Last week I attended an Agroforestry training workshop put on by Peace Corps as a part of ongoing training. All of the agroforestry extension volunteers in Paraguay that I went through training with were in attendence along with a member of their community. We used participatory tools to encourage the Paraguayans in attendence to think about and plan their farms and visited an exemplary farm in which agroforestry systems were established eight years ago and are now old enough to understand well. We discussed and practiced citrus grafting, planting and managing green manures- plants used to fertalize fields by producing biomass and fixing Nitrogen, proper pruning of trees, and building contour lines in sloped fields to prevent erosion (as pictured above). The picture shows our Paraguayan guide to the agroforesty system farm demonstrating how to use an A-frame to make a contour line in a field. Every one in attendence got to practice doing so in order to better understand the process. Overall it was a wonderful experience for both volunteers and Paraguayans! Listening to a Paraguayan explain technical info in Guaraní gave me some of the vocabulary necessary to repeat the information and communicate better to the people in my site and the community contact I brought has promised to work to spread what he learned in my site, too!
