Starved for Science

Well, the weird weather patterns appear to be continuing on into the spring which has farmers in this area frazzled to say the least. To plant or not to plant? What is the magic insurance date again? How cold can the wheat get? You get the idea.

So with spring preparations happening early and the usual busyness of three kids, pre-school, dance class, soccer and perpetual ear infections, Justin and I have had little time to process this latest trip to Rwanda. Until last night.

A good friend, fellow NewSong groupie and SLU professor invited us to speak to a class she teaches on sustainability which we gladly accepted. This gave us a great opportunity to talk about how far the project has come and things we're excited about for the future of the farm sites.

The students were wonderful, asked great questions and were very gracious with our technical shortcomings. But, inevitably, when we show pictures of clearing trees and start talking about synthetic fertilizers and drought tolerant corn, questions and criticisms arise about the environmental impact of what we're doing and we find ourselves defending modern farming practices and warning against the danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water when it comes to agricultural science.

One of the best books we've ever read on this subject is "Starved for Science by Robert Paarlberg. He blames nonproductive farming for Africa becoming the only region on Earth where human poverty and hunger both continue to increase. He writes, " In Africa, farmers today are not engaged in specialized factory farming. They are planting heirloom varieties in poly-cultures rather than scientifically improved varieties in monoculture. They have a food system that is traditional, local, nonindustrial, and very slow. Using few purchased inputs, they are de facto organic." Sounds dreamy and wholesome right? a lot like the animated picture recently used in a certain Chipotle ad? He finishes this thought by saying, "And as a consequence they remain poor and poorly fed."

We're not saying everyone has to farm like we do in the States to be profitable. Organic farming certainly has a place here and abroad. But shouldn't farmers everywhere be given the choice of how they want to farm? Shouldn't African farmers have access to the same technologies and knowledge base that we do?

So, we were grateful once again for the chance to stretch the minds of people who can sometimes cast farmers as the villains. By the end of our talk we had somehow convinced the group to shift all of the blame for any environmental impact issues they had to golf course managers. Job well done I'd say.

And as an added bonus, we got to Pappy's just in time to snag the very last rack of ribs of the night. Awesome.

And the winner is...

Heated debates between my husband and my father are not uncommon. When two people spend as much time together as those two, conflict is bound to happen. From big things (who gets to operate the planter this year) to the small things (Funderburks or Powhaten for lunch), there is almost always something that Justin and Dad are debating.

This winter, however, arose a debate of such monumental proportions, that each side had started recruiting members and a community was left divided.

What, you ask, could cause such a rift?

What could strike a cord that runs so deeply within a man?

The age old question...

Gleaner or International.

Up until now, the project has utilized hand labor for harvesting (as you saw in a previous post about the Mpanga site). This is partly because we have been growing corn for seed which requires more gentle processing than a combine can offer. This season we planted our first crop of soybeans. That along with the prospect of farming some additional land encouraged us to look into purchasing and shipping combines.

So, the search began and with it, the much debated question. Which combine to go with.

There are a lot of factors to keep in mind when researching equipment bound for Africa.
Here are a few:

Narrow roads. While the field size is steadily increasing as farmers begin to work more cooperatively, which would allow for larger equipment, the roads continue to be a problem. For this reason, we begain looking at smaller sized combines.

Another size restriction is the container they will be shipped in. Justin took me along on a combine scouting mission earlier this year and while holding my end of the tape measure I remember thinking, either my math is way off (which is not all that hard to imagine) or we are literally looking at inches to spare if we go with this machine.

Parts replacement is a huge one. It's important to figure out which kind of machine is going to break the least, break the most consistently (for example, if we know this is always the part that breaks, we can include extras in the container), and the liklihood of being able to find replacement parts somewhere in Africa versus the price of having them shipped.

As you may have quessed, among the farmers polled, the older genenation pulled for Team Berry and the F2 Gleaner. Besides the nostalgia surrounding these beasts of a machine, I think there is something very durable about them and farmers talked about their simplicity. Easy to work on, easy to get running again...if you can find the parts. And, consequently, based on nothing other than this picture of me when I was 5, Gleaner had my vote as well.

Team Justin and the 1420 International crew spoke of familiarity with the machines (as a lot of folks in our area run much larger updated versions of this classic) and ease of finding parts. Also taken into consideration is the vast number of people who are able to work on Internationals who might be able to talk Justin through fixing one over the phone.

These along with a thousand other factores (like which model can we get in a 1/64th scale version so we can create a model African farm in our basement...boys will be boys) were carefully debated and scrutinized and a winner was finally decided.

