no grant, no problem

It has been a while. I have had my ups and downs here as I have mentioned probably too much. One thing I have said is that if this project with Calendula gets of the ground I will feel as if I have had a successful service here in Moldova.

Guess what!?

The project is with the company Calendula-Oil headquartered in Holland being financed with VC funding. The quick and dirty on it is it a partnered company between an agriculture college and a business consulting firm using oil from Marigolds in paint. After some extensive studies on behalf of the EU about 10 years ago they had concluded that the oil pressed from marigolds can be very useful in strengthening the properties in paint which pass on these advantages to wood products. This allows abundant wood from trees available locally to have the strength of trees in the Rain Forest.

After talking with a college of mine who had done some work trying to gain awareness for the possibility of growing Calendula in Moldova I became instantly interested. He ran into some dead ends and he gladly handed it off to me. I continued to address the opportunities for their company to grow this crop in Moldova. After some back and forth through email and some information searching on my organizations part here we managed to get them to come to Moldova for a visit. The visit was a success and we are planting 6 test plots through out Moldova to educate the farmers in Moldova on the crop.

The company is paying for the demonstration plots and paying the farmers for their harvests at the end of the season. My organization is also getting paid to do the consulting to the farmers and organizing field visits. The plan is to grow from 6 hectares this year to 30 next year and if things go smoothly up to 300 in year 3.

The benefit to the farmers in Moldova is that this crop is a great rotational crop to be rotated with Rapeseed, Wheat, and Corn. They farmers get a upfront set price at the beginning of the season so that they will know how much they will receive at harvest time eliminating the risk of going bust at the end of the season if there is no market for their product.

I am pretty excited about this project and the success I hope my organization will have after I leave.