• the nature network
  • Careers
  • PR/News
  • Contact
  • EN
    • DE
MB_Logo_RGBMB_Logo_RGBMB_Logo_RGBMB_Logo_RGB
  • Martin Bauer
  • Products
    • Teas
    • Botanical extracts for food and beverages
    • Botanical raw material and powders
    • SuperFine
    • Botanical Extracts, Tinctures and Powders for Animal Nutrition
  • Applications
    • Teas
    • Beverages
    • Confectionery and Ice cream
    • Bakery und Cereals
    • Animal Nutrition
    • Extraction and API
    • Alcoholic Beverages
    • Dairy Products
  • Quality and safety
  • Sustainability
    • Climate neutral
    • Nature
    • Supply chain
  • Blog
  • Downloads
  • the nature network
  • Careers
  • PR/News
  • Contact
  • EN
    • DE
Back to Overview
May 14, 2020

Bee confident

In many parts of the world, smallholders and wild collectors sometimes lack the requisite knowledge and have limited access to training. That, in turn, restricts their income. They live in remote areas and face a range of challenges that impact on their livelihoods.

In the San Pedro region of Paraguay, Martin Bauer is helping smallholders and wild collectors to improve the quality of their products and their own productivity – guided by the sustainable sourcing standard mabagrown. As part of the approach, wild collectors and smallholders learn valuable information within hands-on projects that help them unlock their potential – allowing them to support themselves and their communities and to become more resilient.

From vulnerable to resilient

Ignacio (35) lives in Unión with his wife Benita (32) and their children Erme (14), Junior (13), and Maria (4). Ignacio’s parents are smallholders, and he often helps them out. For the past five years he has also been working as a traditional wild collector. The family relies on orange and lemon peel for their income, which is based on the volume and quality of the peel collected. Due to the seasonal nature of Ignacio’s earnings, he and his family are vulnerable to uncontrollable events like bad weather and a poor harvest.
Low income and high unemployment in rural areas is causing other families to cross the border into Argentina for seasonal agricultural work. As foreign, migrant workers, they often experience compromises to their civil rights and personal dignity. To help overcome these challenges, our project explored ways of stabilizing the household income of Ignacio’s family and 104 other families in the region in order to build up their resilience.

The idea of honey production as an additional source of income actually came from the very people participating in our project. Honey is a popular food in the region of San Pedro. But there were a few obstacles to overcome first.

Ignacio: “Initially, I was not confident about keeping bees as I knew very little about it and lacked the necessary equipment. Following the weekly training sessions and having received strong support from the project team, I can now not only keep bees throughout the year and harvest honey up to four times, I’m also able to catch a swarm of wild bees and prepare my own hive for them.”

 

A strong leadership group

Ignacio has now progressed from learner to dedicated trainer for other families in the project. He also enthusiastically promotes the project to neighbors and friends, who have starting gaining an interest. With his newly acquired knowledge and confidence, he can play an active role in his community.

Over a period of nine months, the project formed a strong leadership group including Ignacio and 15 other men and women. This is a group of active community leaders who are seriously committed to positive change. They have not only successfully promoted the bee project, greatly enhancing its impact, they have also facilitated further discussion and have helped tackle community issues.

Ignacio: “In the beginning, some people smirked at the participants in the bee project because communities here have seen many NGOs come and go while nothing has actually changed for them. Now they can see a positive change and sense that they have a real opportunity themselves.”

Our beekeeping program has seen an impressive rise in honey production from 511 liters in the first to 1,430 liters in the second year. Given the success of the pilot, the Martin Bauer Group is looking forward to expanding the project in 2020. By providing the right tools, guidance and knowledge to people like Ignacio, the project is empowering wild collectors and smallholders to access new sources of income. This makes families more financially secure and enables communities to thrive. As a result, wild collection and smallholding are remaining viable and attractive livelihoods for people in the San Pedro region.

