Partner Spotlight: Partners in Progress with Michael Neumann

Partners in Progress (PIP) is a nonprofit whose focus is on the health and wellbeing of communities by furthering sustainable development in rural areas across the globe.?

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Founded in 2001, PIP originally started by helping communities find funding for projects or technical support, while building greater capacity for inclusivity and developing solutions for community needs. Agroecology focused projects became the area of interest in 2012, working directly with farmers and conducting farm trials. PIP now helps rural communities with subsistence farming through farmer-to-farmer programs that focus on traditional farming work groups and collaboration throughout the community. Overall, these programs fall under the value chain and food sovereignty umbrellas.?

Michael Neumann, the executive director of PIP, ended up in one of Matt’s workshops in Minnesota where they discussed similar interests in agroecology and food sovereignty. In 2018, Matt joined Michael and PIP in Haiti to set up field trials and educate farmers on soil biology. PIP is careful not to impose their presence on farmers, instead they only bring people in to help after being invited, knowing their knowledge and intentions are being welcomed into the community.

PIP aims to help communities. Their Farmer-to-Farmer Agroecology for Food Sovereignty Initiative (FAFSI) has proven influential and beneficial to these communities. The 2-year program starts with a 5-day workshop facilitated by educated farmers focusing on the beauty and challenges in the community. They emphasize the importance of listening to all perspectives and the farmers leave the workshop with a rough draft of their farm design and a budget. Facilitators follow up at their farms to work out the details, finalize the plans, and get them the resources they need. Over the next growing season, the farmers implement the design, and the community supports a tree nursery of about 7000 trees. After the season, the farmers and facilitators meet up again to share knowledge, new concepts/techniques, and discuss what they want to try next year. The farmers get a new plan and budget with the option to incorporate animals into the system. The first offspring of the livestock are promised back to the project to be distributed to other farmers. One final meeting in the fall concludes the farmer-to-farmer program and leaves the farmers with new knowledge and skills to help them in the future.?

The impact of the farmer-to-farmer program is tremendous, and feedback from the workshops are heartwarming. There is so much traditional knowledge that is being lost to colonized farming methods and a lack of education or interest from the younger generations. Providing a place for knowledge sharing is allowing the traditions to persist in the community. PIP wants to build social capital through farmer empowerment so they can turn their land back into the paradise they always say it used to be. Similar to Earthfort, PIP wants to put the power in the hands of farmers and work ourselves out of a job.