2. 'Nuts Going Bananas'

The first venture was a botch and the group failed to get back their capital. The rats continue destroying their peanuts. Too bad! The center stops loaning those seeds. There’s no solution to infestation. They’re faced with so many impossible problems that they decided to clamp down the center.

Two years later, my agency wanted to intervene again. I’ve told my bosses that the reason they aren’t able to meet the required volume is that they didn’t synchronized planting and harvesting. Also, obviously, the farmers are most familiar in trading individually than involving them is collective marketing.

My bosses agreed to hire consultants to assist these farmers. This time, I meet Agrifina, our consultant and later becomes one of my best friends in development work. I told her everything about the group in Palo 19.

We gathered the group in the center. I introduce them to Agrifina and her team. We talked lengthily with them about reviving the center. First, we tackled the issue on rats. Leo, a technologist in her team is there to help them solve rat infestation. Later, he teaches them synchronized farming. And then, we looked into their plans since we knew that they’ve formulated some in past. They’ve noticed that the center was originally intended to be a storage facility to all of their products and not limited to peanuts only.
After several meetings with them, we’ve observed their renewed sense of ownership to the center. We pushed them further to draft a business plan for the center, and later, a manual to operate. They find these documents very useful after realizing that we wouldn’t be there always. They would be the ones implementing their plans not us.