A plant and livestock clinic to win the ‘gold medal of life’
The plant clinic in town of Chamis in the department of Cajamarca represents something unusual in Peru: a farmer advisory service with a permanent presence. According to the agricultural and livestock census of 2012, only 7.3% of the country’s farmers receive technical assistance and in Cajamarca it is even less, just 4.6%. Faced with this…
Delivering services to places that are hard to reach
In the midst of its highly challenging surroundings, the INIA (National Institute of Agricultural Innovation) Experimental Station of Baños del Inca in Cajamarca offers an advisory service for smallholder farmers. Since 2013, when an agreement was signed between Plantwise and INIA, plant doctors Eng. Fernando Escobal Valencia and Eng. Marieta Cervantes Peralta operate plant clinics,…
Sowing seeds of sustainability in Achuapa, Nicaragua
The Cooperative Juan Francisco Paz Silva (JFPS), which was founded in 1990, began operating a plant clinic in 2009. The cooperative was looking for a way to provide technical support to its member farmers, and the plant clinic provided a means to do so. Initially, two technicians, Oscar Calderon and Harold Espinoza, were trained as…
Using the Plantwise training modules and approach to strengthen the curriculum at UCATSE
UCATSE (Universidad Católica Agropecuario del Trópico Seco) is a private university with state funding that began operating a plant clinic under the Global Plant Clinic (GPC) initiative in 2005. With the start of the Plantwise programme in Nicaragua in 2012, UCATSE incorporated student participation into the plant clinic by adopting the plant clinic approach and…
A plant clinic linked to research and teaching in Mairana, Bolivia
In 2009 the Government of Santa Cruz, through the Directorate of Agricultural and Food Health (DSA), invited Telémaco Orquera, an agronomist in Mairana, Bolivia, to attend a training course in the city of Santa Cruz. The course, the first of several taught by CABI, introduced Telémaco to plant clinics, which meant setting up a table…
Diagnostics in action: A proactive plant laboratory in Comarapa, Bolivia
Ladiplantas (Plant Laboratory) in the agro-town of Comarapa, in Bolivia’s low Andean Valleys, is well integrated into the farming community. Ladiplantas is run by agronomist Olivia Antezana, as part of CIAT (Research Centre for Tropical Agriculture), of the Departmental government of Santa Cruz, since 2000 (Bentley and Boa 2004). CIAT is one of the three…