STARKVILLE — In 2019, Jessica Graves was working on her doctorate in agricultural sciences at Mississippi State University when she felt called to make a difference on malnutrition and food insecurity internationally.
After discussing her idea with faculty members she found a way to do just that.
Graves joined forces with M4 Institute, a Christian nonprofit that aims to fight poverty across the globe, to start a rabbit farming project in Western Highlands of Guatemala.
As she envisioned it, the project would teach women how to successfully raise and tend to their own rabbit farms to create a sustainable source of protein, and thus, combat food insecurity in Guatemalan communities.
“Most people say, ‘Well, why not dairy goats? You get meat and milk. (Or) cattle.’ We’ve looked at everything, but the rabbits have become a very fantastic vehicle,” Graves said at the Starkville Rotary Club meeting on Monday. “… There are a lot of advantages to having rabbits.”
Graves, now the director of international capacity development for the M4 Institute, has spent the last six years overseeing the project, which has grown from 37 farms across three communities to more than 100 in seven communities in Guatemala.
“Once we get them up and going they’ve got all the training they need,” she said. “… Raising rabbits is fairly easy.”
The project began with Graves and other MSU faculty traveling to Guatemala to teach locals about the fundamentals of rabbit rearing and all of the perks that come with it, from fashioning pelts into clothing to using droppings for soil fertilization.
Soon, Graves began receiving requests from nearby communities, asking for their help to start their own farms too, she said.
“People just honestly kept asking for it,” Graves said. “… It was really about training. And so we don’t want to just give a handout. It’s really about empowering people.”
The nonprofit continues to take groups of students from MSU study abroad programs to teach rabbit raising in Guatemala, Graves said. But now other groups, including from high schools and churches, travel across the globe to join in on the work.
“It really just depends if there’s organizations that want to put a team together to serve in that capacity,” she said. “We will work with those groups.”
Under the M4 Institute, the program has focused on Guatemala, but Graves could see the same methods applied in other countries. Graves and other MSU faculty members are replicating their rabbit raising efforts in Uganda in hopes of making an impact there as well, she said.
“It is exciting to see how the similarities and the differences between cultures and how you know concepts are adopted or not,” Graves said. “And so we’ll see, we’ll see what the future holds.”
While Graves found her niche in rabbit farming, she said everyone has their own unique skillsets they use to impact communities both locally and abroad.
“Everybody has something unique to bring to the table, and so (I encourage) people just to take whatever that skill set is and serve our local communities, but also be willing to serve abroad,” she said.
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