OSU grad visits Kenya to teach agroforestry; use of trees can enrich soil, increase yields

BY KATHY LEESE

ANNA — After grad­u­at­ing from Ohio State Uni­ver­sity with a bach­e­lor of sci­ence degree in agri­cul­ture in 2012, a Shelby County man found him­self in Africa, teach­ing young chil­dren about agroforestry.

Dustin Homan, 24, son of Mike and Diane Homan of Anna, decided to visit Africa after grad­u­at­ing Summa Cum Laude with Hon­ors Research Dis­tinc­tion. His major was in agri­cul­tural and exten­sion edu­ca­tion with a focus on lead­er­ship and minor in inter­na­tional studies.

Homan is a 2007 Anna High School grad­u­ate, where he was involved in FFA, includ­ing serv­ing as a state offi­cer. It was his high school expe­ri­ences that led to his inter­est in agri­cul­ture that even­tu­ally took him to Africa.

“I chose agri­cul­tural and exten­sion edu­ca­tion because of my involve­ment with 4-H and FFA and the influ­ence of my advi­sors — Michelle Brun­son, Jason Haak and Lori Elsass,” he said. “I wanted to even­tu­ally influ­ence agri­cul­tural pub­lic policy.”

Cur­rently, Homan works for the Adayana Agribusi­ness Group, an agri­cul­tural con­sult­ing firm in Indi­anapo­lis, where he man­ages mul­ti­ple client projects rang­ing from strate­gic plan­ning to con­duct­ing pri­mary agri­cul­tural research, such as farmer focus groups.

At OSU, Homan was named an Out­stand­ing Senior by the uni­ver­sity, which rec­og­nizes less than one per­cent of grad­u­at­ing seniors who excel in lead­er­ship, ser­vice and schol­ar­ship. He was also a Top 10 Senior in the Col­lege of Food, Agri­cul­tural and Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences. He received OSU’s Scar­let, Gray and Green Stu­dent Lead­er­ship Award for his role in advanc­ing cam­pus sus­tain­abil­ity efforts.

As if that is not enough, Homan was active at OSU in Under­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment and the Micki Zart­man Scar­let and Gray Agri­cul­ture Day, was an Agri­cul­tural Ambas­sador, belonged to the Agri­cul­tural Edu­ca­tion Soci­ety and was on he Beanie Drake Stu­dent Lead­er­ship Endow­ment Board.

Cur­rently, Homan is a mem­ber of the Indi­ana Farm Bureau and vol­un­teers at a food bank.

It was many of those expe­ri­ences that led Homan to Africa.

“One of my goals while at Ohio State was to embark on my first inter­na­tional trip, which I thought would be through a stan­dard study abroad pro­gram. How­ever, as I pruned down my pas­sions at Ohio State, I began to grav­i­tate my involve­ment towards two spe­cific areas — hunger and edu­ca­tion,” Homan stated.

“As a result, I became active in the Micki Zart­man Scar­let and Gray Ag Day, which is a student-led agri­cul­tural aware­ness event hosted on cam­pus for nearly 600 local ele­men­tary stu­dents to learn about agriculture.”

Homan noted that “one of my men­tors and the founder of Scar­let and Gray Ag Day, Micki Zart­man, linked my pas­sion with the inter­ests of Dr. Den­nis Gar­rity, direc­tor gen­eral of the World Agro­forestry Cen­ter, also known as the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre for Research in Agro­forestry (ICRAF) in Kenya, to ini­ti­ate a stu­dent intern­ship pro­gram with Ohio stu­dents, which was coined the Buckeye-Borlaug Program.”

Homan’s trip was pri­mar­ily funded through a Sum­mer Hol­brook Research Abroad Fel­low­ship, sup­ple­mented by dona­tions from his fam­ily and church and a grant through the OSU Under­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Government.

Because he had never trav­eled over­seas before, Homan was a lit­tle ner­vous. The trip took more than 20 hours, includ­ing short lay­overs in Newark, N.J.; Zurich, Switzer­land and Brus­sels, Belgium.

“This was my first inter­na­tional expe­ri­ence and (I was) full of anx­i­ety and inse­cu­rity at first because this was the first time I had ever felt in the minor­ity,” Homan said. “One of my first jour­nal entries read, ‘I’ve been on high alert since I got here, espe­cially because my room­mates don’t lock the front door and even leave it open’.”

“Many of the Kenyan stu­dents had never seen a Cau­casian before, so it took me a few school vis­its before I wasn’t so para­noid about their stares. Ini­tially, I felt like an ani­mal being observed in a zoo,” Homan said.

