cc  >> Kevin Check: Good morning.  >> All: Good morning!  >> Check: Welcome to today's  Day on Campus.  My name is Kevin Check.  I'm Senior Director of School  and College Relations at the  Wisconsin Alumni Association.  We're very pleased to bring this  programming to you today in  partnership with the College of  Agricultural and Life Sciences.  For those of you who have  participated in Day on Campus in  the past, you know that there's  typically been a wide variety of  lectures and program options.  This year as the chancellor  mentioned, our programming is  centered around the campus  Go Big Read project and  the Michael Pollan book.  So we have an entire day of  lectures centered on the topic  of food and all different  aspects of food.  As you've looked at the agenda,  you can certainly see that.  For our first session today  we're excited to welcome  Professor Jeremy Foltz from the  Department of Agricultural and  Applied Economics here at  UW-Madison. 

 Dr. Foltz is an  associate professor here.  He also serves as co-director  of the program in Agricultural  Technology Studies.  He holds a BA from  Yale University and an MA  and PhD from UW-Madison.  Dr. Foltz's research focuses on  the economics of new  technologies and farm structures  in the United States and Africa.  He spent last academic year on a  Fulbright grant to study the  adoption of new crop varieties  in Mali, West Africa.  He has also done work on  agricultural biotechnologies in  the United States and Wisconsin  and has been published in the  American Journal of Agricultural  Economics, Agricultural  Economics, and Economic  Development and Cultural Change.  Please join me in welcoming  Professor Jeremy Foltz.  (applause)  >> Jeremy Foltz: Thanks and  thanks for having me here today.  I'm here to talk about  agricultural development  in Africa.  Most of what I'm going to talk  about is in West Africa, in  particular in Mali, which is one  of my favorite countries, and  also where I am in this picture. 

 This is a picture of me in a  field of a particular variety of  sorghum called --, which  translates into "this grows lots  of sorghum."  (laughter)  And you'll see a couple more  pictures of sorghum.  I'm not going to talk too much  about sorghum, but you should  know I am an economist, an  applied economist.  I do occasionally stand out and  get my picture taken in fields  of great crops, but my work is  particularly on the end of,  okay, somebody comes up with a  new variety of sorghum and they  call it "Hey, that produces a  lot of sorghum," otherwise known  as -- and then my job is to  figure out, how do you get this  out to people?  How do you get farmers adopting  a new variety?  How do you figure out if this  new variety of sorghum actually  pays?  So the big thing about -- is  that it produces more sorghum  when you put fertilizer on it.  So most of the farmers in West  Africa and most of the farmers,  certainly, in Mali, farm without  using chemical fertilizers and  often without additional  fertilizers.  To get a sense of what this kind  of farming is like, imagine you  take your kids' sandbox out back  and you plant some corn in it.  And that's about as good as the  soils are there.  And the local varieties are very  well adapted to growing in those  conditions with relatively  little fertilizer, relatively  poor soils.  And so this is a variety that  actually - a lot of those local  varieties, you add fertilizer to  them, they don't actually  produce more seeds.  So you need to breed a variety  that produces more, but that  means you're also asking very  poor people who live on under a  dollar a day to actually put  money into fertilizer.  So a field of --, you need at  least $100 worth of fertilizer  for, say, a two acre field in  order to get your benefit out of  it. 

 So you need the -- to actually  produce something more than $100  extra.  So that's kind of where I come  in, thinking about, okay, under  what conditions would that  happen?  Under what conditions would it  pay?  And how might you get, say,  agricultural credit to the  farmers to figure out, so that  they could actually borrow the  money for that extra $100?  If you live on a dollar a day or  less, you don't have $100  sitting in your pocket.  So that's basically the kind of  work that I do.  So I'm going to talk to you, a  little bit of an overview of  some of it and then two specific  projects that I'm working on,  both of which are kind of new  projects.  The reason I'm talking about  them is that they're new and I'm  really excited about them, but I  don't have great conclusions for  you.  "We have done exactly this or  that."  Let's see how all this works.  All right, so just a little  introduction to sub-Saharan  Africa.  One of the poorest parts of the  world.  So here's the Sahara Desert.  There are 48 countries in  sub-Saharan Africa. 

