Grow Ahead Blog

We got an update from the past recipients of the Micro-loans for Beekeeping in Chiapas campaign to hear about how the loans were used, the impacts of beekeeping on coffee production and how farmers are adapting admits the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have another update after the Grow Ahead campaign with Cooperativa Norandino to plant 45,000 trees, revitalize coffee production and create community associations to monitor ecosystem health and support education and capacity-building around reforestation and conservation. Read about the work of community associations on reforestation and food security as well as Norandino’s commitment to long-term climate resiliency.

We got the chance to interview Alejandra Trujillo who works with impacto café to get an idea of how climate change is affecting small-scale coffee producers in Mexico and how diversification can offer solutions for communities and the planet.

I got the chance to visit the chakra of Raúl and Carmen Alanya Saramiento. Raúl and Carmen are long time members of the Peruvian Cooperative CAC Pangoa and Raúl is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Pangoa. Carmen was one of the initial cooperative members to begin reforesting their land in 2008 and growing coffee in an agroforestry, or food-forest, system. They have an impressive 14 acre farm where they grow coffee, cacao, yucca, bananas, and fruit trees. They have a vegetable garden where they grow spinach, onion, zucchini, squash, peppers and herbs and they raise pigs, chickens, guinea pigs, and fish.

Grow Ahead and Cooperative Coffees teamed up with Peruvian Cooperativa Norandino successfully to plant 45,000 trees, reforesting 45 hectares of land in Piura, Peru. The program is geared towards revitalizing the coffee production of families in Las Lomas de Palo Blanco, as well as supporting the conservation and reforestation of the local ecosystem.

Rigoberto, the local coordinator for the Coffee Diversification Project in Mexico, sat down and interviewed Don Fidel, a producer and member of coffee cooperative CESMACH. Don Fidel speaks about his experience in the past farmer exchange in Nicaragua and what he looks forward to in hosting the upcoming exchange in Chiapas.

Alejandra grew up in a rural area south of Mexico City and works at the Community Agroecology Network staff as project manager for CAN’s work in Mexico.  The Community Agroecology Network, alongside cooperative partners CESMACH and PRODECOOP, and university partners from University of Vermont, Santa Clara University, Universidad Nacional Agraria, and El Colegio de la…

Vasantha Kumari, from the Amrita Bhoomi agroecology center in south India, received a scholarship from Growahead for her work on the conservation of local seeds in April 2018. Vasantha is the seed coordinator of Amrita Bhoomi, which is a farmer’s agroecology school run by the farmers movement of the state of Karnataka. Vasantha is now single-handedly managing the seed program at Amrita Bhoomi.