What's For Dinner?

Tonight's Guest: Heather Putnam Heather Putnam partners with small Costa Rican coffee farmers to save their livelihoods from destruction by La Roya, the coffee rust threatening the world's specialty coffee supply. Large coffee plantations use chemical controls against coffee rust. But they're expensive for small farmers nearly wiped out by recent years' low coffee prices. And these external inputs threaten ecological relationships among plants they raise for food and local markets. Heather co-directs a network of researchers and farmers, the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), working to help rural communities in Mexico and Central America develop self-sufficiency and sustainable farming practices. CAN offers tools and training to use non-chemical alternatives to address coffee rust, and Heather describes farmers' decision process to adopt them.