Thanks Dr. Denise

Our friend and Ryan's buddy from Vet School is Dr. Denise Ward. She's currently on staff with Christian Veterinary Missions. Having served 7 years in Ethiopia with the Borana people, Denise is now at CVM's home office heading up the short term missions. We recently chatted with Denise to get her thoughts/perspective on what Ryan should consider and plan for our trip to Ethiopia with FOVC. Denise also had some really great insight for me as well. I thought I'd share a few points from our conversation as a point of information sharing and so that I don't forget what she told me.

1. Use pigeon peas. They are a good forage for animals and a good food for people. I think I've also recently heard that they're good for soils so I'll be looking into that some more.
2. Tour a local farm (and pay a per diem for doing so) to get an idea of how farming works in the Shanto area.
3. Increase purchasing power. For example, everyone puts 10 birr (their currency) a week into a pot. One woman will take all the money one week. Another the next week and so on. This allows the women to have more money which gives them more purchasing power.
4. Consider the use of intercropping.
5. Create a test plot on church property or government property. This would show them how to do things without them having the risk of losing a crop.
6. Check out ECHO out of Florida. I haven't done this yet but it's on my list of things to do.
7. Plowing is mans work. It's hard to hire someone to come plow small plots of land. Having women collectively have all their land plowed at the same time would help.
8. Market. One woman would take the crop for multiple women one day. The second one takes the crop the next day, etc. This allows the woman more time to be tending their crop, taking care of children, etc.
9. Farming God's Way. I need to look into this some more too.

Thanks Denise for giving me more to consider before I head to Ethiopia!