Cassie Stern Center for Alternative Agriculture Training

Our goal is to help families from poor, rural communities in El Salvador to start income producing agricultural projects. If you want to help by donating to the Cassie Stern Center, click below to learn what is needed.

Training and Support for Individuals, Families and Communities

• Learn to grow food and earn income with environmentally sustainable farming
• Receive training to manage family and project-related finances
• Start home farm project with our rent-to-buy program (e.g., purchase a cow, build a chicken coop, start their own bio-fertilizer program, plant a vegetable garden, etc.)
• Receive follow-up support after training (consulting, vet, insemination, etc.)

Environmentally Responsible

• Recover and recycle rain water from roofs of center buildings
• Recycle animal and plant waste to produce bio-fertilizer
• Use methane produced from animals to generate electricity

Economically Self-Sustaining

• Farm profits fund training, lending program, and community development projects.
• Participants repay revolving loan fund.

Once operational, the Cassie Center will be sustained by the milk, tilapia, and other food products produced on-site.

Initial training can be obtained for:

• Maximizing milk production from dairy cows
• Raising tilapia
• Establishing and maintain vegetable gardens
• Growing green forage
• Chicken projects
• Raising pigs
• Producing Bio-fertilizer

Shown below are two examples of 1 by 7 foot trays made of brick, black plastic and a bed of pumice stone filled with topsoil, compost and manure. The pumice stone beds are used as water retention and irrigation systems and are fed with 3/4" pipes placed in the pumice beds.

Phase I, building the agricultural infrastructure, is almost complete. We have:

• Purchased 8 acres of land
• Built resting, feeding, and milking barns to support a dairy herd
• Built a system for recuperating rain water and dug a water storage tank
• Purchased Jersey dairy cows
• Trained local community staff to operate dairy farm using best practices
• Installed a state of the art milking machine and storage tank
• Installed a bio-digester that recycles waste to produce bio-fertilizer and electricity
• Built basic structure of education building
• Dug basic structure of tilapia tank
• Planted 800 fruit trees donated by the Millennium Development Fund
• Initiated pilot training for cows, bio-fertilizer, and financial management