The landscape of sustainable coffee is going through a rapid transformation from a niche market to a fully recognized strategic business management tool for both mainstream and specialty coffee. Current trends suggest that certified coffee is not only here to stay, but that conformity with one voluntary standard or another will soon become a requirement for market entry. In fact, many coffee growers in Nicaragua are already using more than one certification to gain access to various coffee markets. This implies that certified coffee farmers are making significant on-farm investments and … [Read more...]
Public Policies and their Influence on Rural Women’s Agency
The phenomenon of single women and female heads of household is widespread in the Nicaraguan countryside. It is estimated that 34% of rural households are headed by women and this proportion increases in the poorest strata. The participation of women in productive agricultural activities also increases with the degree of poverty and can make up more than 50% of the workforce. In spite of the massive participation of rural women in productive processes, rural women’s access to productive assets such as land, credit, technical assistance, and inputs remains marginal in most of the regions of … [Read more...]
Rooting Learning Journeys in the Territories of Central America
In 2013, Humidtropics initiated the situation analysis of the Nicanorte Action Site (in Spanish). CIAT and Bioversity International, with the help of local consultants, processed available data regarding human development, natural resource management, production systems, and markets to generate outputs about the current state of affairs in the form of maps. At the same time, short interviews with key organizations generated an assessment of the dynamics of the local innovation process. A collective analysis of the processed information resulted in the convergence of stakeholder interests with … [Read more...]