The Team

It occurred to me while conversing with my parents that perhaps I should clarify exactly what this "internship" is all about. Why are we actually in Ecuador?

A little history:

VT is the managing entity for SANREM CRSP (Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program), a program funded by USAID with several projects in developing countries around the world focusing on researching and implementing conservation agriculture. Our professors, Jeff Alwang, George Norton, and Darrell Bosch have been working with SANREM for many years; every two years since 2005 they have brought small groups of undergraduates to work here in Ecuador (we are the third group, and the best of course, to come). 

The groups in the past have been focused on other things; this time we are working with INIAP (SANREM's partner in the Ecuador project) to interview farmers in the upper watershed of the Illangama river, and the lower watershed of the Allumbre river near to the town of Guaranda (population: 30,000 or so). We are attempting to uncover how much farmers are spending in all aspects of production of papa (potatoes), maiz (corn), frejol (a type of bean), and other crops. Our survey is somewhere near 12 pages as it currently stands, so we'll be hanging out with the farmer for around an hour to an hour and a half extracting as much information about the growing season and inputs as possible. We'll evaluate these costs under standard practices as well as under conservation practices (assuming we can find a few farms actually using conservation practices) such as deviation ditches, planting on the contour, and reduced and minimum tillage. Deviation ditches involve digging a ditch at the top and bottom of a field to slow the flow of water over a field, planting on the contour involves zig-zagging the rows, and reduced and minimum tillage means disturbing the soil as little as possible while planting (no plowing). We are also on the lookout for production with irrigation. 

Now that you are drooling of boredom, let me take a few seconds to post some pictures of our group. We are really lucky to have good group dynamics and we've been able to accomplish things together pretty well. I have no fear that we'll work well together when it comes to going out in the field and implementing our surveys. 

Mr. Trevor Simmons, Crop and Soil 

Ms. Jessica Boatwright, Agricultural and Applied Economics

Ms. Katie DeBreuil, Agricultural and Applied Economics

Mr. Robert Gaffney, Agricultural and Applied Economics

 Ms. Lauren Moore, International Studies

and myself, Agricultural and Applied Economics/International Studies

The work is coming fast and hard, but tomorrow is our last day of school, including some salsa lessons (hilarity shall ensue, I'm sure). We are attempting to make plans for our last weekend in Quito- a visit to a cloud forest reserve may or may not be in the works, but nonetheless we are leaving at 10 am on Sunday for a 4 hour trip to Guaranda. 

On a personal note, I just finished reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalunia, about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. He noted something that I find very true in the midst of this experience: it is very hard to draw large critical conclusions about events when one is intimately involved, it was only after he had left Spain that he was able to understand in a broader sense what he had been through and how he was connected to the larger picture. I feel that I can relate: right now we are making daily decisions about where to eat and when to sleep, feeling the high altitude and the pollution of the city in our lungs, growing together as a group. I shall have to have patience before I can fully process and comprehend how this has changed me and maybe (if we are lucky) how we have changed those we encounter.