers and their communities. An agricultural professional himself, Saliou was able to help me distill key topics (such as soil pH, and cation exchange capacity) into terms farmers understood easily. Beyond the trainings, my time with Saliou and other members of the Winrock team in Senegal helped me to develop a deep appreciation of Senegalese culture, embodied in their teranga (hospitality) and generosity. I have a deep appreciation for the Dakar-based Winrock team, and I thank them for making this assignment a truly excellent experience.