My assignment was a five-day training for extension agents on the safe use of pesticides and integrated pest management strategies for mitigating pests of horticultural crops. Initially, my assignment was to take place in the Kindia region but was relocated to Conakry to accommodate beneficiaries experiencing budget changes. Because of the last-minute change, I was told to only expect 10 participants at most. Over 30 people came on the first day. The training was initially located in the Department of Agriculture but was moved to the Ministry of Agriculture on the day the training was to begin. After setting up in the conference room in our new location, we were told that the room had already been scheduled and we would have to move again; furthermore, the Minister of Agriculture wanted to meet with us before we began. So, first international volunteer experience, 3 location changes, over 30 participants instead of 10, I am now meeting with the Minister of Agriculture for the entire country, and I know zero French—welcome to Guinea, this is your itinerary for the next two weeks.

Though I felt my career as an extension agent had prepared me for a new level of flexibility, nothing could have put that to the test quite like my time in Guinea. Working with a translator for the first time was also a new experience and presented its own set of challenges, forcing me to slow down and to really think about what I was saying so that it could be translated and still have the same impact for the participants. There were a lot of times when I had absolutely no idea what was going on, though this was due in large part to the language barrier. That said, my translator, Ousmane, was amazing and extraordinarily patient with both myself and the participants and I am deeply grateful to have met and worked with him. I also have come to better appreciate the basic conditions we often take for granted in the U.S., like being able to rely on electricity, having access to affordable products that keep us safe from pesticides, or having safe, clean food and water.

Personally, I appreciated many things about Guinea, not least of which were the people. Observing day-to-day life in Guinea was at times difficult, at times frustrating, many times full of joy and hope, but it was always humbling. The thing that stands out most, the thing I cannot shake from my mind; it is the extraordinary resilience and determination of the people who live and work in Guinea, who have an enthusiastic approach to overcoming so many challenges that we cannot even begin to process here in the U.S.

My time in Guinea has given me so much more, I believe, than I was able to provide to the participants of the training. I have seen first-hand the differences between the United States and Guinea, but also the similarities of our people, including the shared desire to make each of our countries a better place for farmers and their families. Professionally, it has broadened my capacity to teach under ever-changing environments. It was challenging, but also very rewarding and I believe it has equipped me a new set of skills that I can use in my educational programs at home.

Personally, I am awestruck by the capacity of extension agents to perform their jobs with so little available resources. Communication, for example, cannot rely on internet and e-mail or cell phones. It must be more purposeful and as a result, more personal, with whomever they are speaking. This I will also take with me as I continue to build working relationships with my clientele in North Carolina.

I am deeply humbled to have been a firsthand witness to the passion that extension professionals in Guinea have for improving the lives of farmers and their families and I hope one day that I am fortunate enough to return. Maybe by then, my French will have improved.

Thomas Sallee recently returned from his second trip to Bangladesh, where he built the statistical analysis skills of faculty from Jessore University of Science and Technology and International University of Business Agriculture and Technology in order for them to conduct improved, advanced agricultural research. He shares his thoughts below on the differences and similarities between his two trips to Bangladesh. 

My second visit to Bangladesh was somewhat different from my first trip. This time it was during the monsoon season which came early this year. It rained just about every day while I was in Dhaka, although mostly at night and in the early morning so I never got soaking wet. Also, my hosts were very considerate and held umbrellas for me and loaded me into vehicles under overhangs or covers. Luckily, none of the areas where I needed to visit were flooded although some parts of the city did experience inundated streets. Other parts of the country weren’t as fortunate. Heavy rains further upstream in India and Nepal along with locally severe rains caused extensive flooding in the eastern part of the country. The people I spoke with endured this with an optimistic resiliency based on the fact that they had seen this year after year and had always come through it and prospered. In Dhaka, I provided some training at the International University of Business Agriculture and Technology (IUBAT). This University, founded in 1991, was the first private university in Bangladesh.