 If you add in North Africa, you  get 53 countries on the African  continent, consistently some of  the poorest levels of economic  growth.  This is a part of the world  where you don't see economies  growing to the point where they  are going to converge to the  levels of wealth that we have in  the developed world.  The last decade has been  relatively successful.  A bit of good news is that  Africa is not very well  integrated into the world  economy.  That's typically a really bad  problem, but in the last couple  of years, in case you haven't  noticed, there's been an  economic crisis in the world  economy, and it's turned out  that some of that Africa's been  able to bypass.  Not all African countries.  Places like South Africa, where  they're actually much better  integrated into the world  economy, they've had a lot more  problems.  Other places, if you have a  banking system that was not tied  to the world banking system, you  actually turned out to be much  better off, because your bankers  weren't buying speculative real  estate or derivatives on  speculative real estate in Las  Vegas.  So you didn't have your banking  system completely fall apart.  So these are, for the most part,  poor countries. 

 Most of what we're going to be  talking about, here is Mali, and  we're mostly going to be talking  about things relative to West  Africa here.  So where does agriculture fit in  this?  So, in a place like Mali you  have about 70% or 80% of the  population that is in some way  tied directly to agriculture and  agricultural production.  And basically, if you're  thinking about where you're  going to have economic  development and what that  economic development is going to  be, it's got to come through the  rural areas.  It's got to come through  agricultural development.  You have a lot of countries that  are net importers of food.  There's a lot that can be done  in making those countries food  self-sufficient.  So a country like Mali, in the  '60s and '70s was food  self-sufficient.  It went through a period in the  late '70s, early '80s where it  was a major net importer of  food, and now it's started to  turn that corner.  So that's the kind of thing  we're working on and thinking  about, well, at some point it's  the kind of place that could be  a major net exporter of food.  At least to the region. 

 The other thing is that you may  have heard about the green  revolution, throughout most of  the world, but Africa has really  lagged behind on developing new  crop varieties and adoption of  new varieties.  Now, a lot of this has to do  with, there just hasn't been  that much research on crops that  grow and what grows well in  sub-Saharan Africa.  So in the rest of the world and  for the crops that grow in the  rest of the world, there are  hundreds of years worth of  research.  There's lots known about a lot  of crops.  There's a lot known about how to  grow corn here in Wisconsin.  There's a lot less known, it's  only been, for the most part,  since a lot of these countries  got independence in the 1960s  that there's been some effort to  figure out, how do we grow corn  in Mali?  How do we grow corn in Uganda?  So you're not basing your work  on 100, 200 years' worth of  research.  You're basing your work on, this  is what people have been doing  the last 20 or 30 years.  So there's a lot more work to be  done in this.  Here is a sorghum breeder from  Mali with two different types of  sorghum.  I'm not sure if this comes out  very well, but basically this is  the old variety, this is another  variety, it's not --, it's  another one. 

 But what you can see is just  more sorghum seeds on that head  of sorghum, a denser variety.  So this is the kind of thing  that we're looking for.  All right.  Research question number one.  How do we grow anything there?  So, this is not just Arizona.  These are fields out here.  This is after the rains have  finished, but that kind of sandy  stretch there, that's where  you're going to grow your  livelihood if you live in this  village.  And a lot of the people who are  doing the growing, doing the  farming, end up being women.  That's partially because, in  some of these areas, the men are  migrating to the cities for jobs  and you end up with villages  where you have women, you have  children, you have older people.  So what can be grown well?  What is going to grow well?  And how can you help improve the  incomes of the people there?  One of the key things is that  growing here is a very risky  operation. 

 The rains come on time, you  might get good yields.  The rains don't come, you have a  problem.  Now, one of the problems that  you might have is, okay, so, if  the rains aren't very good this  year, you end up with a stock of  grain.  You're going to eat through that  stock of grain over the course   of the year.  And so near the end of that year  is the time that you're going to  be planting.  The next rainy season comes  along.  The rainy season there is pretty  much like our summer here.  Imagine you harvest in October,  big stock of grain, and it  starts depleting.  So along comes May, it's time to  plant again.  So you use some of the seeds you  have and you plant those, and  then it's time to work in the  fields. 

