This is the first post ... I needed a presence on the web, and here goes.
I'm Carl, a grad student at University of Wisconsin, Madison. The past six years of my life have been spent either physically or mentally in the Republic of Zambia, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer/staff member for nearly four years (Jan 2004 - Nov 2007). In 2009, I went back to study social acceptance of Faidherbia albida (that Wiki page doesn't say too much, oh well, must work on that) in southern Zambia.
My interest is really in low-external input agriculture (LEIA), and farmer acceptance / adoption of LEIA practices; however, I'm really curious about why farmers adopt some practices vs. others, and also, how to design interventions that encourage farmer innovation. For example, Conservation Tillage (CT) was innovated by farmers in the Cerrado (sic?) region of Brazil; what could Zambian farmers innovate if given the chance?
Anyway, my thesis looks a bit at this, but I'll chat that up more later. Need to get back to work.
