More than 75% of the world’s poor are small farmers trying to make the full transition from subsistence to successful commercial farming. However, only a small percentage of them have access to technical assistance in making the change. Fortunately, in many of these regions, farmers produce a common cash crop.
SID is a global NGO graduating farm households from poverty across whole regions by engaging farming communities in defining the best practices for the common cash crop, training farm families in the practices, and mobilizing local actors to promote the practices and encourage their adoption.
Many poor farmers work on marginal land, semiarid plains, and mountainsides. In our first couple of projects, we helped farmers conserve their land and water while increasing their productivity, price, and income. Shortly after, we added business practices such as meeting with major buyers to learn their prices, making business plans, and evaluating their results.
In one of our projects in Guatemala, women asked for public speaking help because the men dominated the conversation. As a result, we developed an activity just for women that increased their personal and business growth.
Finally, we started a project in a region with more than 30,000 small coffee farmers, and we were the only organization providing technical assistance to increase their income. The regional approach was developed to give all the farmers in a region at least a chance to graduate from poverty.
SID has taught us to grow coffee as a business. We are learning to increase productivity by pruning and stumping the coffee; how to conserve water by digging water retention bands; and the dangers of weeds. Coffee branches are growing longer and they have more cherries.