 So this is the time of year you  need as much energy as you can  get and as much calories,  everything.  But what's happened to your  stock of grain?  It's starting to deplete.  So this is what gets called the  "hungry season."  Everybody's got this problem.  The price of grain really starts  skyrocketing because everybody's  got the same problem and so you  have a lower stock of grain and  you need lots of energy to be  out there weeding your fields,  to be out there planting.  So the ideal thing would be if  you had a really precocious crop  that would come in really early.  You'd plant it and bam, it would  be ready.  And so this is one of the things  we're working on, which is a  crop called fonio.  You probably have never heard of  fonio.  What is fonio?  Scientifically it is  Digitaria exilis.  It's closely related to panicum,  sorghum, and several other  grains in the Poaceae family. 

 Actually I can see some of my  colleagues who can explain what  family that is.  This is the part that I'm not so  sure about.  The part I am sure about is that  it's a relative of crab grass.  All of you know how to grow crab  grass.  I know, and if you're like me,  you're actually not very good at  killing crab grass.  And if you look at your lawn,  you look out there, and when it  doesn't rain most of your lawn  goes brown.  The crab grass does really well,  and this is typically the  problem.  But if you can get that crab  grass to produce something  useful, that's a good thing.  So this is something grown in  West Africa.  It produces a very small seed,  I'll show you some pictures,  that you can produce a couscous  out of. 

 So you steam it and it's very  tasty, it's very good.  Here's some of the fonio that  we're growing.  This is here in the greenhouses  on campus, some fonio growing.  This looks exactly like the  things that are currently  sprouting in my lawn.  So we've been trying to grow  that here.  This is one of those things  that, as I said, there's not  been a lot of research on this.  When I started this, I thought,  I'm not in plant science, and I  thought, people, I'm sure, know  exactly how to grow this and how  this works.  And so we just went and looked  at the literature and it turns  out, no, people don't really  know how to grow this.  The Malians I'm working with,  they knew how to grow it in  Mali.  But actually nobody really knew  how to grow it in the greenhouse  in Madison, Wisconsin. 

 Turns out it's very sensitive to  the day length and we don't have  the same length of day as they  do in Madison.  So what's good about fonio?  Here's a field of fonio and the  kind of woman who would have  such a field.  In fact, this is, in fact, her  field.  This is in Mali.  It's very drought resistant.  It grows best in really poor,  unfertilized soils.  In fact, one of the problems I  think we have is we're using  nice horticultural soils like  you would plant your potted  plants in.  It doesn't grow very well in  that stuff.  Gets confused when you give it  good conditions.  As I said, it produces really  early in the harvest season, so  it's the first crop to break  that hungry season. 

 And so it's really appreciated  by poor people, poor farmers  because it's the first crop to  come in, so when they really  need food and energy,  you have fonio.  It's also very nutritious.  It's high in protein.  If you Google fonio you'll find  there's a small group of people  in the US who are part of the  gluten free world and they're  really excited about fonio  because, I guess, it's high in  protein and doesn't have the  various wheat glutens that you  might otherwise have.  We haven't yet tried to make  bread out of fonio, I don't know  whether this works or not, but  these are the sorts of things  that are maybe down the road.  It is, primarily, a crop that  women grow.  So the benefits of improving  fonio yields, this is something  that, these are benefits that  are going to go to women  farmers.  This is a very important thing  because often targeting programs  specifically to women turns out  to be very difficult, but why do  women grow fonio?  Because it's easy to grow.  To plant it, it's like planting  your lawn.  You throw some seeds out, you  kick a little dirt on top of it,  you hope the rains come. 

 The rains don't come, you maybe  reseed it, but it's going to  grow almost no matter what.  The other thing is, it is really  tasty and it's really highly  appreciated in Mali.  So it is one of the few crops in  the world that is grown by the  poor but appreciated by the  rich.  So what this means is, if we  increase the amount of fonio  grown, we don't have to worry  about who's going to eat that.  Who's going to buy that?  It's going to sell and it  actually sells for quite a high  premium in the major cities in  Mali.  And once we get people in the US  all excited about it, who knows?  We're a long way from that.  A key thing is that, one of the  things is that a country like  Mali has, over the years,  acquired a taste for wheat, for  bread.  The French colonized Mali and  they showed up with these nice,  long baguettes, which are really  tasty actually, and people like  those.  But that means you need to  mostly import wheat.  They also have a taste for rice. 