I also presented training at Jessore University of Science and Technology (JUST), a newer public university, founded in 2007. The rains continued as I traveled to Jessore. Again, my hosts graciously arranged to keep me dry and comfortable. I saw jute being grown, a new experience for me. Jute is a long, soft, shiny vegetable fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. At one time jute was a major export crop for Bangladesh, but declined as a significant crop as plastics took over the bag and rope market. Today, as the world tries to reduce its dependence on petroleum products, there has been a small revival in jute production.

Another difference from my previous visit was that mangoes and jackfruit were in season. Again, my hosts were diligent in providing for me and I had plenty of delicious fresh fruit. I didn’t know there was such an assortment of mangoes. The inside of each variety has a unique color ranging from light yellow to dark gold. The flavors are also quite different. I ate a lot of mango and finally decided I couldn’t pick a favorite. They were all delicious. I also ate a lot of fresh jackfruit, which is nearly impossible to find back home. I didn’t know that the seeds of the jackfruit could be prepared and eaten several different ways. I had some that had been roasted and it reminded me of eating unsalted roasted peanuts.

Fruit and vegetable production is fundamental to food security and economic development in rural Guinea and efficient irrigation practices are vital for producers. Today’s blog comes from volunteer David Speidel, who trained members of the Microenterprise of Fruits and Vegetables Producers of Boulliwel in Guinea on water management and drip irrigation. David shares his reflections on the landscape and potential for agricultural success in Guinea.

“The Guinea Central Highlands of West Africa are a prominent feature of the region. These mountains block the early morning sun rays and during the rainy season catch the humid Atlantic air currents piling up the heavy air, into layers of clouds, making a glimpse of the sun shooting over the hills and under the clouds a rare and brief event at best. These rugged promenades of ridgelines, sheer cliffs, and peaks reaching 1,300 meters, for ancient range lack the smooth rounded hills expected of our mother continent. One rare afternoon, when the haze lifted, while I was looking west from the canyon west of Dalaba I counted nine, maybe eleven ridgelines formed in a north-south aspect, marching in echelon toward the Atlantic like some monster army of giants. In that regard the mountains are a force to be regarded with caution. Since it is this mountain barrier that must be breached by roads to reach the promise of prosperity offered by the iron and bauxite ore beneath the mountain and harvest the bounty of the land’s mangos and gardens of legumes that grow on its slopes.

 

The villages lay, nestled in the level folds of road every four to eight kilometers. The large towns, Kindia, Mamou and Dalaba occupy the important road junctures and the homes, street vendor shops and Mosques sprawl over the hills and up and down the valleys. In between are stretches of forested clad slopes, bare, nearly vertical walls of cliffs, and steep loam slopes in open sections of hillside gardens with short, six meter long, rows mounted up across the hillside to guide the coming runoff to outlets draining the runoff during the rainy season. Along the roadway are the promenades of granite, with balsa stone skins, standing alone, jutting into the sky or blocks of uplifted sandstone features crowned with the tropical vegetation makes the view unique. Found in protected places are the farms.

 

This is clearly a place where people are close to the land. Not once do I remember seeing a tractor. Everything is done by hand. The hand hoeing to mound up the garden rows in the deep loam along the second terrace landscapes which lay by streams or the making of new land on hillsides by mixing the barrowed soil with manure requires constant cultivation. The 3,000 milliliters of annual rainfall does provide the needed water. It also requires rebuilding the rows on the hillside and the drains in the valleys. During the dry season carrying of water in 20 liter buckets is another chore requiring hand labor to grow a crop. The small gardens that makeup the 26 hectare farm is worked by an association of individuals, lays near the village (Baadi) called Boulliwel. It is down in a valley below mountains raising 400 meters above which feed the springs that provide the water for the wells the women draw water from daily for their gardens. The farm association is at the end of a trail which runs two kilometers through a cattle pasture of scrub brush, burned each year to open the land to the sun and allow the grass to compete once the rains start. To reach the turn off of the unmarked trail one of the many dirt roads out of Boulliwel runs another two kilometers along the spine of a ridge high above the valley. This is the road that produce is carried to town for the weekend market.

