Wow, my head is spinning from all that I am learning and experiencing... and I’ve only been gone a few weeks so far. After being in Morocco for one week, I spent a week in Ghana at the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF). A direct flight from Casablanca to Accra made it easy to get there.
The AGRF is the largest gathering of scientific organizations, government agencies, and philanthropic groups interested in improving African agriculture. I was a bit overwhelmed learning about the complexity and challenges of working to help increase food production across the 54 countries in the continent.
There has been real success in increasing food production in a few countries (such as Ethiopia, Malawi, and Ghana), but farmers in most of the African countries continue to degrade their soil, in part by failing to replace the nutrients removed during harvest and also taking off the crop residue from their field.
Even more worrisome to some friends at home, 60% of cocoa production comes from Ivory Coast and Ghana. Yields have stagnated there due to poor management. Any volunteers to sample their products?
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| Cocoa pods...chocolate bars in the making |
I’ll see what small role I can play in addressing some of these issues.
It will be a new adventure for sure!
I hadn't considered the wonderful places you would be visiting as part of your job! If you need a cocoa tester, count me in. Seriously.
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