Homan, who said he was “not too picky” on where he would travel inter­na­tion­ally, found him­self “sur­prised” when he began to expe­ri­ence African cul­ture. “I was most sur­prised by the country’s devel­op­ment. I felt like I took a time machine back to the early 1900s in the United States, with a few cur­rent tech­nolo­gies mixed in.”

“We couldn’t drink water directly from the tap and dri­ving on the roads was like a scene out of a motocross race. Yet, nearly every Kenyan had a cell phone,” he noted.

Homan worked to teach African chil­dren about agro­forestry, which, he said, “focuses on uti­liz­ing trees on farms and in rural land­scapes to pro­vide fer­til­izer to crops from falling leaves to boost pro­duc­tion out­put.” But first, he had to win the chil­dren over.

“The African chil­dren were very well behaved and dis­ci­plined, which caused some ini­tial issues when we tried to engage them through our activ­i­ties. Kenya used to be a British colony and their edu­ca­tion sys­tem mim­ics a lec­ture approach. The stu­dents were not used to respond­ing to ques­tions or get­ting out of their seats, which were com­po­nents of our les­son plan, so we quickly learned that we had to spend time break­ing the ice, usu­ally by teach­ing them the O-H-I-O cheer and ask­ing their teach­ers to encour­age their par­tic­i­pa­tion. We also quickly learned that tak­ing them out­side of the class­room helped to remove some of these bar­ri­ers,” Homan said.

Once he arrived in Africa, Homan spent much time at the World Agro­forestry Cen­tre head­quar­ters in Nairobi, Kenya’s cap­i­tal. He also vis­ited 10 rural ele­men­tary schools around the coun­try and spent a week­end at a beach in Mombasa.

Homan did not have too many prob­lems with lan­guage bar­ri­ers, not­ing that most Kenyan ele­men­tary stu­dents know three lan­guages — Eng­lish, Swahili and their tribal lan­guage. “We taught all of our lessons in Eng­lish and enjoyed, with some strug­gle, learn­ing Swahili from the students.”

Homan helped to teach the chil­dren, of ele­men­tary and junior high age, about agro­forestry. “The World Agro­forestry Cen­tre has iden­ti­fied spe­cific fer­til­izer trees that, when incor­po­rated into farm­ing sys­tems, have been proven to nearly dou­ble crop yields in Sub-Saharan Africa. Incor­po­rat­ing trees also ben­e­fits farm­ers by increas­ing their soil health and food secu­rity, pro­vid­ing fod­der that improves small­holder live­stock pro­duc­tion and pro­duc­ing tim­ber for shel­ter and energy.”

“Unfor­tu­nately, ICRAF lacks strate­gies to dis­sem­i­nate and imple­ment this tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion through­out Africa,” Homan explained.

“All of the 10 schools we vis­ited were part of the Healthy Learn­ing Pro­gramme, which pro­vides resources to schools to enhance the qual­ity of learn­ing and health. The World Agro­forestry Cen­tre is a sup­porter of the pro­gram, so we were tasked with vis­it­ing 10 of the 30 schools in the pro­gram to eval­u­ate how the schools had uti­lized their funds, to increase aware­ness of the ben­e­fits of agro­forestry and out­lin­ing the ben­e­fits of plant­ing trees on farms, which we coined as the four F’s of agro­forestry — food, fod­der, fire­wood and fertilizer.”

“The Kenyans know a lot about agri­cul­ture since it has been their main indus­try for gen­er­a­tions,” Homan said. “How­ever, they do not have estab­lished research or exten­sion ser­vices like we do….so new tech­nolo­gies and prac­tices spread extremely slow. Their agri­cul­ture would be viewed as prim­i­tive to us, but the lack of dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion is a huge bar­rier to advanc­ing their pro­duc­tiv­ity. The schools are begin­ning to serve as research sta­tions, though,” Homan said.

“New agri­cul­tural tech­niques and prac­tices are being taught in the class­room and then the stu­dents go directly to the school’s gar­den to apply what they have learned. Peri­od­i­cally, the school will invite the par­ents and com­mu­nity mem­bers to visit the school to prove the new tech­niques work and to teach them how to use the new tech­nol­ogy,” Homan said.

Grow­ing crops in Africa is a chal­lenge because of what Homan described as their “diverse cli­mate.” It has a “bread bas­ket” area that receives rain­fall and allows grain farm­ing to thrive, but it also has a lot of arid areas where only live­stock can be pro­duced. The lack of ade­quate and acces­si­ble water in the bread bas­ket area, though, is the main issue plagu­ing the coun­try and pre­vent­ing it from becom­ing food sus­tain­able, Homan said. “Grow­ing crops is a gam­ble each year. There is a wet sea­son and a dry sea­son, so it is imper­a­tive for farm­ers to get their crop in the ground dur­ing the wet sea­son with ade­quate time for the crop to take root.”

