Farmer-to-Farmer in Colombia’s Orinoquia Region: Semi-Annual Report October 1, 2015 – March 31, 2016

The project aims to create and roll out a local food value chain, boosted by a food hub, and to support smallholder farmers in increasing production through environmentally sustainable farming practices. The project has three objectives: to increase farm productivity through sustainable agricultural practices and natural resource management, to strengthen the regional agricultural economy through value-added processing and sustainable innovations along the value chain, and to enhance networks that support small farms and markets for local food systems. Volunteers from the F2F program work with smallholder farmers to provide technical assistance in agricultural practices, processing, and marketing. During the first half of FY 2016, the project fielded four complete volunteer assignments, with a fifth departing at the end of March. The combined value for Purdue's F2F volunteers during this time was $24,440 for 52 days of work. Three recommendations from these assignments were adopted, and overall, 35 recommendations have been adopted by host organizations. The project has made significant progress in implementing volunteer recommendations, including the installation of electric fences and biodigestors by farmers. Community-based organizational capacity has also been strengthened based on previous volunteer assignments. The project has also made progress in transitioning from contractors to employees of Purdue International, Inc. (PII), ensuring compliance with U.S. and Colombian law. The project has also focused on improving scopes of work, with seven approved scopes of work and four additional scopes in different phases of review. Monitoring and evaluation activities have helped Unillanos, the project's partner organization in Colombia, to get a better handle on how the project is progressing. The project has also made progress in finding quality volunteers that fit nicely with the requests by organizations in Colombia. The Colombia F2F project has been utilizing volunteer assignments to improve sustainable agricultural production and develop a local food system. Through assignments focused on sustainable water use and catchment, nutrient cycling, organic fertilizers, grey and black water treatments, local and regional food hub markets, empowering organizations, and developing data records, smallholder farms have been able to utilize their resources and leverage them for financial improvement. The Orinoquia Region, particularly the Meta department, is a very important agricultural area for Colombia, producing a great quantity of food. However, professionals and agricultural workers are poorly trained about diseases and how to identify or recognize common diseases. The project developed a training workshop on diagnosing plant diseases based at a lab at the University of the Llanos, which included technical professionals dedicated to this activity from research institutions, federations, and professional services for producers from across the region. The training workshop was conducted by Tom Creswell from Purdue University and Lina Rodriguez from Iowa State University over two weeks, teaching participants procedures and lab techniques to identify plant diseases. This was a strategic contribution by the project to improve the capability in the region and to generate a network between professionals linked to plant disease diagnosis. The project has made significant progress in implementing volunteer recommendations, improving scopes of work, and transitioning from contractors to employees of Purdue International, Inc. (PII). The project has also made progress in finding quality volunteers and improving the capability in the region for plant disease diagnosis.