Yale Sustainable Food Program

 
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Colin Korst, MESc

Year: 
2020

Graduate School:  
Forestry and Environmental Studies

Current position:
Agroforester-in-Residence

Past position(s):
Global Food Fellow (2019)

 

More about Colin’s global food fellowship:
Location: Kintampo, Ghana

Research question: What are the motivations, challenges, and complexities that characterize smallholder farmers' transition from staple crops to cash crops in the middle-belt of Ghana?

Project description: I used participant observation and emergent design principles to examine why subsistence yam and peanut farmers were transitioning to growing cashews for export on the global market.

Notable fellowship moment: Around midday my hosts would sometimes roast freshly dug yams or boil corn and peanuts from the field, and other times they might bring dishes from home to reheat. So when we decided to take a lunch break, we sat down together in the shade and enjoyed a well-deserved meal after a morning of arduous work, surrounded by the landscape of the farm and eating its fruit which had been harvested and prepared mere minutes beforehand.

Favorite fellowship meal: Ampesie with Kontomire (Boiled yams with cocoyam leaf stew)

A new question Colin encountered: How do actors at various levels of the agricultural supply chain protect themselves against fluctuations in the price of global food commodities?

A few other (academic and non-academic) interests: I like bicycles, yoga, hiking, and tea!

Colin learning how to harvest peanuts at Na Afia’s farm (Photo by Mercy Kumah)

Colin learning how to harvest peanuts at Na Afia’s farm (Photo by Mercy Kumah)

Pounding Yam Fufu for dinner (photo by Colin Korst)

Pounding Yam Fufu for dinner (photo by Colin Korst)