Dr. Richard Edwards has done everything from helping redesign small rural meatpacking plants in Georgia to assessing small farmers in Africa and the former Soviet Union.
Most recently, he returned from a volunteer assignment in Mozambique, part of a project with CNFA, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to helping people and enterprises in the developing world.
The reason he volunteers, he said, is because he gets “an intrinsic satisfaction that maybe you are helping a little bit,” as well as for the opportunity of traveling to places he would otherwise not go.
The Farmer-to-Farmer program, in which Dr. Edwards participated, is funded through the U.S. Congress, said Andrianne Konstas, program coordinator for CNFA, one of the organizations implementing it.
“It’s really a way of helping promote U.S. agriculture as well as strengthening the markets in developing countries,” she said.