Agros International
Current donation: $265,000
Donations to date: $1,145,000
Agros works to break the cycle of poverty for farming families in rural Latin America. In the upcoming year, our donation will help Agros build an agribusiness incubator center in La Bendición, Nicaragua, that will teach farmers across seven villages the skills they need to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty by moving from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture.
Why They're Climate Smart
Current farming methods produce a third of all greenhouse emissions worldwide — but they don't meet the world's growing demand for food and don't generate enough income for those growing the food. Agros believes there is a solution: land ownership, market-led agriculture, financial empowerment, and sustainable climate-smart farming practices.
Agros teaches farming families how to use hydroponics, vermicomposting, and reforestation techniques to not only increase their yields, produce healthier food, and generate more income, but also reduce their impact on the environment. Based on current studies, these activities have offset the equivalent of the carbon emitted from roughly 8,300 round-trip flights from Seattle to Rome per year.
Why They Receive Our Continued Support
Their results are outstanding. Over the past five years, Agros has enabled families in San José, Nueva San José, and La Bendición, Nicaragua, to raise their average daily income from $2.42 to $5.69 — a threshold that the World Bank denominates as lower middle income — while building prosperous communities out of what was essentially nothing (as Agros builds new villages from scratch). They then took their learnings to the next level by creating the Harvest and Hope Teaching Center (HHC) in La Bendición — a facility designed to teach farmers market-oriented, climate-smart agricultural skills that increase incomes, improve household conditions, and provide economic opportunities that keep families together and reduce migration.
In the first year of the HHC's operations, Agros welcomed 80 families into their program. With our ongoing support, Agros will include the village of El Galope in La Dalia, add 120 more families, build approximately 110,000 square feet of greenhouses and mesh structures, increase their production of bio-inputs (organic fertilizers), and plant more than 250,000 trees.