Red wins again. (Dad is inevitably muttering something under his breath about young kids thinking they know everything and we'll just see who has to come show them how to fix it when it breaks down)

And, like nearly all machinery decisions, it really came down to price and location. We were able to get a total of three combines (two 1420's and one 1440) for the right price and all in Illinois...Carlyle, Greenville and Auburn to be exact.

So, the two 1420's along with two bean heads and one corn head are being loaded onto a container as we speak and should reach the shores of Africa in time to harvest the crop Justin and Dad just finished planting. Barring any unforseen problems and, of course, pirates.

And it should be noted that we are already the proud owners of a 1/64th scale 1420.

Pity Party

When people see me dragging my three kids, by myself, into church or to get groceries, there is always this look of sympathy and worry in their eyes. "How are you holding up sweetie?" they often say and offer to bring me a meal through the week or watch the kids while I run errands. Don't get me wrong, I could absolutely not make it through these weeks of Justin's absence without the help. I'm grateful every time someone offers to carry a child for me or hold the door for us or bring over Chinese take-out.

Some have even gotten in the habit of saying things like "I sure hope Justin is planning to take you to the beach when he gets back!" as if he's been gallivanting around the globe hopping from resort to resort. If sleeping on a concrete floor with a thin piece of foam for a mattress and eating beans and rice for every meal is a vacation, then, yes, he's certainly living it up and owes me a tropical getaway.

The truth is, life is not daisies and roses for any of us when he's gone. No question about it, we lived much easier and simpler lives before we got involved with this project. The going and coming, the frustrations of dealing with foreign politics, the red tape, the language barrier, the food, or lack of, the financial burden....all of it can seem a little overwhelming at times.

So why do we keep doing it? Why do we keep going back?

Simple. Because of Daniel. And the nearly 1 million kids just like him.

On our first trip to Rwanda back in 2008 Justin and I did a lot of driving around the country scouting locations for a possible farm site. When we would reach our destination, before we even stepped foot out of the vehicle, we were surrounded by kids.

Kids are everywhere in Rwanda and here are some of their sobering statistics:

1% of the population in Rwanda has any type of Post-Secondary Education
34% of the households are headed by widows
13% of households are headed by children
26% of the population under the age of 14 are orphans (somewhere between 825,000 and 1,000,000 children)

It's been said that a nation cannot prosper unless it cares for its most vulnerable and nowhere is this more true than in Rwanda.

So how does modern farming help someone like Daniel, his 6 siblings and the hundreds of thousands of orphans in his country? Right now, it looks like producing better seed and more of it so the local farmers (which make up over 90% of the population) can buy it at a cheaper price. It also means making mechanization available to even the small farmers and training them in best practices like seed bed preparation and plant health. We hope, at some point, to introduce animal production so Daniel and his family can afford to include meat as a regular part of their diet and so that meat can be raised, butchered and sold in a more regulated way.

In the long term, we hope what we are doing will attract other business owners around the world to begin to see Rwanda as a global partner and a strategic place to invest.

A country with over a million little mouths to feed will soon have a million teenage mouths to feed and then a million adults who need jobs and need industries in which to work and specialize. Farming in Rwanda has to become a more diversified business and we hope what we're doing is contributing to that end.

So, while it's certainly easy for me to slip into pity party mode from time to time, when I haven't left my house or talked another adult in days, I need only look at these pictures of sweet Daniel and remember that I care about his little future. I care that he has all of the opportunities as he grows up that my children will have.

That being said, there's always room on the pity porch for some shrimp lo mien and bottle of Riesling if you happen to be in the area.

If you would like more information on sponsoring a child like Daniel, please visit the ProCom Rwanda website by clicking here.

The making of the Mpanga Site

Aside from being a bumpy 3 hour drive from Kigali (the capital city), having no electricity or running water, having to use a latrine for a potty, swarms of malaria-carrying mosquitoes and the occasional Cape Buffalo stampede, the site at Mpanga is turning out to be more than we could have imagined. However, it took a little work to get it ready to be farmed.

Justin called with great excitement from Mpanga about this time last year reporting that a brand new Cat 963D Highlift bulldozer had been delivered for clearing land, but they were having trouble getting it started. The next day they discovered the problem...there was no alternator. Someone had stolen it. This, as we are learning, is common in Rwanda. After countless calls between Rwanda and the States and a trip to Fenton MO, a replacement alternator was purchased and included in my checked bags bound for Africa along with 200 lbs of additional tools and parts. By now I'm used to fetching parts when things break down around the farm, but this takes "parts run" to a whole new level.