 Rice tends to be imported from  Thailand, Vietnam.  You can grow some in Mali, but  it's not the best climate.  This is not the best place in  the world to grow rice.  But fonio is actually  appreciated more than rice.  So if you could produce more  fonio, you could replace some of  those rice imports and do a lot  for that country.  All right.  So here are the problems with  fonio.  The yields are really low.  Well, yeah, not surprising.  It's drought resistant, it does  well in really poor soils, but  you don't get very good yields. 

 So they're about a third of what  you could get if you were  planting corn on that land.  And just to give you a sense,  they're less than a tenth of  what you would get planting corn  in Wisconsin.  The part that we're working on  is that it's closer to a wild  plant.  And wild plants have this  interest in getting their seeds  out.  The plants that we've been  breeding for all these years  want to keep their seeds.  We've set them up so they keep  their seeds until we're ready to  harvest them.  But if you're a wild plant, you  don't really want to wait around  for the humans to come harvest  them.  What you want to do is get as  many of your seeds out.  So the seeds do this thing  called early seed shattering,  which means they fall off the  plant before you get a chance to  harvest them and when they fall  off, they're really tiny, so  you're not going to go find  these on the ground.  They're just going to get mixed  up and maybe the goats will find  them. 

 So about a third of the harvest  is lost to this.  Just dealing with this problem,  you could increase everybody's  yield by a third.  It also turns out, processing a  really small seed like this is  very, very difficult.  There's actually a French  project that's working on the  processing, which is kind of  nice because it's not something  I know something about, but it's  an important piece in the chain.  All right.  Why work on fonio?  Well, it is a neglected crop.  Nobody else is going to work on  this.  The major seed companies of the  world, they're not interested in  fonio.  They're actually not  particularly, for the moment,  interested in working in places  like Mali, but if they do,  they're going to be working on  cotton, on corn, on crops that  they know and crops where they  can make a lot of money selling  seeds.  There's no money in fonio for a  seed company for the moment. 

 Someday down the road, maybe  there will be.  20, 30, 40 years from now, it's  possible.  But those kinds of long-term  investments don't happen.  But the other thing is that  nobody's been working on this so  small amounts of research have  the potential to have really big  impacts.  It may turn out that even large  amounts of research may not get  us anywhere, we don't know, but  that's why we do the work.  That is why we do the research.  So we're hoping that with small  levels of intervention, better  understanding the crop and how  it works, we can get to a point  where we actually can improve  yields.  And as I said, it's one of the  few crops grown by the poor but  appreciated by the rich.  So this is a baptism in the  capital of Mali of a very, very  wealthy family and all their  wealthy friends.  This is the kind of place that  would make sure fonio was  served. 

 So the middle class baptisms,  you serve rice.  But if you've got this kind of  gold, this kind of money, you're  going to be serving fonio at  your baptism.  Now, the people growing fonio  look like this.  It may not be obvious from the  back, but the quality of the  cloth, this is the finest  Russian damask with lots of  embroidery, so these are the  people who are going to buy the  fonio.  These are the people who are  producing it.  This, because these women knew  their picture was going to be  taken that day, these are their  best clothes.  This is what they would wear to  one of their own baptisms in  town.  And so, you can see, basically,  part of what we would be doing  is getting money from these  people to these people.  But in order to do that, we need  these people to be able to  produce a surplus of fonio.  Now, a surplus of fonio would  help them out in the growing  season. 

 It would also help them out with  money later on.  Okay.  So how are we going to do that?  It's a really good question, and  we're not sure we know the  answer.  But we're going to collect and  analyze fonio varieties.  This is some test plots and  experiment station at the  Institute d'Economie Rurale in  Mali, in a place called --.  And we're going to try to  understand the genetics of early  seed shattering.  This is work that's a  collaboration between myself,  Sarah Patterson, who's in the  back, who's in horticulture and  has a lab that specializes in  looking at seed shattering.  And we're basically trying to  identify the kind of genes that  control seed shattering and  understand whether we can breed  fine varieties of fonio that are  going to deal with those  problems.  And we also have collaborators  at the Institute d'Economie  Rurale, Malian researchers, who  are very well trained and very  well set up to do this.  When I started pushing them on  this, because I was interested  in fonio because of its  basically economic properties,  they said, "That's interesting,  but we're actually not working  on fonio right now, because  we're working on corn, we're  working on cotton, and all those  other things," which goes back  to, why would we work on this?  Because this is a long-term  investment and nobody else would  be making this kind of  investment if it weren't for us. 

