Central America - Current Programs

 Cuba

The Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Cuba study abroad course is a two-week field visit in mid-May which will provide students with an up close and personal view of Cuban farms and farmers. The course will give students a broad overview of the current state of Cuban agriculture, its strengths and challenges, and its tenuous relationship with the United States. Students will venture into all major tropical agro-ecological zones over about half the 780-mile length of the island. Field visits will include tobacco farms in scenic Pinar del Rio in the west, organic vegetable farms of suburban and urban Havana, and historic sugar cane farms in the heartland of Villa Clara. They will visit urban organic vegetable production co-ops, local produce markets, government research stations and an agricultural university. Students will learn about historic relationships among Cuba, Spain, and the United States and how these relationships have helped shape Cuban agricultural systems. Students will also be given ample time to explore the World Heritage Site of Old Havana with opportunities to meet and mingle with everyday Cubans. Proposed for May 15-30, 2016. Contact Brent Rowell (browell@uky.edu) for more information.

 Haiti

The Haiti Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) project will be implemented by the University of Kentucky and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with International Programs in Agriculture acting as the lead implementing partner. Together they will construct a PAM for agricultural commodities and important policies in Haiti; enhance the capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resource and Rural Development to collect data, use PAM, update PAM parameters, and to perform policy analysis and evaluation using PAM; and they will disseminate the results of the policy analysis is and evaluation using PAM to professional audiences through seminars, conferences, and workshops. This project will provide the Government of Haiti, universities, and other entities with a tool and the experience necessary to perform policy evaluations using credible data and other information. These policy evaluations can be used to make informed decisions about government taxation, subsidies, and other expenditures to improve livelihoods in Haiti.