Unido: 27.jun.2012 Última actividad: 10.ago.2024 iNaturalist
My name is C Tom Hash (Tom for short), and I used to lead ICRISAT's pearl millet breeding activities in Western & Central Africa, having moved to Niger (Feb 2012) after spending most of the previous 26 years (since March 1986) based in India, with 9 months on sabbatical leave at the Institute for Genomic Diversity at Cornell University (Oct 1999 to Jul 2000) & 2 years + 7 months based in Mexico (Jul 1988 to Jan 1991; covering sorghum & millets improvement from Panama to Nebraska).
I continue to be actively involved in integrating conventional, marker-assisted (but not transgenic), & participatory plant-breeding approaches for the improvement of dryland cereals (barnyard millets, finger millet, foxtail millet, pearl millet, sorghum, white fonio, ...) & fodder cowpea; as well as strengthening farmers' access to quality seed via informal (local) & formal (national, regional & international) seed systems, & facilitating small-holder farmer access to other agricultural inputs (seed treatments, mineral fertilizers & small machinery to reduce the drudgery of manual labor such as sowing, micro-dose fertilizer application, chopping straw to reduce fodder rejections by ruminant livestock, & threshing & winnowing pearl millet grain with the High Impact Thresher (HIT) developed at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, USA) for small-holder crop-livestock producers across the arid & semi-arid tropics & subtropics, globally. I am also interested in developing vertically-integrated fair-market value chains for unions of smallholder West African farmers that would permit their families to capture a larger portion of the value of any marketable surpluses of the nutritious products of their crop-livestock systems -- having first addressed the food & nutritional security needs of their households and their local communities.
I formerly lived with my wife Deanna, our two dogs (Canis domesticus, var. 'Standard Poodle' & var. 'Indian Spitz'), and a fahakha pufferfish, in Niamey, NIGER. I enjoy music; natural history with emphases on botany, geology, herpetology, & ornithology; photography; & learning about the agro-ecology, geology, history, & paleontology of the regions in which I work & through which I travel -- often multi-tasking in several of these areas simultaneously.
I consider myself a jack of all trades & master of none, a citizen & student of Planet Earth, a market-oriented Marxist & misanthrope, a child of the 60's (although born in the 50's) & a fierce friend of the poor.
Everything I do is with applied passion, or I don't do it at all.
I try to live every day as if it will be my last.
And I do not suffer fools gladly.
Q.E.D.