Share:

Related posts

February 10, 2021

Hygiene packages gratefully received

In 2020 we helped more than 60,000 people working in our supply chains to cope with the Covid-19 crisis. Here, you can find out how our […]

Read more
January 11, 2021

Hibiscus: Tangible benefits

Stories of our botanicals – Part 3 For us, quality and sustainability belong together. We want our business practices to be good for nature, people, and […]

Read more
December 19, 2020

Chamomile: Blossoming Around the World

Chamomile is unmistakable with its bright yellow center, white petals, and floral, apple-like scent. Unknown to most, chamomile is actually a common name for several daisy-like […]

Read more
Martin-Bauer-Footer-Logo
  • PR/News
  • Legal info
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms & conditions
  • Contact
  • Careers

Follow MartinBauer

Member of The-Nature-Network-Footer-Logo
© 2023 MartinBauer

    To operate our website technically functional and securely, our website uses cookies. If you declare your consent, we may use cookies also to optimize and ongoingly adjust our website to your needs, to offer social media functions and to analyze information on the access to our website. You may revoke your consent anytime. Further information my be obtained through our privacy statement. Settings

    Privacy Overview

    To operate our website technically functional and securely, our website uses cookies. If you declare your consent, we may use cookies also to optimize and ongoingly adjust our website to your needs, to offer social media functions and to analyze information on the access to our website. You may revoke your consent anytime. Further information my be obtained through our privacy statement.

    Strictly Necessary Cookies

    Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

    Cookies

    Name: moove_gdpr_popup

    Description: It saves preferences for cookie settings.

    Duration: 1 year

     

    3rd Party Cookies

    This website uses cookies to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

    Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

     

    Cookies:

    LinkedIn

    Name: UserMatchHistory

    Description: LinkedIn Ads ID syncing 

    Duration: 30 days

     

    Name: bcookie

    Description: Browser Identifier cookie to uniquely identify devices accessing LinkedIn to detect abuse on the platform

    Duration: 2 years

     

    Name: lang

    Description: Used to remember a user's language setting to ensure LinkedIn.com displays in the language selected by the user in their settings.

    Duration: Session

     

    Name: lidc

    Description: To facilitate data center selection 

    Duration: 24 hours

     

    Name: li_gc

    Description: Used to store consent of guests regarding the use of cookies for non-essential purposes

    Duration: 2 years

     

    Google Analytics

    Name: _ga

    Description: Used to distinguish users.

    Duration: 2 years

     

    Name: _gid

    Description: Used to distinguish users.

    Duration: 24 hours

     

    Name: _gat_gtag_UA_200342150_2

    Description: Used to throttle request rate. 

    Duration: 1 minute

     

    Name: _gat_gtag_UA_200342150_1

    Description: Used to throttle request rate. It comes from career page.

    Duration: 1 minute

     

    Name: _ga_VYHFCRQS9E

    Description: Used to persist session state. 

    Duration: 2 years

     

    Name: _ga_SZXYZ0VT0C

    Description: Used to persist session state. It comes from career page.

    Duration: 2 years

     

    e_tracker

    Name: et_coid

    Description: cookie recognition

    Duration: 2 years or configurable

     

    Name: BT_pdc

    Description: It contains Base64-encoded data of visitor’s history (is client, newsletter recipient, visitor ID, shown smart messages) for personalisation.

    Duration: 1 year

     

    Name: BT_sdc

    Description: It contains Base64-encoded data of visitor’s session (referrer, number of seconds from the beginning of session, shown smart messages in the session), that are used for personalisation purposes.

    Duration: Session

     

    Name: et_oi_v2

    Description: Opt-In cookie saves the decision of a user, whether on a page tracking Opt-in should conducted.

    Duration: 50 years for Opt-Out and 480 days for Opt-In

     

    Other

    Name: cookiesAvailable

    Description: To check whether 3rd party cookies on websites, that share same domain were already accepted

    Duration: Immediately deleted

     

    External content:

    YouTube 

     

    Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance