Many veterans of Nicaragua's civil war live in the country's poor highland areas. In the early 1990s, demobilized soldiers in the town of Tuma-La Dalia made a new start as coffee farmers and created the Jorge Salazar cooperative.

Coffee prices tumbled a few years later, so the cooperative decided to diversify into root crops such as quequisque (similar to cassava), which are suited to the highland climate. However, the farmers' lack of experience with these crops made for produce of uneven quality and low yields. Furthermore, middlemen took advantage of them, paying low prices.

Late in 2004, TechnoServe launched a large-scale coffee diversification project with the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Global Development Alliance. The program helped farmers in regions producing low-quality coffee to diversify into more profitable crops.

TechnoServe identified an export demand for root crops as an opportunity for the Jorge Salazar farmers. It helped them obtain better planting material and improve their production techniques, resulting in more consistent quality and a six-fold increase in yields.

The farmers of Jorge Salazar also needed better market opportunities. TechnoServe linked them to exporters such as TecnoAgro and Hortifruti (a Wal-Mart subsidiary), negotiating for cooperative members to sell their best-quality quequisque for five times what it would fetch in local markets. TechnoServe also linked them to a local supermarket chain that offered a price nearly as good as the export price.

The cooperative's bookkeeping systems were strengthened, and members received help to get loans for working capital. TechnoServe also showed them how to increase the value of their produce by washing and trimming it prior to sale. Through an alliance with other USAID-funded projects, TechnoServe also helped the cooperative build a new collection and processing facility to improve hygiene and efficiency.

These improvements created 80 new full-time processing and packing jobs and an additional 200 seasonal jobs. Though they started with 44 members, the Jorge Salazar cooperative has since doubled in size. Profits help cover school fees (including university scholarships) for a number of the members' children. The cooperative also purchases from 60 unaffiliated farmers in the region.
The Jorge Salazar cooperative's sales rose from about $126,000 in 2005 to more than $700,000 in 2006. In that same period, their export volume rose from two large shipping containers to forty.

Rosario Ordonez is one of the Jorge Salazar cooperative's full-time employees (most of them women) who wash, cut and pack quequisque in containers. For 10 years, she was a migrant worker, traveling to Costa Rica with her husband and five children to find seasonal harvesting work in the sugar or coffee industries. Thanks to her job at the cooperative, she no longer has to leave the country to support her family. Three of her children have also secured permanent jobs with the cooperative. Nine other families in the community who used to depend on migrant work now have stable year-round employment in the Jorge Salazar Cooperative.

"I thank God I found a steady job with the cooperative and don't have to travel to another country to work," Ordonez says. "In the cooperative the pay is good."

(Story updated 2007)