Volunteer travels to Belarus to teach farmers

PALMER — Bill Campbell can talk potatoes for days — weeks even. Just ask his kids.

“My kids always say ‘How can you talk about potatoes for a whole week?’” Campbell said. “I tell them ‘Gees, we were just getting warmed up!”

Campbell has 35 years experience raising and experimenting with potato varieties as an American farmer. But he said it was a real eye opener when he traveled outside the U.S. for the first time at age 50 and saw firsthand the challenges facing farmers.

Funded by the United States Agency for International Development’s Farmer-to-Farmer Program, Campbell has since gone on five of six different trips, including a two-week trip in June to work with farmers in Belarus. He’s also volunteered in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The USAID program provides voluntary technical assistance to farmers, farm groups and agribusiness in developing and transitional countries to promote sustainable improvements in food processing, production and marketing, according to a press release about the program.

Thursday, Campbell was in a working in field near the Palmer Experiment Farm where he was examining test hills of potatoes planted there as part of a USDA research project.

Each hill was planted with a genetically different type of potato, he said. Some of the hills of spuds had dark yellow flesh, some blue, some red. And some had deep eyes and others shallow.

Campbell said the project is looking for varieties that seem viable commercially, like the potato variety known as 8-3. He said the goal is to find new varieties of potatoes that hold their color during processing, since most potatoes are processed into foods like chips or French fries.

For emerging nations, Campbell said potatoes are the perfect food because they produce more food value per acre than any other crop. And a goat or a cow and plot of potatoes can provide all the nutrients a person needs to stay alive, he said.

“Potatoes have all the essential amino acids, except one, which milk has,” Campbell said.

In Belarus, he worked with farmers to help build seed production and storage capacity.

Russia is in the midst of a drought and is buying all the potatoes Belarus can produce.

Campbell said things like irrigation, disease control and storage that U.S. farmers take for granted are absent in Belarus.

“We know from up here irrigation can almost double the yield,” he said.

Campbell also worked with other farmers there to improve storage options and disease control.

“They are so appreciative,” he said.

But while they people of Belarus may lack material possessions, they are happy and rich in their own way, he said.

“People were very appreciative,” Campbell said. “It’s work, but at the same time it’s intrinsically rewarding.”

For more information, or to learn about similar volunteer opportunities through the program, visit cnfa.org/farmertofarmer.