 

The rangeland is a mystery. The scrub sends its roots deep into the cracks of granite that has only a thin entisol surface covered with scatted basaltic stones left eons ago. This early in the season between the dry and rainy period the land seems devoid of grass needed to feed the few horned cattle lying in the shade and chewing cud. Was this land once covered with the same red loam seen on the upper hill tops? Was it once fertile, only to have lost its topsoil to the demands of early agriculture? Today the scrub rangeland only supports sparse grass with the help of open fires to clear the brush that let the sunrays in and wait for the rains to come.

 

The rains come in the afternoons and late at night trailing into the early morning. The storms entertain with lightening shows and crack of thunder adequate to impress anyone familiar with our continental storms on the high plains. Then after the humid air has squeezed out its moisture, the clouds part and in one rare case the early morning rays peak over the high easterly ridge and splash a glow over the old crumbling French grandstand, sitting sad and forlorn in the abandon parade field now used for football. But before the image can be captured the sun slips higher back into the cloud shrouded haze. One last attempt was made when time allowed, plotting the capture of a sunset across the Dalaba canyon. The clouds were thick again blocking any view of the yellow sphere. Finally in a brief moment a deep red band, crossed a thin segment of the horizon. Rather than turning from yellow to orange and then darker shades of red it simply emerged and then slipped behind another ridgeline to close its day on this ancient continent and march westward across the Atlantic to the new world. Here in our higher latitudes sunrises over the Ozarks Mountains are long and colorful lasting 30 minutes for different shades of violet and purple in the pre dawns before reaching 30 minutes of the reds and orange colors ending up in yellow the late morning risers see. On the high plains the sunsets are longer yet and sparkle in the evening dust and can be enjoyed at leisure. In Africa the events are there, but shorter and difficult to capture. It takes both opportunity and planning. The beauty of this land is important to note and remember. But how to manage?

 

 

This is the question, how best to manage the land. To produce and harvest its bounty while ensuring its productivity is improved for future generations. How much of the steep hillsides can be reclaimed with additional soil and manure mixed into hillside mound gardens? This will depend on how much water can be moved, sustainably up from the lower valley streams and wells. And it will depend on how much produce can be marketed down the roads leading off of these mountains. Yes this is a land of giants, a giant called the Guinea Central Highlands.”

Constrained by a lack of resources, public extension services in Nigeria fall far short of the goal of one extension agent for every 800 farmers. In this context, agribusinesses and social enterprises like Babban Gona play a key role in expanding small-scale farmers’ access to training. Babban Gona (“Great Farm” in Hausa), an innovative agricultural franchise. uses an outgrower model, partnering with farmers to increase maize, soybean, and rice production in their own fields. The organization works with groups of smallholders to achieve economies of scale, providing access to low-cost and high-quality inputs and production materials and facilitating marketing of harvests. Babban Gona has built a corps of local extension agents to offer one-on-one support and production advice to over 5,000 farmers.

USAID Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer John Moulton worked with Babban Gona to improve its training and extension services. With volunteer support, staff revised their annual trainings and created systems for supporting extension agents. Community extension agents learned to assess farmers’ level of knowledge and training needs. They also created annual work plans with checklists to allow them to monitor their progress. In order to better serve farmers, agents now visit farms on a more regular basis and are available to answer any immediate questions by phone. Babban Gona also started using demonstration plots to share best practices with the broader communities in which their farmers live. Finally, Babban Gona streamlined service delivery by creating special service units responsible for managing distribution and post-harvest processes. The new system is much more convenient for farmers, reducing wait times for inputs and payment.

Other volunteer assignments provided support on soil management and marketing techniques. Based on volunteer recommendations, the majority of Babban Gona’s farmers now use crop rotation to maintain soil fertility and prevent damage from crop disease and pests. Extension agents were also taught to work with farmers to identify optimal plant spacing and fertilizer application rates. Farmers have noticed significant benefits, with many able to decrease the amount they spend on fertilizer each year. As a result of F2F assistance, Babban Gona farmers increased yields by 56% (from 3.5 to 4.6 tons) per hectare.

