Farmer-to-Farmer Program Yields Cross-Cultural Collaboration
USAID’s Farmer-to-Farmer (FtF) Program operates in 40+ countries. It provides volunteers to help not just farmers, but agribusinesses and their supporting organizations to promote sustainable improvements in food processing, production, and marketing. Volunteers come from U.S. farms, land grant universities, cooperatives, private agribusinesses, and nonprofit agribusiness organizations. A small percentage are retirees, and all wish to contribute to development efforts. Volunteers typically spend three to four weeks in a host country, responding to the needs of local farmers and organizations by sharing their skills and experience. This program cultivates both crops and relationships, enabling the American volunteer and host country farmers to learn from each other.
Robert Navin in USAID’s office of Agriculture EGAT met a fabulous volunteer during a recent oversite visit. Navin said, “Over FtF’s 21 year history, there have been some great volunteers who have given of themselves, thus improving the U.S. image abroad. Mr. Kappelman is one such volunteer, and he received in return a great gift that he has shared with his local community and beyond via internet.” Here’s the story of one Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer, Wisconsin dairy farmer John Kappelman, in his own words:
“I've had the great opportunity and life experience of working on two USAID projects (through USAID contractor CNFA,) in the beautiful little country of Moldova. It was my second visit to Moldova.
Moldova is a gorgeous little Eastern European country located directly north of the Black Sea, landlocked by the Ukraine, and Romania. They were a part of the Soviet Union until 1992, and are now independent. Two thirds of the people are of Romanian heritage, the other third is half Ukrainian and half Russian. Moldovan, a dialect of Romanian, is the official language spoken throughout the country; Russian is very commonly used, as well. The country is one of the most amazing agricultural areas in the world. It is the "Great Plains" of Eastern Europe,with beautiful black top soil10 to 15 feet deep, gorgeous rolling, green grazing lands, and a great climate, they can do almost anything agriculturally.
Moldovans are a warm, friendly, intelligent, and educated people, and their hospitality is overwhelming. Unfortunately their economy is a huge problem, as they are truly caught between"East" and "West". The average Moldovan village family lives on between $200 and $400 per year. The economic situation becomes so desperate that people leave for years at a time to go to Portugal, Italy, Moscow, or even Africa to earn hard currency to try to support their families. This is tearing their families, villages, cities, and country apart. I can tell many heartbreaking stories from my first-hand experience. At a Moldovan family gathering I attended, as an invited guest, someone asked me how I liked Moldova. I said very quickly that I "absolutely loved Moldova", to which there was an equally quick reply, "Try working for our wages, and then see how well you like it!" It was a point well taken. Still, Moldovans maintain a sense of nation, home, lifestyle, and family that many of Americans could learn a lot from, as I certainly did!
A friend last year told me that he believed in the concept of the "Citizen Diplomat": common, responsible citizens of different countries working together, getting to know each other and their respective cultures, and in the process creating person-to-person and community-to-community bonds in a way that governments working directly could never achieve. I believe in this as well.
These are a few photos taken during my assignment. You may not notice that I was balancing Moldovan cow diets, doing farm plans, setting up rotational pastures, running budgets, designing facilities, and facilitating problem solving. What you will notice is the great time I was having with a lot of wonderful Moldovan people, many of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves at the same time, while all that work was happening. That's my idea of a "Citizen Diplomat." My family looked at my pictures when I returned, and said, "John, did you do any work at all? It looks like you were just there enjoying yourself!" My reply is this, "Both were happening! Isn't that really cool?"
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| In rural Moldova, milk is collected daily from hundreds of local households with one or two cows. Selling extra milk is one of the few ways villagers can augment their $200-400 annual income. Here, American Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer John Kappelman records part of a day's yield. |
Milk is still transported by car- or horse-drawn cart throughout much of the Moldovan countryside. |
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