One key to our\nlearning so much in Chad was first connecting with Dr. Diego Boilengar. Dr. Boilengar is a former university lecturer\nin Germany, specialized in agricultural enterprise development. He was serving as a special advisor to the Minister\nof Agriculture, and from the moment I cold-called him from Nairobi one day in\nMay, 2019, I knew we could work together. \nHe really took time to describe the production systems in Chad. The line was fading in and out, and a couple\nof times I just pretended to understand what he\u2019d said. But it was clear that Diego was highly\nknowledgeable, and cared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d been put in touch\nwith Diego by my good friend Abdulaye Sawadogo, CEO of Nafaso Seed Company of\nBurkina Faso. Abdulaye had been\nexporting small quantities of seed to Chad, and was invited to produce seed\nthere. Diego had facilitated his\ndiscussions with the government, and I can only guess that he caught the seed\nbug from Abdulaye. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At any rate, coming\ndown to the last moments before my trip and still with no visa to board the\nflight in Nairobi, I sent a question to Diego, asking if I should buy the\nticket, or cancel. He sent a two-word\nSMS: \u201cOui, vient\u201d. I like brevity. I like people who are too busy for long\nexplanations. So I went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was met at the\nairport in N\u2019djamena by Diego and a very tall, distinguished-looking man named\nAhmed Ngame. We talked seed the rest of\nthe day, and the following day I met the Minister. She listened patiently as I rattled on about\nthe importance of seed to farmers, then said something that really took me\naback: \u201cI agree, and will cover the\ncosts of your field visits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chad is a very poor\ncountry. It really doesn\u2019t have a lot of\npublic money to spend on random expatriate agronomists coming in talking about\nseed supply to smallholder farmers. But\nhere the Minister was commiting some of her very limited discretionary funds to\nensure that I saw the reality on the ground. \nI was very touched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We covered several\nthousand kilometers in three days, from N\u2019djamena to Moundou and beyond, near\nthe border with Central African Republic. \nChad has very hard-working farmers, and endless amounts of fertile\nland. It could be a breadbasket. But Ahmed explained that the yields they get\nare so low, and hunger is so rampant, they often don\u2019t have the energy needed\nto plant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was in Chad that I\nreally saw the pain of farmers working so hard, but harvesting so little,\nmostly because of a lack of high-yielding seed. \nWe visited several cooperatives who had organized to produce several\nhundred tons of certified seed. It was\ninspiring effort, but Chad needs at least 20,000 tons of seed. They need, and want, private seed companies\nthat can organize the effort needed to produce and market seed of new varieties\nat-scale. I hope and pray we can help\nthem do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One key to our learning so much in Chad was first connecting with Dr. Diego Boilengar. Dr. Boilengar is a former university lecturer in Germany, specialized in agricultural enterprise development. He was serving as a special advisor to the Minister of Agriculture, and from the moment I cold-called him from Nairobi one day in May, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1621,"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\/1708"}],"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=1708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1708\/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=1708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.seedsystemsgroup.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}