 Okay, so, this is what we're  hoping to do.  We're just in the beginning  stages of this.  We're in the process of sending  out requests to find funding for  this and basically testing out  whether we can do some of these  pieces.  So it may be, if you come back  in five years, I can get up here  and show you pictures of great  varieties of fonio, or I could  say, "Ah, yeah, that fonio  project, well, we thought it  would be easy to do this, but  it's going to turn out to take  another five or ten years."  So that's what we're doing in  fonio.  Okay.  So, moving right along.  Next research question.  This is Umu.  Umu's got mangoes.  Mangoes are some of my favorite  foods, which is probably why I  like Mali so much. 

 And one of the things about  mangoes you would never know  from the supermarkets here is  that each of these is a  different variety of mango.  When you go to the supermarket  here, they sell mangoes by the  country.  That is, this is Ecuadorian  mangoes.  But you know what?  In Ecuador there are probably an  equal number of mangoes.  These over here, these really  big ones, are in Mali what they  call "Americanos."  (laughter)  Why, I don't believe  that the variety was created  anywhere in America.  I believe that it's because it's  big, and they probably ought to  call them "Texans" or something.  (laughter)  These over here, these are  the --, just delicious.  But anyway, here's Umu.  What Umu does, she goes to the  farmers' fields, buys mangoes,  sets up on the side of the road,  and sells these lovely mangoes  and it would be great if Umu  could figure out how to go from  selling them on the side of the  road to selling them to your  local supermarket.  At least, this is probably my  own selfish bit, I would love to  have them for sale locally. 

 And these mangoes are why, while  I believe in many parts of the  local food movement, these  actually can't grow here, and so  I want access to the mangoes  that Umu has access to.  One way.  Here is a company in Ghana that  is exporting fruit, sliced  mangoes, coconuts.  This is one way that they could  get here.  This is actually a company, in  fact, I heard just the other  morning on NPR, they had an  interview with the CEO of this  company.  They fly their fruit into Europe  because it's refrigerated.  They cut it, behind here is a  refrigerated building, and along  comes this volcano in Iceland  and all of air travel in Europe  stops, and the 3000 people who  work here, as well as the 300  farmers and perhaps the Umus who  are the middlemen, who are  bringing the mangoes there,  their livelihoods are in danger.  So what can we do to get more  agricultural exports out of  Africa?  Well, there are a lot of things  that constrain it.  Poor transport infrastructure,  bad roads, old trucks, poorly  run ports.  There's a lot of petty  corruption. 

 So this is what I'm going to  talk to you a little about.  There are other problems, a lack  of market information.  Umu doesn't know that if you  went to the local Piggly Wiggly,  it would cost you $2.50  to get a really kind of bad  mango, the kind that she'd  probably give you for free.  If I go back I can show you,  there's a bucket in the back  there.  If you buy one of those buckets  in the front, she'll throw in as  many of those as you want.  That's what goes for $2.50  at the local supermarket.  There's a lack of facilities to  process fruit and meet US  phytosanitary controls.  Also, we here don't understand  that there are lots of different  varieties of mangoes, lots of  different varieties of  pineapples.  So there's a lot of information  that needs to flow both ways.  But today we're going to talk a  little bit about petty  corruption. 

 It is rampant.  This is a study with Dan  Bromley, who's now an emeritus  faculty member.  And what we have is survey data  from 2000 truckers, all across  West Africa.  These are 2000 truck trips.  On those trips, they paid  44,000 bribes.  (audience murmurs)  So what we're doing  is trying to analyze  who they paid the bribes to,  how, why?  As a way of understanding what's  going on.  So here's a map of West Africa.  Umu's sitting here in Bamako.  These are the major roads that  would get those mangoes out to a  port.  Each of these lines across a  road is a checkpoint. 

