Success Story

With help from Horticulture Innovation Lab researchers, they’re growing nutritious crops that boost their income.

Hilarios Chaves, 20, is one young farmer who has doubled his vegetable yield to grow for his family, local markets, and export markets thanks to new innovations.

In Guatemala, nematodes have been blamed for cutting potato yields in half over the past 20 years. Researchers are connecting ‘fuzzy cognitive mapping’ with soil health practices to identify sustainable nematode management solutions.

At 29, Fatoumata Cissoko dries pineapple for her business in West Africa and has already spent three years trying out different drying methods on her parents’ farm in Guinea. She is confident of the entrepreneurial opportunities that are found after harvest — and she is working to share her knowledge with more farmers.

Leaning into her tuktuk, Eang Chakriya opens a cooler and takes out fresh vegetables that have been carefully packed and chilled, showing them to a group of neighbors to purchase.

We recently received an email from one of the first organizations to receive Trellis funding, a reminder of how big of a difference this small grant can make. The email from Uganda started with:

A small-scale American farmer invented the CoolBot for low-cost cooling with an air conditioner, which the Horticulture Innovation Lab is using with farmers and researchers around the world.

More commonly used with field crops, this research shows that conservation agriculture practices allow vegetable farmers to improve soil health and reduce some of their labor needs.

A partnership between university scientists and a private technology company has sprouted both new concepts and new tools that can help vegetable farmers in developing countries access better seeds.