Marco Barzman joins SAREP staff

SAREP welcomes new staff member Marco Barzman, who is working on impact assessment of the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems (BIFS) Program and individual projects. He will develop and implement methods to assess the impact of BIFS projects on the attitudes and practices of farmers, advisors, pest control advisors (PCAs) and others within the relevant commodity.

Barzman will also be comparing the BIFS team-based extension approach to more linear styles of information exchange. SAREP will use this information to evaluate and improve outreach for BIFS projects. Barzman received a bachelor of science degree in biology from UCLA and a doctorate in entomology with a focus on agroecology from UC Berkeley. He comes to SAREP from Bangladesh, where he coordinated a CARE project promoting the integration of fish and vegetable production in rice paddy fields. CARE is an international non-governmental organization working in developing countries. The CARE-Bangladesh project provided training to 30,000 farmers using participatory extension methods. Previously Barzman worked with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to promote sustainable agriculture research internationally. He also worked with rice growers in the Dominican Republic to identify information flow about the use of agrochemicals, and was involved in a study on the traditional use of weaver ants in citrus in Vietnam’s Mekong delta.