Arriving in Benin\u2019s\ncapital of Cotonou on a Sunday, I didn\u2019t really know what to expect. Like many international agronomists working in\nAfrica, I\u2019d spent a lot of time in neighboring Nigeria, and lived for several\nyears in Ghana, but Benin \u2013 the former Dahomey \u2013 had always remained outside my\ntravel itineraries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What a pleasant and\nexciting surprise Benin turned out to be. \nFrom my first meeting, with Dr. Adolphe Adjanohoun, head of the national\nag research institute, INRAB, and Mr. Roland Zoglobossou, head of the national\nseed regulatory agency, and then with their full teams, to an energized\ndiscussion with the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Gaston Dossouhoui, to my time\nin the field viewing seed production fields of indigenous vegetables, to a\nfascinating visit to one of the world\u2019s very few oil palm breeding facilities,\nto our final wrap-up meeting on Friday back in INRAB headquarters, and an\nenjoyable meal with INRAB leadership at a great restaurant, l\u2019Imprevu, the whole\nweek felt like it was scripted in heaven. \nI have rarely felt so welcomed as a total stranger as I felt in\nBenin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Honorable\nMinister, after our brief conversation where I described to him SSG\u2019s\npublic-private model for rapidly increasing seed supply and distribution\nthrough private, local seed companies and dealers, turned to his team and said\n(my translation from French), \u201cWe have to move with this. Don\u2019t be conservative. Don\u2019t drag your feet!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we were off. With my super-supportive guide, Sylvie Boku,\nassigned by Dr. Adjanohoun to assist with my movements around the country, I\ntraveled to the INRAB station in Niaouli, to the coastal plain station for seed\nmultiplication in Sem\u00e9, and to Pob\u00e9, near the Nigerian border, where INRAB\nbreeds oil palm, and was just amazed at the commitment to agriculture among the\nagriculture officers of the government of Benin. These people work hard, and really believe in\ntheir vocation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My favorite moment in\nBenin came while meeting with Ms. Isabelle Megbleto, who owns several input\nsupply shops. She imports vegetable seed\nfrom Europe and hybrid maize seed from Burkina Faso. While explaining animatedly what she was\ndoing to package her seed in better, foil packets, I remarked that she really\nseemed to love her work. She stopped,\nput her hands down on her desk, and said, \u201cI will never do anything else for\nthe rest of my life, but seed.\u201d I\nunderstood where she was coming from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arriving in Benin\u2019s capital of Cotonou on a Sunday, I didn\u2019t really know what to expect. Like many international agronomists working in Africa, I\u2019d spent a lot of time in neighboring Nigeria, and lived for several years in Ghana, but Benin \u2013 the former Dahomey \u2013 had always remained outside my travel itineraries. What a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}