Emily Ambrose

IARD 4960 Reflection Fall 2015

Prof. Peter Hobbs

The following is a reflection of the work completed by myself, Emily Ambrose with AVRDC-The World Vegetable during June to August of 2015 in Arusha, Tanzania. This brief reflection will describe my work with AVRDC and my experience in Tanzania. This brief report will include a number of acknowledgments to funding, project coordinators, and overseers.

Acknowledgments:

I would like to begin by thanking the donors and funding sources that provided for the internship with AVRDC from Cornell as well as project funds from AVRDC and their “Home Garden Project: Deploying Vegetable Seed Kits to tackle Malnutrition problems in Tanzania” project in conjunction with USAID “Feed the Future” program. In addition to the funding for this project, the project coordinators and staff support at AVRDC-The World Vegetable Center of Eastern and Southern Africa were immensely helpful; namely AVRDC director Dr. Thomas Dubois, program director for Home Gardens: Ralph Roothaert, and program facilitator Ms. Sophia Bongole. In addition to these members of AVRDC, local extension agents were also integral to my fieldwork and location of the farmers included in my fieldwork. Lastly, the language facilitation of Ms. Maria Lupogo who accompanied me in the field and aided in the some of the translations of the group discussions as described below.

Work Component:

My internship with AVRDC began in mid-June of 2015 in Arusha, Tanzania. I began my internship working on a project that dealt with the vegetable seed industry in Tanzania and the problems that were facing seed producers, contract farmers, and government ministries of agriculture and horticultural research. I began looking at the current structure of seed production for namely vegetable crops in Tanzania; Arusha due to the climate and cool conditions is appropriate for most seed production and for producing more viable, less stressed seeds. Though I didn’t focus my project specifically on this and creating a case study on it, I believe it to be one of the most interesting parts of my time with AVRDC where I understood more about a nationalized seed program for vegetable seeds.

After spending about two weeks working on the above work, I transitioned to developing my own research that focused on vegetable production and perception of vegetables between men and women. I was very interested in home gardening and the role of increasing vegetable production and consumption in diets of both men and women; further, I wanted to know how the seeds that were being introduced and disseminated in Tanzania played a role in the vegetable production with actual small scale farmers. With the gracious support of AVRDC staff and Director Dubois and project coordinator Raplph Roothaert, I was able to plan a week of field work that would aid in my research and with the project to conductresearch on the possible differences between men and women in regard to how vegetables are perceived, how and why vegetables are grown, and importantly how adoptable the consumption of vegetables would be in terms of the Home Garden Seed Kit project. An important component of my research was in determining how to best create a method to rank vegetables for market and for home consumption and in having farmers create their own list of criteria that made the vegetable most highly rated; I achieved this through using a method of rating that followed a traditional African board game called ‘Bao;’ The Bao method had been conducted before in agroforestry research by Dr. Roothaert as well as Steve Franzel at the World Agroforestry center. I enjoyed participating with the farmers during this exercise and practicing my Swahili with them. After my fieldwork I spent the last few weeks in Tanzania synthesizing my findings to present at the World Vegetable Center; the presentation will be attached to this report. The internship concluded in mid-August 2015.

Reflection on Experience:

My time is Tanzania with AVRDC-The World Vegetable Center of Eastern and Southern Africa was a great opportunity for me to see another focus of international work, a more research and office oriented approach. Since this was not my first experience internationally or in East Africa, I was expecting to complete much different field work and a longer portion of time in the field, however, I appreciated the opportunity to conduct my own research and be able to identify things that I would and would not like to do in an international career in agriculture-related development. Overall my experience was good with the ability to speak Swahili and practice, as one of the greatest highlights, being in Tanzania is definitely the best place for anyone to speak Swahili even though it is spoken in different areas of Eastern Africa.