Peace Corps in Paraguay :: Photo Essay

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by Justin Mog, Amanda Fuller

posted May 09, 2008

Photo by Justin Mog and Amanda Fuller. flickr.com

Seed Bank Silos

In 2005, Peace Corps volunteers Justin Mog and Amanda Fuller were dispatched to an impoverished community in rural Paraguay, where they hoped to help curb farmers' overreliance on cotton, a pesticide-heavy, soil-degrading cash crop. The volunteers listened to the locals: With prices plummeting, farmers were willing to try something new. “But their first question was, ‘Where can I get affordable seed?'” says Mog. The two launched a seed bank, which loans tree, vegetable, and alternative crop seeds to Paraguayans. After harvest, farmers return 110 percent of the amount of seed borrowed.

Worldwide, some 8,000 Americans are now volunteering in the tiny independent agency John F. Kennedy set up in 1961 to promote “world peace and human progress.” While some criticize the Peace Corps as just another institutionalized means for exporting American culture, many Peace Corps projects, like the Paraguayan seed bank, are uniquely participatory.

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Justin Mog and Amanda Fuller are serving as Agriculture and Environment volunteers in the Peace Corps.

They left for Paraguay in 2005 after earning graduate degrees from the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

See the full set of their pictures of life in the Peace Corps, and more of their images at: flickr.com.

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