抗击木薯病害.docVIP

抗击木薯病害 You need all the help you can get when you are working with one million farmers across six countries to stem the spread of the cassava diseases so families dont go hungry. The Catholic Relief Services （CRS） leads the Great Lakes Cassava Initiative which was funded by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation. This initiative deals with diseases decimating cassava plants which is staple food like the potato in the United States located in eastern and central Africa. The project which lasts four years， is helping government agricultural institutions， local partners and farmers to grow， distribute and plant disease-tolerant cassava varieties so farmers can rely once again on this important food source. But telling approximately one million farmers about the disease symptoms and how they can replant healthy fields is really no easy task. When CRS heard that Cornell University was seeking hands-on learning opportunities for a diverse set of graduate students， a great partnership was born. Over the last two years， Dr. Beth Medvecky and Dr. Terry Tucker of the Cornell International Institute for Food， Agriculture and Development have taught a class that ties into CRS programming. International Agriculture and Rural Development students create short courses called modules for CRS field agents during the school year. They build and improve skills such as： business and marketing， group collaboration and management and family health and nutrition. The modules give field agents a standard base of knowledge which they then use to train groups of rural villagers with the aim of helping villagers to escape their current poverty. Cornell and CRS developed Computer-based modules to help field agents improve trainings offered to farmers to increase business and agricultural knowledge. From May to July， five students joined Dr. Medvecky on a trip to Africa， where they teamed with three students from Kenyatta University in Nairobi to field-test draft versions of GoCourses for the Great