Category: Travels for Crop Trust

1 May 2019

A MOROCCAN ROADTRIP

MOROCCO ROADTRIP DAY 1. WELCOME TO MY WORLD It was a coincidence and a stroke of luck that my work travels in Morocco converged with the travels of Padma, Jenni and Russ. So they were able to meet my work colleagues and we were able to spend a night in Marrakech before the three of
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7 June 2018

THE CORIOLIS EFFECT

‘How’s the weather in the southern hemisphere?’ Ben asked. We crossed the Equator just north of Kisumu so we felt obliged to get the token tourist shot. A man with a bucket and some water beckoned us over for a demonstration. We knew he was just after a few shillings but let him show us
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6 June 2018

A TALE OF TWO MARYS

Once upon a time a man married two Marys, which is something you can do in Kenya. The man passed away but his two wives, the Marys, lived on and prospered while growing finger millet. Finger millet is a traditional crop of Eastern Africa and once grew abundantly in the Western Kenya near the town
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6 June 2018

JOY IN THE FINGER MILLET FIELD

Margaret, a progressive farmer in Kakamega County of western Kenya, suffers from diabetes. So she planted finger millet at a time when all of her neighbours planted maize. She likes the finger millet because it is high in nutritional content, is gluten free, and has a low GI. Magaret has been growing finger millet for
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6 June 2018

UGALI AKA WIMBI

My colleague, Benjamin, and I travelled to Kenya to learn about finger millet and check up on some projects the Crop Trust is supporting. Neither of us had ever eaten finger millet so our hosts made sure we’d change that. Our hosts brought us to a small village called Ekero in Kakamega County which was
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5 June 2018

JONAH, THE KENYAN TEA PLUCKER

It’s an all-day journey from Nairobi to Kisimu, where my colleague, Benjamin Kilian, and I will look at some finger millet pre-breeding projects. Halfway into the journey we climbed to 2400 metres on the western side of the Riff Valley and entered prime Kenyan tea country. We stretched our legs and met Jonah, a tea
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5 June 2018

MORAG, THE QUEEN OF CASSAVA

The last time I saw Morag Ferguson I was shoving hummus into my mouth and washing it down with arak. It’s been 25 years since Morag and I worked in Syria. The times have changed, but not Morag. I caught up with Morag at her home for the past 15 years – Nairobi, Kenya. Morag
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16 May 2018

BACK AT ICARDA

It’s taken me 25 years, but I’ve finally returned to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, the organisation I once worked for. This time it wasn’t in Syria but the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon … but Syria was just a few kilometres away beyond the mountains in this photo. The location
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16 May 2018

REPLENISHING THE SEED OF THE FERTILE CRESCENT

Ahmed Amri stood in the middle of a checkerboard-patterned field. “This field sums up the diversity of wheat in the Fertile Crescent,” said Ahmed. “All the plots are wild wheat, but each one is slightly different, and any one of these could possess a beneficial trait which could help crop breeders develop wheat varieties more
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