UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Today we completed our Introduction to Sustainable Agriculture workshops in Bareti. Bareti is a small village located in the Tsalka Municipality of Southern Georgia. The Tsalka municipality is located in the Kvemo-Kartli region known in Georgia for its fertile soil, access to water resources, and the potential for development of agriculture. This region is also in one of the most ethnically diverse municipalities in the region. In the early 1990’s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tsalka was facing a number of socio-economic development challenges related to the migration of the local Greek population returning to Greece resulting in the abandonment of buildings and property ownership issues. This later caused property ownership conflicts between immigrants resulting from poor land management. Later, the region received an influx of ecological migrants during 2000-2008 from mountainous regions of Georgia (Svaneti and Adjara) that were affected by natural disasters such as la...

The Bediani Children’s Center (BCC) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization located in Bediani in the Tsalka Municipality in the Kvetmo-Kartli Region nestled in the heart of Georgia. Because of the high elevation and rough terrain, this region is one of the most economically depressed in the country. Bediani is better off than the majority of the region which is displayed in their flush toilets, access to medical care, tourist attractions, and sources of income other than farming for the majority of the villagers. No matter where you are in the village, you are surrounded by towering mountains covered in greenery. There is a small river that flows through the center of the village where villagers recreate and draw water for daily use. Just upstream, there is a hydroelectric power dam that provides electricity for the area. Between the village’s children’s center, the large psychiatric hospital, and tourism brought by the historic 11th century convent, here are enough jobs and ...

8:00am: wake up, get ready for the day. 9:00am: the agreed upon departure time - wait outside of the common house. 10:00am: call from Nino, Zviad’s wife, summoning me to her house for breakfast. 11:00am: finish breakfast, wait outside of the common house. 12:00pm: Zviad drives his car to the common house, we all pile in and begin the daily trek. 2:00pm: arrive at Zviad’s restaurant in Tsalka. 4:00pm: drive from Tsalka to Bareti. 4:30pm: conduct interviews. 10:00pm: drive from Bareti to Tsalka. 11:00pm: drive from Tsalka to Bediani. 1:00am: arrive in Bediani. There are two main things I learned from traveling in Georgia are that things have a different procedure than US, and that I had absentmindedly taken roads for granted in the US. Georgian lifestyle is much slower than what seems to be the American lifestyle. In the US, everything is about efficiency and speed. We are constantly attempting to make things and processes faster. The first day w...

Pictured: The team in front of the Great Lakes Power Office We left Kigali and traveled four hours travel along the National Route 1 and 7 before arriving at the unclassified red dirt road leading to Banda.  Banda is located in the Rangiro Sector, Nyamasheke District in the Western Province of Rwanda. The two hours along rutted red dirt road, muddied from recent rains and with debris from intermittent landslides is only passable by 4x4, ours a deep green Toyota pickup operated by our professional driver.  Banda represents the most remote, poorest and demanding locations in Rwanda. Children walk many kilometers up and down steep hills to attend school, fetch water and firewood or work in the fields. Adults, young and old work, on small agriculture plots, carry their produce along the same steep hills either pushing them on bicycles or carrying them on their backs and heads. The village of Banda has limited or no infrastructure, no running water, sanitation, hospitals an...

Pictured from right to left: Lauren Howe, Subash Karki of CGED Nepal, Mr. Dawa Sherpa (farmer and husband), and Mrs. Laxmi Sherpa (Dawa’s wife) Nearly six months ago, an NGO called Centre for Green Economy Development Nepal (CGED Nepal) found the Horticulture Innovation Lab chimney solar dryer manual online from a Google search of alternative technologies for solar drying. “The chimney dryer seemed affordable, simple, and easy to construct,” they shared with me as we sipped dudh chiya (milk tea) in their office. CGED Nepal reached out to the Horticulture Innovation Lab over the summer to share their experiences building and using the dryer, which they hope to offer to farmers as part of their suite of alternative energy technologies for sustainable development, agricultural livelihoods and income generation. As luck and life would have it, I’m now in Nepal conducting my International Agricultural Development (IAD) MS thesis research, which involves piloting the chimney solar dryer ...

This week, I had a fantastic opportunity to present the initial findings of my research and our project’s activities at the Annual Asia Food Safety and Security Association (AFSA) International Conference on Food Safety and Food Security. My timing for getting this awesome opportunity to work in Cambodia couldn’t have been any better as this year, as it was my host university’s (the Royal University of Agriculture) turn to organize the conference. This year, the conference was hosted in Siem Reap, the site of the famous Angkor Wat. Every two years, AFSA brings together scientists and practitioners from across Asia to present on their research and projects in a forum committed to exchanging ideas on a wide range of ideas on food security and food safety. Many researchers in Asia find attending large, international conferences cost-prohibitive, and the goal of AFSA is to host an accessible platform for information exchange in the region. I was incredibly fortunately to have the oppor...

This week, I took a quick side trip from my surveying to check out a training on the Participatory Guarantee System in the nearby province of Kandal, Cambodia. The Participatory Guarantee System (commonly referred to as PGS), is an alternative organic label and marketing system that meets farmers at their level and needs. Instead of attempting to adhere to complex and difficult to attain standards set up by international bodies, PGS brings together growers, buyers, and other community stakeholders to set production and handling standards that meet community-defined quality standards. This system relies on community trust and self-evaluation to ensure all members are adhering the the group’s standards. As part of my research, I hope to be able to implement a similar training to introduce PGS to farmers in Battambang, Cambodia (where my project is based). I was very excited to have this opportunity, and my wonderful mentor from the Royal University of Agriculture went out of his way to d...

I have been in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for about three weeks now. This summer I will be working with the Royal University of Agriculture to help introduce quality standards to vegetable farmers in the Battambang province as part of the Safe Vegetable Value Chain Project (SVVC). SVVC is a project funded by USAID’s Horticulture Innovation Lab at UC Davis. UC Davis has a long collaborative relationship with the Royal University of Agriculture, and I am excited to help out as much as I can this summer. My first few weeks have already flown by and I’m diving into my research objectives. After some initial orientation and meetings with my university mentor, we set a plan to begin my data collection and surveying right away. My initial surveys and focus groups will help identify what practices and attitudes farmers have about quality standards as well as gauge their interest in joining a new marketing system known as the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS)-- a system that brings together grow...

We had multiple coding projects. We taught teachers, 5th standard students, and hostel girls basic programming through the software scratch. The goal for each group was to make the cat (scratch) dance. This was very user friendly, I’m a history major and can tell you I do not know how to code, but this program was more centered on fun-game-like activities that even I understood it. 5th standard boys listening to instructions It was endearing seeing one of the teachers excited in making her cat move, I saw her dancing a little bit and she was very flustered when I caught her. We are thinking of expanding coding for next year, possibly having a coding day and creating some curriculum for the teachers so the students can really hone in these skills. This was extra beneficial for the hostel girls because when they start applying to college they can see that coding is an option for a career path. This was my second favorite activity. Seeing everyone’s faces after completing their t...