agricultural

EducaFuturo is a program currently being implemented by Partners of the Americas in Ecuador and Panama. Funded by the US Department of Labor (USDOL), EducaFuturo seeks to combat child labor in both countries by providing educational programs, vocational training, and livelihood services. The Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program has partnered with EducaFuturo on numerous occasions over the past five years, sending 7 volunteers to support their efforts in improving the educational outcomes of youth involved in child labor, while also increasing the income opportunities of households to reduce their reliance on child labor. Volunteers have provided training on a range of topics, including sustainable production practices, processing, business management, and marketing. Most recently, University of Oklahoma Extension food specialist, Dr. Barbara Brown, traveled to the city of Otavalo, Ecuador to provide training to EducaFuturo participants on fruit processing and value-added products from their ...

By Ian Robinson, F2F Volunteer in Ecuador  It’s a Tuesday morning in Esfuerzo, a rural community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. As the clock hits 9:00 am, a handful of individuals gather in a covered area on the side of the road, each of them carrying a shovel, ax, or hoe. Six piles of decomposing organic waste are spread out across the ground beneath the structure, each pile at a different stage in the process of transformation from vegetable scraps to becoming compost. For the last ten years, these Tuesday morning work sessions have been a weekly tradition in Esfuerzo, one of ten communities in the area to participate in a program that transforms organic waste from municipal markets into nutrient-rich compost. When the waste decomposes, the municipality helps the communities market and transport the fertilizer to their final customers. Residents estimate that they produce 500 40-kg sacks of compost each year and generate over $1,200 in revenue. They also use the fertilizer on their ow...

One of the many agricultural lecture/workshops at Chuya Yaku.  This was the farm of Abel Canelos and Yolanda Vargas Written by: Rip Winkel, F2F Volunteer This is the second report on my Partners of the Americas' USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer assignment to Puyo Ecuador. In the first report, I outlined my schedule, and explained a bit of what the purpose of the project was about. In this second article, I would like to detail a little more on the work done, the communities and some of the folks that I was fortunate enough to get to know. And as stated before, I feel privileged to have been able to work this project for Farmer-to-Farmer program. Each week that I was in Ecuador, it seemed that there was less and less time to get things done.  In Chuya Yaku, where the majority of the work was conducted, 8 out of 10 farms in this Kichwa territory participated in the trainings and workshops. The size of the groups attending these sessions ranged anywhere from 5 to 28 ...

Article Written by Rebecca Roebber, Marketing Director for indi chocolate Chuya Yaku is a Kichwa community in Ecuador located in the heart of the Amazon. Their cacao growing efforts are preventing deforestation in the rainforest. In Kichwa, Chuya Yaku means clear water. Kichwa is the indigenous language spoken by just over 180 people that live in the community and is a common dialect of the region. Until 2012, Chuya Yaku was inaccessible by road, the elders of the community report that it would take them over a week to reach Puyo, and two days to the nearest town. Once oil industries found out that there was valuable oil in the region, they built a road with the intention of extracting resources. Excessive logging is a secondary effect of the road being built. In the last three years lumber and oil industries and even the local municipality have put money into road and bridge development for continued extraction of resources and extending roads farther into the rainforest. Even though ...

By: Rip Winkel, F2F Volunteer  To start the year 2017 off, I am privileged to be working on yet another Farmer to Farmer assignment, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Partners of the Americas. My project takes me back to familiar territory in Ecuador. I am working in in the Ecuadorian province of Puyo, a high-altitude land where the frequent rains run off down into the Pastaza River that eventually joins into the Amazon. Since my arrival here, I have been fortunate to work with the same communities as last year, as well as adding couple of new ones to the project.  And, just like last year, this project is 10 weeks duration, instead of the normal 2 week length.  The date set for this project started on the 8th of January, and will go through to 19th of March, 2017. Currently I am half way through the assignment, and this article is the first of two that I will be writing; the second article will be posted soon after my return t...