Michael Major

A Traveller's Eye, A Thinker's Heart

Category: Travels for Crop Trust

  • A POTATO JOURNEY FROM WISCONSIN TO KENYA

    I started out begrudgingly planting potatoes for a merit badge in Wisconsin. Decades later, I found myself in Kenya, watching advanced potato breeding at work. From garden patches to in vitro labs, I’ve come to appreciate the science behind every spud, and the people shaping its future.

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    A POTATO JOURNEY FROM WISCONSIN TO KENYA

  • THEY’RE HARVESTING POTATOES IN KENYA

    Potato harvesting in Kenya is being transformed through improved farming practices, including better seed selection, soil management, and access to agricultural support. These changes are helping smallholder farmers increase yields, strengthen food security, and build more resilient livelihoods in the face of climate and economic challenges across the region.

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    THEY’RE HARVESTING POTATOES IN KENYA

  • THE STIGMA OF GRASSPEA

    The ancient Greeks, notably Hippocrates, were pretty wary of grasspea (Lathyrus sativa). They figured if they ate too much they’d get some neurological disorders. The stigma of grasspea still persists today in many parts of the world.Last month I joined a team from the Crop Trust‘s BOLD Project to visit researchers and farmers in India

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    THE STIGMA OF GRASSPEA

  • CROSSING THE BRAHMAPUTRA

    The Brahmaputra is one of the mightiest rivers in the world. From its source on the Angsi Glacier in Tibet it flows nearly 4,000 kilometres to its mouth in the Bay of Bengal. Our hosts at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute wanted to take us to a char on the river. A char is a

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    CROSSING THE BRAHMAPUTRA

  • THE PEA OF THE CHAR

    As I jumped off the horse cart and landed on the sandy soil of Charbongram, an island in the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh, I kicked what appeared to be a weed. It was a scraggly, prostrate plant somehow surviving where no other plants could. ‘That’s grasspea,’ said ICARDA pulses breeder Shiv Agrawal proudly as if

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    THE PEA OF THE CHAR

  • GRASSPEA IS A GRACIOUS GIFT OF GOD GLOBALLY (5G)

    As I stood in the middle of a 28-acre community managed grasspea field in West Bengal, India, I asked how the villagers divided the tasks of managing the field. There were puzzled looks on the farmers’ faces. ‘There is no labour with grasspea … only sowing. God does the rest.’ Former ICARDA pulse breed Ashuthosh

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    GRASSPEA IS A GRACIOUS GIFT OF GOD GLOBALLY (5G)

  • SHUSHILA SPEAKS OUT

    As our convoy of three cars arrived to Bamuliya, a village an hour out of Bhopal, we were met by a gaggle of men. They escorted us to a field neatly planted with grasspea. I asked which of the men was the farmer and then attached a microphone to his shirt. I forgot some equipment,

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    SHUSHILA SPEAKS OUT

  • THE FAMINE CROP

    You’d be forgiven if you admitted you had never heard of grasspea. It’s really not one of the world’s leading crops. But as our climate is changing and soils degrading it could be one of the most promising. Grasspea is a nutritious crop which is heat- and drought-tolerant and often survives when other crops fail,

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    THE FAMINE CROP

  • PRESERVING MALAN IN CENTRAL KALIMANTAN

    Papa Dewi told me about his way of ‘malan’. That means farming in his native Ngaju Dayak language of Central Kalimantan in Borneo, Indonesia. And it’s based on planting seeds according to local wisdom and ancestral customs. Those seeds are inseparable from the Dayak way of life. But the malan traditions are disappearing as traditional

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