Michael Major

A Traveller's Eye, A Thinker's Heart

Category: Travels for Crop Trust

  • THE ROADSIDE MARKET IN PNG

    If you want a good sweetpotato in Papua New Guinea you don’t need to go to a supermarket. Just pull over on the road … on almost any road (but there are not too many roads in this super rugged country). My hosts from the National Agricultural Research Institute and I drove past a market near Goroka in the Central Highlands and pulled over in front of a huge display of different varieties of sweetpotato. I didn’t want to buy sweetpotatoes any but wanted to document the diversity. As I jumped…

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    THE ROADSIDE MARKET IN PNG

  • I DON’T CARE SWEETPOTATOES

    There’s a sweetpotato in Papua New Guinea called ‘gimane’. But the farmers prefer to call it ‘I don’t care’. It’s because it grows so well they don’t have to care about much once they get a vine or tuber in the ground and it’ll grow. No fertilizers, no insecticides … not really much to care about and in 4-5 months you’ll get a decent harvest. Gimane is one of about 1,000 varieties of sweetpotato in PNG. Traders brought vines or tubers here about 300 years ago and it’s just run amok…

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    I DON’T CARE SWEETPOTATOES

  • A DAYAK WELCOME IN BORNEO

    The inter-tribal warfare amongst the Dayak people of Borneo in the old days was pretty brutal. But once the tribes made peace they welcomed their former enemies in a ceremony called ‘tampung tawar’. Now the Dayak use the ceremony to welcome visitors. My colleague, Beri, and I came to the village of Tumbang Samui in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan to visit a community seedbank. With the assistance of the Borneo Institute and the Crop Trust the villagers are preparing their seed to conserve forever in the icy shelves of the Svalbard Global…

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    A DAYAK WELCOME IN BORNEO

  • TWO STANS AND ALFALFA

    The glaciers of the Tien Shan mountain range in Central Asia are receding quickly. And that’s causing a lot of concern amongst the farmers of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The glacial meltwaters which allowed them to irrigate their crops are no longer abundant. And without adequate water, yields plummet. I joined a group of scientists brought together by my former employer, the Crop Trust. We journeyed to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to explore ways to grow more alfalfa (or lucerne as its known here in Australia) with less water. The scientists reckon that…

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    TWO STANS AND ALFALFA

  • A DAY IN THE RICE PADDIES OF CAO PHONG

    Timing is so important in photography. And I seem to get it wrong so often. I stayed an extra day in Vietnam so I could see rice being harvested in terraced paddies. But it soon appeared that my timing was wrong. Turns out most of the rice in northern Vietnam had already been harvested. Nothing left but stubble. But our host, Vietnam’s National Genebank Director Dr Toan, said his sister-in-law had a homestay near the upland rice fields in the Cao Phong District near Hoa Binh – about two hours from…

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    A DAY IN THE RICE PADDIES OF CAO PHONG

  • A TWILIGHT STROLL THROUGH HANOI’S OLD QUARTER

    I came to Vietnam as part of a Crop Trust-supported genebank review team and after five days here I thought I’d only see a slice of Vietnam between our hotel and the plant resource center. But the team was able to wrap up its work by mid-afternoon on Friday so we all travelled to Hanoi’s Old Quarter to get a taste of the city and unwind a bit. And there’s no better location to immerse yourself in Hanoi. The Old Quarter is vibrant and bustling with people constantly dodging motorcycles and…

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    A TWILIGHT STROLL THROUGH HANOI’S OLD QUARTER

  • THE FRIENDLY COUNTRY OF LAOS

    VIENTIANE To be honest, I can’t tell you much about Laos. I can tell you the Americans bombed the s**t out of the country 50 years ago. In fact, Laos’s claim to ‘fame’ is that it is probably the most bombed country in history. 270 million cluster bombs were dropped on the country. That’s about all I know about Laos. Well, until today that is. I arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, today to join some colleagues from the Crop Trust who are here to review the national genebank. I…

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    THE FRIENDLY COUNTRY OF LAOS

  • ASKING THE WOMEN

    A few decades ago, crop breeders would develop new varieties which they thought farmers wanted and then expect farmers to plant those improved seeds. That didn’t work so well because farmers and breeders don’t always think alike. Nowadays good breeders get farmers involved early on in the process of developing new varieties and ask their opinion before the varieties are released. Our Crop Wild Relatives Project has helped breeders at the International Potato Center develop some climate-smart potatoes. But before the new varieties are released the breeders are asking farmers to…

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    ASKING THE WOMEN

  • POTATOES FOR A CHANGING CLIMATE

    Climate change is reducing potato yields due to drought, heat, and diseases like late blight and bacterial wilt. The Crop Trust’s Crop Wild Relatives Project is funding a pre-breeding project in Peru and Kenya that aims to develop improved potatoes by tapping into the genetic diversity available in the wild relatives of potato … there are about 150 known species of wild potatoes. These potato wild relatives grow in diverse soils and climates, from the dry desert along the Peruvian coast, to the inter-Andean valleys, up to altitudes of 4,200 meters…

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    POTATOES FOR A CHANGING CLIMATE
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