Passionfruit Farmers in Nicaragua Are Building New Businesses

For Nicaraguan farmers like Jaime Vicente Úbeda, investing in new technology or trying something different can be intimidating.

If the investment fails or if Ubeda does not receive proper training, he could quickly go broke and leave his family to go hungry. Because of these risks, many farmers like Ubeda, from the rural community of Yupalí, continue using outdated farming techniques that limit their ability to turn a profit.

"I was trying to build my crop, but I needed new tools and skills to help turn it into a business,” said Ubeda.

Despite the odds, Ubeda decided to take a risk and try his hand at farming passionfruit, known locally as maracuyá. Within a year, he had built a stable business, earned a reliable income and saved money for the first time in his life.

His good fortune can be partly put down to his partnership with local social enterprise, iDEal. Through its training, he learned how to manage, harvest, and market passionfruit, a high-value crop that delivers strong returns when cultivated effectively. 

With iDEal's support, Ubeda established a 0.70-hectare passionfruit plot and began harvesting a high-quality crop, helping him earn more than USD $8,000 from his plot the following year. 

In total, iDEal has worked with more than 9,000 farmers, helping supply irrigated agriculture systems to 1,835 hectares of land across the country, while generating $12 million in new income for smallholders and their families. 

iDEal has expanded its work with passionfruit farmers after conducting a market assessment which identified strong national and international demand for the crop. Passionfruit can be harvested after just nine months and maintains near-continuous production for about four years, helping provide farmers with steady cash flow.

But powering farmers to build passionfruit businesses isn't without its challenges. Many farmers live in remote locations and face barriers including limited capital, gaps in crop management knowledge and weak links to both local and commercial markets.

To combat these issues, iDEal partnered with Burke Agro and the COMANOR cooperative while training farmers, including Úbeda, on crop management and market standards. Once farmers applied the techniques and connected with buyers, they generated enough income to reinvest in the next cycle and operate independently. iDEal also helped organize farmers into groups, producing passionfruit for processing and export.

Today, Úbeda, a member of the Frutigran R.L. cooperative, continues to draw on his years of experience growing a wide variety of crops, including vegetables, guava, and basic grains, and now passionfruit.