“Water is such a rare resource that the peo­ple there col­lect rain dur­ing the wet sea­son from their roofs, to hope­fully last them through the dry sea­son. At the end of one of our vis­its, we asked the stu­dents how we could help them in the future. Some asked us to come back to pro­vide addi­tional train­ing, but the one response I will never for­get came from a young, des­per­ate boy:. ‘Can you please bring us rain?’”

Inter­est­ingly, the coun­try is also home to a lot of British-owned green­houses pro­duc­ing flow­ers for the rest of the world.

Homan found that the African stu­dents were anx­ious to learn about agriculture.He noted the stu­dents view going to school as a priv­i­lege. He said African stu­dents will skip sleep and “walk miles each day, get to school early and stay late….to soak up any extra tid­bits of infor­ma­tion, which they then take home and apply. By doing this, the stu­dents are edu­cat­ing their par­ents, many of whom did not attend school, and help­ing to spread new agri­cul­tural tech­nolo­gies and practices.”

Homan said Africa does have some agri­cul­tural advan­tages over the United States. “I devel­oped an addic­tion to avo­ca­dos and man­goes while in Kenya because of their abun­dant avail­abil­ity and fresh, juicy taste. Kenya has an advan­tage over the United States in fruits and veg­eta­bles because of its trop­i­cal climate.”

While focused on agro­forestry, Homan said, they had an oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide “strate­gic insight” for the Healthy Learn­ing Programme’s future direc­tion, look­ing specif­i­cally at “how the pro­gram can fund addi­tional agri­cul­tural projects to help ben­e­fit the schools, such as anaer­o­bic digesters to pro­vide gas for cook­ing.” The stu­dents already ben­e­fit from the program’s health and san­i­ta­tion pro­grams such as gar­den­ing and hand wash­ing stations.

“Kenyan farm­ers really aren’t that dif­fer­ent from Ohio farm­ers,” Homan stated. “Both are entre­pre­neur­ial and busi­ness minded, both are try­ing to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies and….feed the world, both trust their liveli­hoods to unpre­dictable weather and both know resources are lim­ited and that you must put back into the land what you reap from it. The biggest bless­ing for us, though, is the dis­sem­i­na­tion of research and knowl­edge, par­tic­u­larly through our exten­sion ser­vice, which Kenya does not have.”

Homan said trac­tors are a rare thing in Africa. “Only the large farms, which are mainly owned by the British expa­tri­ates, have trac­tors. The few trac­tors we did see were quite old and used. Most labor is done either by hand or with animals.”

Homan got to expe­ri­ence the food grown by Africans. “Kenyans eat a lot of roasted meat, which they call nyoma choma, usu­ally served with steamed kale and a corn­meal mush. I became very fond of nyoma choma, espe­cially the goat meat. I also ate a lot of fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, with my favorites being man­goes and avo­ca­dos. I had an avo­cado tree grow­ing next to my first home. My most mem­o­rable meal….was at The Car­ni­vore, which is appro­pri­ately named. We filled our­selves up with dif­fer­ent kinds of meat, includ­ing lamb, croc­o­dile, camel and ostrich.”

Homan also encoun­tered wildlife dur­ing his visit, includ­ing some that vis­ited dur­ing meet­ings at the ICRAF offices. They vis­ited a giraffe sanctuary,

ele­phant orphan­age and saw a num­ber of other animals.

Even though the chil­dren lived in prim­i­tive con­di­tions, Homan was sur­prised by their pos­i­tive atti­tude. “The stu­dents I met in Africa were so full of life — happy, con­tent and gen­er­ous — even though they had noth­ing by our stan­dards. Some of them were sleep­ing in crammed huts made of dried cow dung and sticks. Many of them walked miles home after a 10-hour school day to put in another four to six hours on the family’s farm. Yet, many of them told me they had been blessed by God

because they knew of peo­ple who were in worse sit­u­a­tions,” Homan said.

Look­ing back,Homan is glad he took the trip to Africa. He said it “was the tip­ping point for me to stop set­tling for ‘what is’ and start cre­at­ing ‘what could be’.”

He hopes one day to return and con­tinue teach­ing stu­dents the con­cepts that will help them become suc­cess­ful farm­ers and suc­cess­ful people.

Homan may be con­tacted at dustin.homan@gmail.com.

Kathy Leese writes for the

Sid­ney Daily News.

Posted by Rachel Lloyd on Feb 28 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.