It's hard to believe that 27 months ago I was getting on a plane bound for Kazakhstan to serve with the US Peace Corps as an English teacher. After only 9 months of service, all volunteers were removed from the country for safety reasons, and we were all left wondering what in the world to do with ourselves. I landed first at Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp, which served as a resting place after a tumultuous exodus from Kazakhstan, a quiet place of recovery after having to leave my Central Asian friends and family, a place to plant new seeds and see them grow (literally and figuratively), and a social place where I could share Peace Corps stories with our FLBC guests until I was blue in the face, and there would still be eager listeners. I had time to heal, and I'm so grateful for those 7 months.
At the end of the summer, I packed up my car and my dog and headed to Michigan. I've spent the last academic year working towards my Master's degree at Michigan State University in the department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies. At the end of this two year program, my Master's degree will be in CARRS (see the department name above), and my specific focus will be in international agricultural development.
Now we get to this summer, and how I'm going to end up in Malawi from mid-May to mid-August. My thesis research looks at farmer experimentation. I'll be working with farmers who live in Malawi and have a very small amount of land and who don't have access to credit or chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
Many agricultural non-profit organizations (such as Africa RISING) are encouraging these resource-poor farmers to experiment with different crops to help farmers bolster their food production (most farmers in Malawi grow maize/corn as their main food crop and keep a small house garden for tomatoes, onions, etc.). Farmers are encouraged to experiment with legume crops (like peanuts, soybeans, common beans, pigeonpeas, cowpeas, and many more) by planting a few legume crops among their corn plants (this is called "intercropping"). Legume intercropping is a common practice among Malawian farmers, but on a very small scale, so non-profit organizations are encouraging farmers to grow more legumes, if possible. The idea is that the legumes will add nutrients to the soil (and boost corn yields) and will also improve the nutrition of farmers and their families (because legumes are a good source of protein and calories). Here's an interesting article that explains the benefits of legume intercrops, and has some good quotes from Sieglinde Snapp, who is one of the leads of this project and is also one of my graduate committee advisors. And here's an article from the May issue of this year's National Geographic that talks about the scientific side of the project (starting with the section entitled "Viewed from Africa").
53% of Malawian children under age 5 suffer from stunted mental and physical development due to inadequate nutrition, and many people (myself included) think that legume intercrops are a good starting place for improving the diets of Malawian farmers and their children (keep in mind that around 80% of Malawi's population rely on farming to make a living, compared to less than 1% of America's population).
This summer, I'll be talking with over 300 farmers about their involvement with non-profit organizations, their current farm practices (for example, how many legume crops are they growing with their corn?), their on-farm experiments, and their food security. I'm very grateful to USAID and Africa RISING for supporting this research, as I think it will be incredibly interesting and might be very important for the food security of Malawian farm families!
Over the next year, I'll be writing a lot of academic-type papers for school, so now that I've given you all a little background about what I'll be doing, the rest of the blog will be my attempt to tell stories from the field. Of course I'll post updates about how the research is going, but I want to use this blog as mainly a forum for sharing my experiences in Malawi. Most of you may know that I've been drawn to Africa for as long as I can remember (in fact, when I volunteered for PC I really wanted to be sent to Africa but was sent to Central Asia instead!), and it's hard to believe that I'm finally going to get there. I think it's wonderfully ironic that if my Peace Corps service hadn't been interrupted, I would have been coming home this month, and instead, I'm leaving for Africa this month! PC Kaz taught me to expect the unexpected, so I'm going into this journey with an open mind and a hunger for adventure. This time for Africa!