 At every one of those  checkpoints, that truck would  probably have to pay a dollar or  two.  Usually the going rate in most  is 1,000 CFA, which translates  into about $2.  So you think it's expensive  driving to Chicago?  Try driving from Bamako to  Ouagadougou.  So, this is basically what we're  looking at.  I'm running low on time, but  just to give you a sense in the  importance of this issue.  In 2009 there was a food crisis  in northern Mali.  The government says, okay, we'll  buy some rice, we'll put it in  some trucks, we'll ship it up  there.  We'll affect the price of food.  So they do that.  But even the government needed  very specific papers not to have  to pay these bribes. 

 So they put a siren on top of  the trucks.  Okay, this one's got the siren  running, it's going to go  through the checkpoint  and they gave it  a special laissez passer  signed by the president.  That's what it requires.  Now, if you're Umu, you're not  going to get that on your truck.  So you're going to pay.  Give you a sense of this.  Okay, here are a couple trips on  here from Bamako to Ouagadougou.  Lome to Ouagadougou.  Tema, which is a port in Ghana.  So these are each  about 1,000 km,  which would be like driving  from here to Toronto, which is  kind of a good thing because you  cross a border. 

 In most of these cases, you  cross one border.  So on Bamako to Ouagadougou, you  pay $130 in bribes.  That's every 100 km,  every 60 miles,  you're paying $14.  In contrast, I figure there are  about $10 worth of tolls total  that you would pay between here  and Toronto.  If you were going to, say, New  Orleans, it's a little bit  farther, but there aren't any  toll roads.  You'd pay about $25, that's  'cause I think you hit the toll  around Rockford and after that  you're good to go.  And so, this is a major piece.  It's raising the prices.  Corruption is actually  increasing on these roads.  So what we're trying to do is  figure out, okay, how we can  reduce the effects of that. 

 All right.  Just some quick conclusions of  what we've come up with.  Well, we don't know how to stop  this.  It's going to be really hard to  root out.  It is perhaps just like paying  tolls, but it actually changes a  lot so you can't be sure.  There might be a toll there,  there might not be.  That toll might cost you.  Your truckload of mangoes might  sit there all day because the  guy wanted more money than you  had to pay, or it might just  pass right through.  So there's a lot of evidence  that it cuts down significantly  on trade.  So those are my two stories. 

 Let me just tell you quickly,  just to give you a sense of some  other things going on at UW.  The UW has started an exchange  and linkage project with  Makerere University in Uganda.  Some of the people who created  that are here.  And this is basically to help  them produce graduates who have  some of the relevant competency.  Another project that would've  been really fun to talk about is  the work by Kevin Pixley on  creating bio-fortified maize.  That's something I've been  talking to him about.  He's on the kind of  create-the-technology end.  My thinking is, okay, how do you  get that so a farmer's actually  adopting that, actually using  that technology?  So those two pieces have to come  together.  Here in the College of Ag we  have both of those two pieces.  Just another thing about some of  the graduates of this. 

 They run those ads on TV about,  if you see this happening,  you'll see a Badger there.  These are just some graduates of  the Ag-Econ department.  There's been a big change in  the US Food Aid Policy.  Two Badgers, Dan Maxwell and  Chris Barrett are major players  behind that in writing the  pieces that said, "No, the way  we're doing this doesn't make  sense.  Doesn't benefit US farmers,  doesn't benefit African farmers.  Here's a way of doing this so it  would be better."  A colleague, Bruce Larson,  is working on the effects  of HIV/AIDS in Kenya.  This agricultural trade.  When I started in Mali, I ran  into the USDA trade  representative, this guy named  Bob Hanson.  Turns out, he's a UW graduate  from Ag-Econ.  And Jeff Cochran,  works for US Ag. 

 And there are just a lot of  current and former Peace Corps  volunteers who are doing this  kind of work, both in the Peace  Corps and then also working for  development organizations.  Running low on time, so this is  just to give you a sense.  In my view, agricultural  development is all about  transferring technologies.  These are some guys in Mali that  were sort of interested in  tractors, so I got on the web,  found them a John Deere tractor  to show them, and this is the  reaction.  Like, "Wow, look at that!"  So that's my story for today.  Thank you.  (applause)