Casey_Harrison | Agrilinks

Casey Harrison, Nuru International, Impact and Learning Director

Casey Harrison

United States Impact and Learning Director Nuru International

Casey was born and raised on a farm in rural Maryland, and he has spent the past ten years working at the nexus of smallholder farming in Africa and natural resource management. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Luapula Province, Zambia (2009-11), he worked as an agricultural extension agent with the Linking Income, Food, and the Environment program. After Peace Corps, Casey received a dual M.A. in Natural Resource Management and International Affairs from American University in Washington D.C and the University for Peace in Costa Rica. From 2013 to 2016, he began working with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on mitigating the negative environmental and social impacts of agricultural production and value chains with a focus on East and Southern Africa. Casey started working at Nuru International in 2016 and has dedicated his time and energy to supporting the local Nuru teams in areas of agronomics, micro-finance, climate-smart agriculture, and resilience. In his free time, Casey enjoys travelling, backpacking, biking, and live music of all kinds.

Sign for a Nuru-supported farmer organization leaning against a building in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region in Ethiopia

Transforming Rural Economies through Professional Farmer Organizations

Farmer organizations fuel the capacity to change and adapt when farmers are willing to work together to build professional businesses in their communities.

Casey Harrison

Apr 13, 2021

Agricultural Productivity Education and Extension Markets and Trade Resilience

Overhead photo of a large group of people

Staying Smart in Agriculture

The first post , second post , third post , fourth post , and fifth post in this series are an attempt to convey how Nuru’s approach to rural livelihood...

Casey Harrison

Oct 26, 2018

Agricultural Productivity Climate and Natural Resources Education and Extension Markets and Trade Policy and Governance Resilience

Signs describing the cooperative

Co-Creating Local Value Chains

This post is the fifth in a six-part series on Nuru’s rural livelihoods programming and how it helps farmers and their families take steps to move from surviving to thriving...

Casey Harrison

Oct 25, 2018

Agricultural Productivity Climate and Natural Resources Education and Extension Markets and Trade Policy and Governance Resilience

Man standing in a field of maize with a smart farming monitoring system in his hand

Driving Adaptive Programming With Data

Nuru strives to make data driven decisions in all of its programming, and what follows is just one example of how smart use of real time data can help farmer...

Casey Harrison

Oct 23, 2018

Agricultural Productivity Climate and Natural Resources Education and Extension Markets and Trade Policy and Governance Resilience

Woman standing near a bale of hay

Localizing Training and Extension

Nuru’s training curricula are designed to optimize the present capabilities, opportunities and motivations of the farmers they serve. For example, Nuru Kenya tested multiple varieties of improved dairy feed grass...

Casey Harrison

Oct 22, 2018

Agricultural Productivity Climate and Natural Resources Education and Extension Markets and Trade Policy and Governance Resilience

Group of people standing outside a home

Championing Behavior Change in Agriculture

Previously, I shared a brief post about how Nuru’s rural livelihoods programming generally works with farmers. Today I’d like to dive in a bit to describe how behavior change plays...

Casey Harrison

Oct 19, 2018

Agricultural Productivity Climate and Natural Resources Education and Extension Markets and Trade Policy and Governance Resilience

Group of people sitting and listening to a standing speaker

Keeping the Culture in Agriculture: Smart Farming

At Nuru International we believe strongly in continuous improvement and adapting our programs to ensure they are adequately serving our farmers and their families and helping them cope with the...

Casey Harrison

Oct 18, 2018

Agricultural Productivity Climate and Natural Resources Education and Extension Markets and Trade Policy and Governance Resilience