Justin, Rich and Ben trying to figure out how to install the alternator



A second bulldozer arriving at the site

Here is the progression of land preparation on field 1 at the Mpanga site.

Finally being planted

Corn starting to come up.
 The mountains you can see in the background of this picture are Tanzania.

We've heard a lot of criticism regarding the clearing of trees for the purposes of agriculture so let me just address that here. The best rebuttal I've heard for this kind of criticism actually came from a Ugandan native named Grace who was working with a group of American college students doing a study on the neighboring village. She was among a small group of us watching as Justin started pushing over a big, beautiful tree in the middle of field 2. The other American and I were somewhat horrified to see it going down and were cringing as it's roots started to surface. The African woman looked at us and simply said, "my people are starving, plant more trees somewhere else."

One problem we've noticed in Rwanda is that the hillsides have largely been cleared for farming which is leading to significant amounts of erosion. Another member of our team is working on an Agra-forestry project which will focus on reforestation of the hillsides leaving the valleys and flat lands, like the one we are working on, available for food production.

So, bulldozers and excavators have become a regular part of our machinery line-up and, truthfully, I'm thankful that my husband occasionally has a chance to operate them. Demolition of this magnitude is evidently very therapeutic and much cheaper than the therapy it would require to survive in our home with a very strong-willed 3 year old, 18 month old twins, and a somewhat snarky wife.

As of right now, the team hasn't discovered any missing alternators or crucial parts that were overlooked in the packing process, but a girl can hope, right?

Willie: the voice of Global Agriculture? Yikes.

If you've ever been lucky enough to be around when the subject of modern farming practices comes up in conversation, you know this is a major hot button for me. My husband has learned to live in fear of the moment when someone within earshot of me mentions something about organic foods being healthier, factory farms being inhumane, pesticides being used irresponsibly... you get the idea.


My goal in this post is not to take on each of those issues individually. There are tons of much more qualified folks within the Ag Industry singing that song and supporting what our farmers do. (like Holly Spangler, who you can read here or Emily Webel here)


The central issue for me, the hot button, the soap box and the message of this post is this: the decisions we make, the commercials we run, the legislation we pass, the agricultural science we criticize...things we think will simply make a difference on the shelves of our local grocery stores actually have GLOBAL IMPACT.


Here's a recent example that I've been itching to tackle ever since the Super Bowl. As many of you recall, Chipotle ran an ad casting modern farming practices in a very bad light, depicting animated pigs being pumped full of chemicals and pills until the animated farmer has an epiphany and knocks down buildings and fences to allow said pigs to run and frolic to their heart's content.

Here's how Fox News reported it: "It may feature cute animation, but the message is a strong one. It’s an indictment of what many consider a dark side to the meat industry here in America: factory farming. While people may dream of animals roaming free before being taken to slaughterhouses, in reality, most meat comes from animals held in cramped cages their entire lives, pumped full of drugs and food that plumps them up in a short amount of time."


Now, while the advertising major in me can appreciate the well crafted message and clever animation, and even the Willie factor, the part-time, very inexperienced and very new-to-this economic developer in me is horrified.


And here's why.


Chipotle is trying to sell more burritos. Simple. As. That. They are using a popular social issue and great advertising to do so, but at the end of the day, they have a bottom line and share holders that like it when they operate in the black.


The problem is, the message that they're using to sell more burritos impacts lives far beyond those that grace their corrugated tin doors. Leaders of developing nations are listening, to our advertising, our talk shows (cough...Oprah), to our legislators and to us. American voices can be LOUD and we demand to be heard, without always thinking about who is listening.


This issue has always been an important one to me, but never more so than since we started farming in Rwanda. When you can look into the very faces of mothers who are breaking their backs in fields planting open-pollinated seed that is sure to dry up if there is no rain, knowing that drought-tolerant seed is available but illegal in their country, nothing is more heart-breaking.


Our choices abound in this country, from what food we buy, to what seed we plant, and where we go to church. Not so in much of the rest of the world. And the voice in which we speak about these freedoms carries great distances.


No one is speaking about or supporting this message better than Bill Gates. In a recent speech given to the UN Rural Poverty agency IFAD, he is quoted as saying, "If you care about the poorest, you care about agriculture. We believe that it's possible for small farmers to double and in some cases even triple their yields in the next 20 years while preserving the land." A fact that we are seeing first hand on our model farm in Mpanga just by introducing mechanized methods and better seed bed preparation.


