In early 2001, much of El Salvador was devastated by massive landslides. Thousands of already poor farming families in the highlands were left homeless and destitute. Ana Rosa Graf, an architect from San Salvador, joined the rebuilding efforts. But she soon realized that without sustainable livelihoods, people would still struggle…
The Jorge Salazar Cooperative, located in the northern municipality of El Tuma-La Dalia, is a collective of 46 farmers – mostly veterans of Nicaragua’s civil war in the 1980s, which devastated the country’s economy. In an effort to incorporate ex-guerillas back into civilian society, TechnoServe – with the support of…
Intibucá, in southwestern Honduras, enjoys a favorable climate for farming, yet is one of the country's poorest regions. Most area farmers own less than three acres, but in the past decade, they have improved their lot by planting market crops like cauliflower, broccoli and lettuce, and by organizing a…
Since trading their guns for plows at the end of the Nicaraguan civil war, Modesto Reyes and his fellow coffee farmers have transformed the community of Pueblo Nuevo, with better health services and new education facilities for its children and stable livelihoods for hundreds of men and women. Reyes…
Nicaraguan farmers Filadelfo Sotelo and his son Cesar Eduardo Sotelo had very little time to spend with their family. They worked long hours farming crops such as beans, corn, tomatoes, and passion fruit. They also performed odd jobs just to make ends meet. Despite this, they never…
When coffee prices tumbled to record lows earlier this decade, the livelihoods of thousands of Central American farmers were suddenly jeopardized. So TechnoServe identified a new opportunity for them: high-quality commercial and specialty coffees that could fetch premium prices in the changing market. With support from the Inter-American Development…
Hundreds of thousands of poor rural residents depend on the Nicaraguan dairy industry for their livelihoods. But low-quality milk and limited marketing and management skills prevent many of the businesses in this sector from gaining access to good markets. The San Francisco de Asís dairy farmer cooperative wanted to…
In 2005, Hurricane Stan struck Guatemala, destroying crops and homes. The losses spelled particular hardship for indigenous communities with little education or resources. For an entrepreneurial farmer named Manuel Yax, this crisis simply reinforced his resolve to follow through on his dream: running a business that would generate economic…
Just two years ago, Beto Gonzales was almost forced from his land in El Salvador. He and his fellow producers of jocote, a fruit native to Central America, had grown accustomed to receiving subsistence wages for the sale of their crops. Each year, the traditional methods Beto applied to grow…
The Nicaraguan civil war left former combatants José Adán López and Luis Marin Garcia destitute and dependent on government assistance. Now the two men are president and vice president, respectively, of Union de Cooperativas Agropecuarios de Servicios Unidas de Mancotal (UCASUMAN), one of Nicaragua’s leading small-farmer export associations in specialty…
