Michael Major

A Traveller's Eye, A Thinker's Heart

Category: Travels for Crop Trust

  • THE BAMBARA GROUNDNUTS OF UNYAMIKUMBI

    If you look at a dried Bambara groundnut in its shell you’d be forgiven if you thought it was a deformed peanut. They share a name. Peanuts are called ‘groundnuts’ in many places in the world. And they are both legumes. And both need to have hard shells removed prior to eating. But that’s pretty

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    THE BAMBARA GROUNDNUTS OF UNYAMIKUMBI

  • THE SINGIDA MORNING MARKET

    Sweetpotato leaves wilt quickly. They’re harvested in the early morning and usually consumed by nighttime. We wanted to see them nice and fresh so we ventured to the Singida market as the sun rose. We found leafy green vendors, Domina, Rahel and Mwasiti, setting up shop. They pulled out African nightshade, amaranth, mustard greens and

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    THE SINGIDA MORNING MARKET

  • NJUGU

    Esther Yoham Majija wanted to make her bakery, the Fortlene Bakery, a step apart from other bakeries in her town of Babati, Tanzania. She wanted to use traditional African vegetables in her baked products. The mother of three visited a booth of the World Vegetable Center at a trade fair and learned of different ingredients

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    NJUGU

  • RECLAIMING FONIO

    It’s one of the oldest cultivated crops in Africa but you’d be forgiven if you’d never heard of fonio. I had heard of fonio’s many qualities but had never seen nor eaten it. That’s changed now. I travelled to Benin with my colleague Scott Christiansen to learn more. Stakeholders in Benin led by the Crop

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    RECLAIMING FONIO

  • CRINCRIN

    I never thought I’d enjoy eating green mucilaginous slime. But I did. Jute mallow is a favorite with the Beninese who call the crop crincrin. It’s an annual leafy crop grown in many places around the world. Its leaves are rich in pro-vitamin A, iron, calcium, and vitamins B and C. Those are important in

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    CRINCRIN

  • AGOUN FOR LUNCH

    The city Dassa-Zoumé is about half way between Cotonou and Natitingou in Benin and pops up just about when your stomach starts to grumble during the day-long trip. Our colleagues, Malika and Sam, knew just the place for lunch and we stopped in at a roadside kitchen for a feed. Malika said something about yams

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    AGOUN FOR LUNCH

  • BY THE RIVER OF DEATH

    The mouth of the Ouémé River in Benin was historically quite a treacherous place with dangerous currents which took many lives. Yet the settlers and traders built a fishing village at the mouth and that village has now grown to be Benin’s largest city. French colonists liked the location and stablised the currents and built

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    BY THE RIVER OF DEATH

  • THE ‘YOU NEVER KNOW’ RICE

    A rice variety developed in China in 2008, stored in international genebanks, has emerged as a top-performing crop in Pakistan. After years of preservation and testing, this resilient strain—now called NARC-RICE-1—demonstrates the vital role of seed conservation in ensuring future food security.

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    THE ‘YOU NEVER KNOW’ RICE

  • IS ARCTIC SNOW REALLY BLUE?

    For years, I have been seeing photographs of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. And in nearly every photograph, the snow is blue. The Svalbard Archipelago is halfway between the Arctic Circle and the North Pole, so I often wondered if perhaps up there the snow truly is blue. I finally got an opportunity to travel

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    IS ARCTIC SNOW REALLY BLUE?
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