Driving Change

• Home
» Global Citizens

By Tristan Roberts

When Panama’s National Cattlemen’s Association recently needed to substantiate the ineffectiveness of an agricultural policy that was hurting their beef sales and putting farmers out of business, they turned to Brandon Nicolay’s independent study project (ISP), which he completed as a student in the SIT Study Abroad program "Panama: Development and Conservation program."

Nicolay’s study, presented to Panama’s president Martin Torrijos and his cabinet ministers, became the key evidence that convinced the government to reevaluate agricultural policy in the Bocas del Toro province, says Aly Dagang, academic director for SIT’s program in Panama.

My ISP was on the ineffectiveness of a provincial quarantine of beef due to an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis,” says Nicolay. “I found that in the seven years of the quarantine only eight percent of cattle had been tested,” he says. “Not enough money was being put into the program, and it appeared to the central government that, as long as the quarantine was in effect, only that province was affected, and the rest of the country could go about its business not concerned with the issue.”

The government’s lack of attention was causing sick cattle to be sold within the province, and many farmers were switching to less-lucrative rice farming rather than pay the fees that were mandated by the government’s policy, but not supported by government funds.

Although the cattlemen had been making similar arguments to the government, Nicolay’s paper, written by an outsider and couched in scientific language, influenced the president to change his policy.

BRANDON NICOLAY is an environmental studies student at Carleton College.

TRISTAN ROBERTS wrote this article, courtesy of OurWorld (http://ourworld.worldlearning.org), the online alumni community of The School for International Training (SIT) and World Learning.