Rich Earth Institute

Aminou Ali (FUMA Gaskiya, Niger)
Ali Maman Aminou, is an Agronomist, and currently the Director of the Maradi farmers’ unions’ federation, “FUMA GASKIYA”. He is also the PI of the McKnight Foundation’s CCRP-sponsored Women’s Fields project in Niger. The project works on options by contexts among which low cost fertilization using human urine.

Batamaka Some (Collaborative Crop Research Programme (CCRP) Regional Representative West Africa, Burkina Faso)
Batamaka Some is an anthropologist and research consultant based in Burkina Faso. He has conducted research in agriculture and gender, mainly focusing on rural livelihoods strategies, food security, agricultural productivity and market access, and cash crop farming in Africa. As the Regional Representative of the McKnight Foundation’s Collaborative Crop Research Program, he works with grantees to advance the program’s mission and efforts towards agroecological transition.

Mary Richardson (CCRP FRN Learning & Exchange Coordinator, USA)
Mary Richardson is a consultant and researcher based in Canada. She works with the Collaborative Crop Research Program where she is engaged with Farmer Research Networks (FRN). FRNs are guided by principles, such as farmer participation and agency in the research process, and research that provides practical benefits to farmers and supports learning and knowledge sharing through networks. Mary will share some of the learning about how these are supported in relation to agroecology research projects.

Rebecca Nelson (Cornell University, USA)
Rebecca Nelson’s laboratory works on disease resistance in crops with a focus on maize, with broader interests and activities relating to agroecology and food systems.  Her laboratory is analyzing the genetic architecture of quantitative disease resistance and dissecting mechanisms that impair pathogen development, with a special interest in mycotoxin resistance and management. Through the McKnight CCRP, she supports a portfolio of research projects aimed at improving food security in developing countries in Africa and Latin America. She co-teaches courses in international development and public health.  She worked at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru from 1996-2001 and at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines from 1988-1996.

Kevin Mclean (Sun24, USA)
Subsistence Farmers in Africa using Urine as Fertilizer
Kevin Mclean is the president of Sun24, an NGO.   In partnership with the Catholic and Anglican churches, Sun24 has trained millions of women in Africa and Asia to add rock beds to their open-fire cookstoves.  Rocks are free and improve the efficiency of these cookstoves by a third.  Among other activities, Sun24 is working toward using this vast network to train smallholder farmers to use urine as fertilizer on their crops.