Cultivating Farming Success

FIU BOOSTS AGRICULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN CENTRAL AMERICA WITH USAID GRANT

By Deborah O'Neil

The Farmer-to-Farmer Program fulfills the "global" mission of the Pino Center.

Generations of wisdom inform the seasonal rituals of planting and harvesting in Guatemala’s distinctive coffee, sugar and banana fields. But, faced with falling prices and increased competition, the campesinos who make up 52 percent of Guatemala’s workforce are being urged to diversify the crops if they want to survive.

The message by economic development experts is taking hold. One experiment supported by Guatemala’s agriculture agency brought bok choi, hairy cucumbers, Chinese eggplant, bagaña, cundeamor and Thai okra to their fields. The vegetables — normally grown in Asia — didn’t just grow, they thrived, sprouting abundantly. The farmers then faced a new challenge: What to do with all these strange vegetables?

Turning this experiment into a sustainable farming success — one that would reinforce the economic stability of this developing country — would take expertise beyond the father-to-son knowledge of the farmers. It would take someone like Shalni Chandwani ‘05, then an FIU MBA student with a background in international marketing.

Chandwani brought her expertise to Guatemala in May 2004 through the John Ogonowski Farmerto- Farmer Program, a 5-year project at FIU’s College of Business Administration working with support from the Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center. FIU is a partner with the non-profit organization Winrock International in a $4.5 million Farmer to Farmer grant funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Farmer-to-Farmer links agriculture, business and marketing professionals on a volunteer basis with agricultural organizations in developing nations around the globe.

Winrock sought FIU’s collaboration in the program because of the University’s expertise in Latin America, its distinguished international business programs and ties with South Florida’s business community.

Real-World Results

So far, FIU has recruited 101 volunteers — local farmers and scientists, business professionals, FIU students and alumni — for assignments in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. FIU’s 60 completed projects in Central America have been a quantifiable success. For instance, the farmers in Guatemala utilized the marketing plan Chandwani created to successfully close a deal on Asian vegetables.

“This allowed me to apply my knowledge and education to a real-life situation and the experience taught me a great deal,” Chandwani said. “It was really neat to merge these two worlds of knowledge to make it successful.”

Farming, after all, is an entrepreneurial enterprise. Alan Carsrud, executive director of the Pino Center, likes to say whether you paint, grow, sell or build for a living, you need entrepreneurial skills to succeed.

“It is looking for opportunities, figuring out how to do something with nothing,” he said. “It is going where people don’t expect you to go and doing things differently.”

FIU alumnus and Denver real estate developer Omar Salinero ’90 provided financial consulting to 10 farming cooperatives in Nicaragua and worked with them to determine their credit worthiness. At the same time, Salinero was able to help the cooperatives find additional sources of money.

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