Video to help fruit farmers manage Carambola Fruit Fly

Two Farmer to Farmer Programme volunteers, through Partners of the Americas, will be producing a video for Guyanese farmers demonstrating the different ways to monitor and control the Carambola Fruit Fly.

According to a press release from Partners of the Americas, the goal of the video is to enable fruit farmers in areas where the pest is prevalent to better understand ways of trapping and controlling it.

The video is being produced by video production specialists Clay Mason and Alexandra Crowder, who are video production specialists who will be working in Guyana until April 29.

Mason is a freelance filmmaker and photographer focusing on mini-documentaries and videos for the web who completed his first Farmer to Farmer assignment with Partners of the Americas in Haiti in October 2011. Crowder is the co-owner and senior creative manager of The Canopy Collective, which provides a range of photo, video, music, audio and hand-made print services.

For more than 15 years, the Inter-American Institute for Corporation on Agriculture (IICA) has been collaborating with the Ministry of Agriculture on the Carambola Fruit Fly surveillance and control in Guyana and the volunteers came here in response to an IICA request to Partners.

IICA Technician Jermaine Joseph and NAREI Senior Plant Protection Officer Ansel Todd are responsible for providing technical guidance on the video while the team is in the field. Mason and Crowder’s visit is sponsored by Partners specifically for the Farmer to Farmer Programme.

The programme is supported by the US Congress and USAID, as part of the United States foreign assistance programme. Farmer to Farmer brings together agricultural professionals and practitioners from the US and the Caribbean.

Volunteers from the US work with farmers and agribusiness owners in Guyana, Haiti, and Jamaica to identify local needs and design projects to address them.

Partners of the Americas, which was founded in 1964, links US States with Latin America and Caribbean countries in partnerships that use the energy and skills of citizen volunteers, their institutions and communities to address shared concerns of social, economic and cultural development.

The local chapter is linked with Mississippi and works on projects in several diverse areas, including health, reproductive rights, emergency preparedness, agriculture, and cultural and educational exchanges.

Partners of the Americas is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organisation with international offices in Washington, DC.