In Honduras, Director-General visits pioneering school, coffee and crop research projects
FAO Director-General QU Dongyu watches students dance at the Gastel Basic Education Center in Honduras.
©FAO/Kristabel Herrera
20/09/2024
El Jarín, Honduras – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is poised to strengthen its collaboration with Honduras to foster the transformation of its agrifood system to become more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable, Director-General QU Dongyu said here while wrapping up a series of field visits in the Central American country.
He called for a new business model for the production, the commerce and the consumption of food in Honduras, while chatting with farmers and technicians during a tour of an innovative farm laboratory here with the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock of Honduras, Laura Suazo. He emphasized the importance of more sustainable production, linked to fair trade, with consumption of healthy diets by all.
The Director-General visited the La Tabacalera Experimental Station in the Comayagua Valley, which includes training facilities, cold storage, warehouses, greenhouses, a compost shed and a vegetable-packing plant. La Tabacalera has an avocado nursery and conducts pioneering research and development of genetic material for poultry as well as a host of crops including maize, beans, sorghum, sesame, mango, cassava, papaya, guava as well as local delicacies such as pitahaya and yuyuga.
Managed by SAG-DICTA, a government-run technical agency with which FAO is a longstanding partner, La Tabacelera also has outreach programmes with local women farmers who are incentivized with technological and productive bonus scheme.
Women, especially women farmers, continue to be a priority for FAO and are key for rural development. Honduras can also leverage its potential globally by participating in FAO’s flagship One Country One Priority Product (OCOP) initiative, which aims to assure smallholders and family farmers have access to stable world markets for their specialty products.
Schools and coffee
During his visit to Honduras, Qu also went to a village near La Paz to see a FAO-implemented project focused on creating school gardens where he met star students and participated in a food-tasting workshop exercise where locals made fortified tortillas, banana bread, natural lemon-and-cucumber sodas, bottled tomato sauces, pineapple jelly and other dishes.
The Director-General singled out the visit as a delightful opportunity to interact with young people, who not only are at the core of FAO’s efforts. Nutritional woes such as stunting are a major issue across Central America.
The FAO delegation also visited an educational center for organic coffee growing in Marcala, one of the main coffee producing regions in Honduras, the largest coffee-producing country in Central America and the Caribbean.
Qu and others met with local producers, and Chief Economist Maximo Torero made a presentation along with Suazo and the Minister of Tourism, Yadira Gomez.
That field visit offered an opportunity for the Director-General to view significant FAO projects such as one aimed at improving long-term resilience and reducing migratory outflows from Central America’s Dry Corridor region.
It is expected that FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative will intensify engagement with producers and exporters of three local value chains, for coffee, cocoa and honey respectively.
He called for a new business model for the production, the commerce and the consumption of food in Honduras, while chatting with farmers and technicians during a tour of an innovative farm laboratory here with the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock of Honduras, Laura Suazo. He emphasized the importance of more sustainable production, linked to fair trade, with consumption of healthy diets by all.
The Director-General visited the La Tabacalera Experimental Station in the Comayagua Valley, which includes training facilities, cold storage, warehouses, greenhouses, a compost shed and a vegetable-packing plant. La Tabacalera has an avocado nursery and conducts pioneering research and development of genetic material for poultry as well as a host of crops including maize, beans, sorghum, sesame, mango, cassava, papaya, guava as well as local delicacies such as pitahaya and yuyuga.
Managed by SAG-DICTA, a government-run technical agency with which FAO is a longstanding partner, La Tabacelera also has outreach programmes with local women farmers who are incentivized with technological and productive bonus scheme.
Women, especially women farmers, continue to be a priority for FAO and are key for rural development. Honduras can also leverage its potential globally by participating in FAO’s flagship One Country One Priority Product (OCOP) initiative, which aims to assure smallholders and family farmers have access to stable world markets for their specialty products.
Schools and coffee
During his visit to Honduras, Qu also went to a village near La Paz to see a FAO-implemented project focused on creating school gardens where he met star students and participated in a food-tasting workshop exercise where locals made fortified tortillas, banana bread, natural lemon-and-cucumber sodas, bottled tomato sauces, pineapple jelly and other dishes.
The Director-General singled out the visit as a delightful opportunity to interact with young people, who not only are at the core of FAO’s efforts. Nutritional woes such as stunting are a major issue across Central America.
The FAO delegation also visited an educational center for organic coffee growing in Marcala, one of the main coffee producing regions in Honduras, the largest coffee-producing country in Central America and the Caribbean.
Qu and others met with local producers, and Chief Economist Maximo Torero made a presentation along with Suazo and the Minister of Tourism, Yadira Gomez.
That field visit offered an opportunity for the Director-General to view significant FAO projects such as one aimed at improving long-term resilience and reducing migratory outflows from Central America’s Dry Corridor region.
It is expected that FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative will intensify engagement with producers and exporters of three local value chains, for coffee, cocoa and honey respectively.