Improvements in Babban Gona’s ability to serve female farmers has been one of the most significant impacts of F2F support. Tolu Owolabi, Babban Gona’s Director of Human Resources, described how a simple idea resulted in a dramatic increase in women’s engagement: “The advice given to us by Winrock F2F volunteers to recruit more female extension agents to serve as role models and attract women farmers really helped a lot. It has never happened before that we have this huge number of female farmers applying to be Babban Gona farmers considering the environment where we work. But with the application of this idea, we now have 100 women applying to be part of the Babban Gona project.”

In addition, the knowledge acquired from these trainings assisted Babban Gona in making improvements necessary to win the 2017 Skoll Award. The Skoll Foundation presents the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship each year to a select group of social entrepreneurs whose innovations have already had significant, proven impact on some of the world’s most pressing problems, and invests directly in the promise of even greater impact at scale.  Kola Masha, Babban Gona’s Managing Director, made the following remarks

“Babban Gona farmers service limited wishes to appreciate Winrock for her diligence and cooperation in ensuring that both Babban Gona staff and member farmers get the best of up-to-date trainings through well-equipped and passionate volunteer trainers who have at several times of assignment given themselves to the training, improvement, and equipment of both our staff and member farmers for increased productivity. Your efforts have yielded great success, as your trainings did not only improve staff knowledge on agriculture but also improved both staff and member farmers development, thereby equipping them to face greater challenges and reducing crime rates to the greatest minimal.

 

Your excellent teaching skills and the admirable personalities of your volunteers has tremendously helped us through our journeys. Team Members were excited to learn new skills for seed production at our last training. The knowledge acquired from the trainings which were introduced into our activities has also provided our organization with the honor of acquiring the 2017 Skoll Award.

 

We greatly appreciate every form of impact you have made on us as an organization. We have learnt so much from you and we look forward to learning more, also kindly let us know how we may be of assistance to you at any time.”

As a Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) recruiter, my role is to find volunteer agriculture experts that can provide the most positive and measurable impacts to our assignments. I receive the greatest job satisfaction hearing about the volunteers’ experiences and reading the updates from the field staff on impacts. However, it isn’t often that recruiters are able to witness these impacts first-hand. I recently had the opportunity to travel to Myanmar and Nepal to do just that.

In Myanmar, we visited two Farmer-to-Farmer host organizations, which provide assistance in livelihood development for local women in Pindaya and Nyaung Shwe. We then travelled to several villages to meet with the female participants of soap making and business management assignments to see how they were utilizing their training. What struck me was the hospitality shown during each visit. There wasn’t a meeting that didn’t involve green tea and delicious local snacks. We listened to the women’s stories of their opportunities and challenges in starting new businesses, while we munched on rice cakes and fried potatoes. They were excited to share their successes in making new soap products using avocado, tomatoes, lotus pollen, coffee, etc. A few groups eagerly presented their meticulous business management records that were created based on the F2F volunteer’s advice. The women’s groups agreed their ultimate goal was to see sustained profits and business growth. Many of these groups are already well on their way to achieving those goals.

One woman showing off her new soap products

While in Nepal, we traveled to Ramechhap district to meet with youth entrepreneurs who benefited from F2F training on business management. Entrepreneurship seems to come naturally to the people we spoke to. They work hard and have an eye for market opportunities. F2F training helped them build confidence to invest and make informed business decisions. We toured the plant nursery of one of the participants. His enthusiasm was infectious. He is proud of his successes, and the way he has grown his business after applying the techniques he learned in training. He wants to help other young people in his area and surrounding districts to experience the same. The sense of collectiveness in Nepal is inspiring. One can see that even the smallest amount of assistance can and will be replicated to build rural economies.

Binod showing off his plant nursery

In my role, it can be difficult not to view volunteer assignments in terms of flights booked, visas received, travel advances sent, and paperwork completed. It is easy to get lost in the minutiae of recruiting and mobilizing volunteers. Seeing these assignments and their impacts through the lens of a volunteer and the participant has heightened my sense of pride for the Farmer-to-Farmer program, Winrock’s field staff, and the work we do at headquarters.