Annual Report
2024-2025
Annual Report
2024-2025

Bolivia

Since 2015, UPA Développement international has supported Bolivian organisations through its Agro-Innov Network volunteer cooperation program. Activities in the country have grown significantly since 2020.

Projects

SEPOP 2

Market Access Improvement Project

The second phase of the Project to improve market access, SEPOP 2, ended in March 2025 after over three years of implementation.

Following up from the first phase of SEPOP (2021 to 2023), this project aimed to promote the sustainable development of Bolivia’s agricultural sector by strengthening the technical, financial, and commercial capacities of family farms.

The results have been very encouraging! By the end of the project, 1,355 women farmers—working in oregano, coffee, honey, citrus fruits, and spices—had enhanced their capacities through improved access to services offered by their professional agricultural organisations.

The two partner organizations, the Central Local de Cooperativas Agropecuarias Caranavi Ltda (CELCCAR) and the Unidad de Negocios de Especias y Condimentos (UNEC), improved several services for their members, including:

  • Quality control, marketing, and storage processes.
  • Training in entrepreneurship, integrated pest and disease management, water management, soil health, and sustainable agroforestry.
  • Technical assistance to farmers.
  • Soil analysis.
  • Manufacture of organic inputs (fertilizers and biopesticides).
  • Support in obtaining organic certification.

In addition to these improvements, the organisations chose to tackle a key concern: access to quality agricultural inputs. Composting and organic input production sites were set up, and members were able to participate in manufacturing and distribution workshops.

It was a true pleasure to collaborate with such dedicated farmers. We wish them continued success in the future!

SEPOP 2 in Bolivia was made possible thanks to financial support from the Agence française de Développement via AgriCord and the Agro-Innov Network of UPA Développement International, supported by Global Affairs Canada.

More Fertile Soils for Coffee and Citrus Cultivation

In the rural areas of Caranavi Bolivia, coffee, citrus, and honey farmers are facing depleted soils and increasingly frequent droughts.

To strengthen the climate resilience of its member agricultural cooperatives, the Central Local de Cooperativas Agropecuarias Caranavi Ltda (CELCCAR) has made soil health and sustainable fertilisation a top priority.

Frédérick, a volunteer agronomist from the Agro-Innov Network, supported members from seven cooperatives in analyzing their soils and adopting appropriate climate-resilient practices.

Thanks to his support, 107 individuals have been trained, tools for monitoring results and fertilization have been put in place, and collective projects have emerged, including a compost and poultry farming project led by CELCCAR's women's committee.

Community Kitchens

A New Network of Community Kitchens

Did you know that UPA Développement international supported the launch of a network of community kitchens in La Paz Bolivia?

Six community kitchens have been set up through collaboration between the Centro de Promoción y Salud Integral (CEPROSI), an organisation working to improve women's health, the Montreal-based Cuisine et vie collectives Saint-Roch, and volunteers from the Agro-Innov Network.

The benefits of these kitchens for participating women are numerous:

  • They help reduce household expenses and improve health through better nutrition.
  • The food processing activities developed within the kitchens strengthen entrepreneurial skills and promote socio-economic independence.
  • They create a strong support network, offering welcoming spaces for sharing information, advice, training, and, above all, opportunities to build better lives.

Over the past year, two new community kitchens were inaugurated, including one led by a group of indigenous women in the El Alto area. A total of 127 women, including 95 young women, have benefited from the community kitchen network. Community gardens are also being developed near the kitchens.

A great success for Canadian-Bolivian cooperation!

Watch the video of the collective kitchen inauguration event

Benin
Burkina Faso
Martin Caron
President of the Board

The future of agriculture, here and around the world, depends greatly on the decisions we make and the actions we take today. Hence the expression, “The future starts now.”

This projection into the future calls for deep reflection. Are the necessary resources available? Is the sustainability of family farming assured? Are collective marketing systems alive and well? Are structural initiatives continuing to emerge? Does the next generation of farmers have confidence in the future?

Each of these questions is relevant and deserves careful consideration. If the answer to most of them is yes, we must continue along the same path. If the answer is no, we must act, innovate, unite, and collectively change the course of events —preferably sooner rather than later.

This concern for the future is central to the mission of UPA Développement international (UPA DI), which, since 1993, has drawn on Quebec's agricultural values to support the development of a large number of rural communities around the world.  To do this, we pilot environmentally friendly projects that are transferable to future generations and designed to enhance food security and autonomy for populations.

Our local farmers can take pride in all these projects, as well as in the many forms of representation that UPA DI provides to numerous international organizations. Reading this annual report will surely convince you!

Hugo Beauregard-Langelier
Chief Executive Director

While many are content to believe that the future will be the same as the past or trying to revive an idealized version of the past, others are forging ahead, dreaming of a future they are building. For them, the future is not something that simply happens to us, but something shaped by the actions we take.

These dreams to be built and actions to be taken, have been central in the past year at UPA Développement international (UPA DI).  All this leading to the adoption of a new strategic plan, an opportunity to reflect on the mark UPA DI seeks to leave in the evolving landscape of agriculture and international solidarity.

Rooted in its history, engaged in the present, and ambitious towards the future, UPA DI's vision is for those who feed the world and inhabit our agricultural lands to live with dignity from the fruit of their labour. This vision is built on ecological economic growth, strong collective action, and the socio-economic empowerment of women.

But the realization of these aspirations will inevitably depend on young people, the next generation, who will live in a time where the potential for technological and social innovation has never been greater, yet crises have never been more frequent or severe.

If, as they say, history repeats itself, we must trust these young people who will feed us tomorrow to rise to the challenges they will face, just as our ancestors did before us. And if history repeats itself, UPA DI will be by their side to dream, innovate, and build a future driven by collective action, solidarity, equity, social justice, respect, and democracy.

Happy reading!

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