During the summer of 2017, I contributed to the ongoing repatriation and preservation of Maya Itzá plant medicine knowledge in Petén, with the goal of supporting the Itzá in their quest for sovereignty, autonomy, and preservation of their culture and way of life.
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).
The Henry L. Jastro research award partially funded my research this past summer in Zanzibar conducting experiments to build the knowledge base for climate smart agricultural practices for poultry.
The main focus of the project was to support the foundation of a new rural agricultural high school, which is intended to support students in learning Q’eqchi’ Maya agricultural practices and traditions that have been lost after many years of civil war and racial discrimination.
Throughout the summer and fall of 2018, I conducted fieldwork in New England and California looking at current realities of beginning and mid-career, small-scale, sustainable farmers in the US.
Between July - September of the year 2018, I traveled to the Aysén Region (Chile) to gather information to conduct a study about the Ecosystem Services (ES) provided by temperate forests, and their function, and respond to different uses and management practices in different basins of the region.
My project involved designing and implementing a density trial for moringa oleifera to model alternative production methods to moringa farmers in Meru, Kenya.
The overall objective of this research project was to determine if methylmercury discharged from rice systems poses a health risk to humans and wildlife fish consumers and, if so, how we can cost effectively minimize the risk.
From late July to early November 2018, I had the privilege of traveling to Bo, Sierra Leone to assess the feasibility of ethanol cookstoves as a clean-cooking alternative in households.
This summer, I went abroad to Pacto, Ecuador, an agrarian town in the cloud forest of Ecuador, to conduct a farmer training and a cost of production survey with coffee farmers.
Thanks to funding through the RIFA and JASTRO programs, I traveled to Brazil to research what barriers might exist that prevent a higher prevalence of agroforestry systems, with a specific emphasis on access to financial services.
Unlike some other research projects that received funding for this Jastro period, my project focused more on applied work and information gathering to support the development of an innovative high school in an indigenous region of Northern Guatemala.