He goes on to defend the case of GMO's (genetically modified organisms), a highly controversial issue in developing nations, by saying "You should go out and talk to people growing rice and say do they mind that it was created in a laboratory when their child has enough to eat?"


And that, my friends, is exactly the point I'm trying to make. Somehow when Bill Gates says it, it carries a little more weight. Weird, I know.

The Eagle has landed.

They made it!

And by "they", I mean ALL of the disc blades. Can I get a woot woot?!

Oh, and the guys made it too. And were greeted by a dozen delicious African Bagel Company donuts from one of our favorite Muzungus, Rich. More on him and his wonderful wife and their awesome ministry later...

Ok, I know it seems cold and uncaring to worry more about the blades than the arrival of my own dear sweet husband, but if you only knew how valuable those silly blades are. How much care was taken to package them perfectly, and weigh them out to measure precisely how many we could fit in each bag. Only to watch as the TSA tear through our tape and jumble them all up to see if they were explosive I presume? We stood with jaws dropped as if the box of blades were our firstborn.

Alas, the blades and the men and the sippy cups have all arrived, so let the fun begin.

First order of business, finish up with harvest at the Mpanga farm. Here's a glimpse of what that looks like.

Corn pickers have been purchased and are in the process of being shipped,

but for now, harvest is done by hand.

Since Justin's last trip, new housing has gone up! So, this is where the guys will be staying this trip which is a nice break from the tents they'll be enduring at the other farm sites. There is no electricity or running water here yet, but having a real roof over head is a big improvement.

And this is the view! Hard to beat.

Here's a nice shot of the second corn crop before harvest.

 Is this Rwanda or Illinois?

I'm working on a post that has a nice progression of pictures from the very beginning of our work at the Mpanga site and will hopefully get that posted soon. You'll be amazed to see how far this site has come from when we first layed eyes on it.

Thanks for reading!

World's Worst Blogger

I keep telling myself, I should be good at this. I read people's blogs and think, I should really start blogging again. I have an AgComm degree from the University of Illinois for heaven's sake. But, like flossing, and eating more leafy greens, I just haven't managed to make it a regular part of my routine. For now, I'll blame the tiny twin boys, one of which is chewing on my computer chord, the other drooling on my tab key which I'm sure will render it useless. How important is the tab key really?

Alas, I have committed, at least for today, to give it another whirl. So, be gracious with my inconsistency, my misspellings, my poorly placed pictures, and my paragraphs that aren't properly indented for lack of a tab key.

The sudden inspiration for another stab at blogging came as a result of my husband making another voyage to the farm in Rwanda, this time taking my 62 year old father and another guy that has been working with us at our stateside farm, Collin. They are flying out of Washington as we speak with 400 lbs of luggage including disc blades (weighing in at around 12 lbs each), tractor parts, 2 tents, lots of bug spray, some deer sausage, and most importantly, 6 Nuby sippy cups, for a certain baby friend who is learning to drink like a big guy.  

A lot of exciting things have happened since my last post. We are mid-way though our second harvest at the Mpanga farm and early estimations have us at double what we produced last season. We've added some acreage at that site, so with the improved numbers (which were already about double what the farmers were producing before) we hope to continue to establish ourselves are reliable producers in the country and expand our opportunities even more.

We are in the process of preparing an additional 150 acres in the northeastern-most corner of Rwanda in an area called Nyagatare. Land prep is underway there and Justin's focus when he gets there will be to get this land planted in corn.

Justin's goal will also be to plant beans at the Mpanga farm (where the bumper corn crop is being harvested) and another farm in Muhazi where there is a reported 2400 acres being set aside for the production of beans. Evidently a huge soybean processing plant has been built in Rwanda but, at present, has no soybeans to process as there are none growing in the country. Such is life in Africa it seems, cart before the horse in the most extreme ways.

We are also shipping more equipment which I think is my husband's favorite part and which he is great at. He is constantly in search of a good deal on smaller used equipment that can be refurbished and shipped for use in Rwanda. Right now we are in the process of preparing 2 seed drills, 2 combines, 2 corn pickers, 2 eight row planters, and assorted seed conditioning equipment for shipment. Pictures to come as the process of disassembling and packing this stuff into a container always provides a great source of entertainment for me....and lots of cussing from my husband.

So I will leave you with this brief update with the promise of more to come as the guys land in country and the stories start rolling in of their adventures there. At this rate, I may even find a way to work in kale chips to my diet.