Beans, beans, beans

So it's probably about time I explain exactly what I'm working on here...

For the first 2 months here, I've been tasked with a project for the bean industry in Nicaragua.  Which naturally raises the question "What kind of beans?"  Frijoles.  Specifically red beans, though black beans as well. 

Nicas LOVE their red beans.  They eat rice and beans, generally "gallo pinto," multiple times a day.  As one of my coworkers put it, "if the meal doesn't have beans, I'm not satisfied." 

Gallo pinto aka "spotted rooster"

In Nicaragua, there are more than 200K farmers producing dry beans, mainly red but black as well (especially now that Pres Daniel Ortega is in cahoots with Chavez so Nicaragua is now growing and exporting black beans to Venezuela to swap for oil).  Most of the bean farmers are incredibly poor and end up consuming the beans themselves (subsistence farming), unless there's enough to sell for a small income.  The goal of the project is ultimately to help these smallholder farmers, in line with Technoserve's logo "Business solutions for the poor."

Seems like a fairly straightforward problem then....  get the farmers more profit.  Which means we can increase their productivity, increase the price of beans or decrease their costs.  Deceptively simple.

These farmers are poor, living in rural areas, uneducated, no access to credit, minimal training on farm management, little understanding of irrigation and little use of fertilizer, certified seed, pesticides and other inputs.  They could get a better quality (and better price) and increase production by using inputs, but they need to be able to access credit, which means having a guarantee and probably understanding bookkeeping, and they need to be able to understand how to use the inputs correctly, which means training and technical assistance.  And if there's too much rain or too little, it could all fail. 

On top of it all, Nicaragua already exports beans (normally*).  So increased production, while good for farmer income originally, would ultimately flood the domestic markets and cause prices to drop.  Not so good for Farmer Juan.

So my focus, besides understanding all these issues and identifying potential solutions, is to identify international market opportunities where we could sell this hypothetical new supply of beans.  And then, hopefully that new market opportunity would spur organizations and businesses to invest in the bean industry and these smallholder farmers would learn how increase production.  And then Farmer Juan would be able to grow more beans, make more money, send his kids to school and the whole of Nicaragua will be lifted out of poverty.  (a girl can dream, can't she?)

*Now it just so happens that Nicaragua has had ton of rain over the past months, which means about 30% less beans than normal.  Which means shortage and high prices.  So beans are ALL over the front pages of the newspaper and its about all anybody talks about.  Couldn't be better timing for this study?

Anyways, it's a whole lot more complicated than all that, but you get the jist of it :)