Via videos, Guatemalan growers share techniques for increasing productivity in corn and bean farming
Guatemala City, March 23, 2015 (IICA). Nine videos that recount the experience of small-scale corn and bean growers in Guatemala show that training and the adoption of innovations can increase productivity in agricultural activities.
The videos, produced by the Office of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in Guatemala, are available on the IICA YouTube cannel and, thanks to an agreement with the international organization Access Agriculture , will also be available on its website AgTube .
According to the Head of IICA’s Inter-American Information and Editorial Production Center, Federico Sancho, IICA and Access Agriculture signed an agreement to make the videos available on this platform with a view to promoting the management of knowledge on agriculture and facilitating e access to a large amount of highly useful information.
The videos from Guatemala, available in Spanish, English and q’eqchi’ (the native language of at least one million Guatemalans), share the results obtained by IICA in implementing the training and technical assistance components of the Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative of the World Food Programme (WFP).
The initiative received support from the Red SICTA project, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and renowned agricultural anthropologist Jeffrey Bentley.
According to the IICA Representative in Guatemala, Keith L. Andrews, “This material will be of great help to small- and medium-scale growers because it shares the experience in Guatemala with other regions and in different languages, which will make it easier to understand and replicate. It is a tool, explained in the words of growers themselves, that will strengthen capabilities in the field.”
In the videos, the growers share the new production, harvest and post-harvest practices they have implemented with support from IICA and the WFP, and how these led to increased productivity on their farms and improvements in the marketing, quality and safety of their produce.
In addition, they explain how they have managed to control the diseases that affect their crops and share the practices they use to ensure the sustainable management of natural resources.
AgTube, of Access Agriculture, disseminates useful material in dozens of languages for growers, extension agents and journalists in the agricultural sector. The objective of the platform is to make training videos available for small- and medium-scale producers in developing countries.
This is the first time AgTube has videos in Spanish or q’eqchi’.
More information:
keith.andrews@iica.int
federico.sancho@iica.int