Let’s Take Care of Our Little Planet!

Posted on June 2, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under Our World

On my way home from work yesterday, people had already gathered in Lafayette Park in front of the White House, to protest President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. In my work with smallholder agriculture, I see the direct impacts on climate change on the daily lives of people all around the world. Impacts that for many of the farmers I work with can be a matter of life and death for a child in the family. These are the same people that produce our cocoa, coffee, rice, and off-season fruits and vegetables. In the part of the world where I live, milder winters, a few extreme weather events, and Starbucks changing its coffee of the month from Latin American to African sourced may be the only consequences we see for now of us changing the climate. But without doing something, we and our children will certainly have to pay for it in the future.

I want to say that the time for action is mow, but the truth is that the time for action was decades ago. So we better hurry and start taking care of our little planet! Let’s make our planet great!

Power Passport

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under My Travels, Our World

We all know that there is nothing fair about where in the world you are born. Some of us are born in countries with peace and economic prosperity, while others happens to start their lives in poverty and in the midst of conflict, without us having anything to do with this ourselves. The same is true for our passports. While some of us have the luck of holding passports with which we can enter most countries without a visa, others have to spend long hours waiting at embassies only to find out that they needed an additional document to apply and have to come back another day. When I lived in Moldova, my friends who wanted to visit countries like Sweden, which’s embassies in Bucharest covered both Romania and Moldova, first had to apply for a visa to Romania through what was at the time a highly arbitrary system, and then travel to Bucharest to apply for the visa and come back and pick it up a week later. An almost Kafkaesque process!

I am one of those born with luck. For decades, Hemleys & Partners have published the Visa Restriction Index and as every year, Sweden came out on the top also in the 2017 ranking. A slip from 2014, when the Swedish passport topped the index, but second only to Germany. The Passport Index in their 2017 Global Passport Power Rank confirmed the ranking and apparently, I can travel to 158 countries without a visa. Not bad! Tomorrow, I’m however heading to an embassy in a first of what I suspect will be several visits to apply for a tourist visa. I am so excited that I will get to visit this country in a few weeks that I am more than happy to spend some time at their embassy here in DC. Which country it is? I won’t reveal it yet, but given that it’s a country that I need a visa to, I guess I have now narrowed it down to about 50 countries with this post…

Women and Men and Agriculture

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under On Agriculture and Food

As with everything else, gender roles are very rigid in agriculture. They are not the same globally: in some countries, taking care of livestock is a man’s job; in some it’s a woman’s. In one place, a certain crop is cultivated by predominately women; in another place it’s grown by men. Sometimes, women add value to products through cheesemaking, preservation of crops or fish, brewing beer, etc, and take them to the markets, in other countries this is done by men.Sometimes, these roles vary even between regions within a country. Women and men around the world participate almost equally in agricultural but they do not always have equal access to inputs, resources, services, and knowledge. Which of course prevents them from making the most out of their livelihoods and makes the sector use scarce resources such as water and land in a suboptimal manner. Plus countries are not growing and poverty is not decreasing as fast as they could. Last week, I participated as a discussant in this webinar on gender in agricultural risk management, where we talked about some of these issues and how to reach both men and women to better manage agricultural risks.

Two impressive female farmers in Malawi that are part of a cooperative. They are responsible for the irrigation pump behind them, which completely changed the business for the cooperative as they now can grow seeds and high-value horticulture. The two women asked me to take the photo of them after showing me the pumping mechanism, so I take the liberty of posting the photo here.

Monday Motivation

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under Inspiration

This week, my mind is already skipping ahead and in packing mood for my summer plans, while my fingers are trying to tap away on the computer keyboard to write everything that has to be finished before I take off. In the meantime, I focus on this:

This week I’m reading:

The Jungle by Sinclair Upton – about the U.S. meatpacking industry in the early 1900s.

This week, I’m listening to:

Freakonomic’s podcast Food + Science = Victory!, on perfecting cooking and how to eat nutritiously.

This week, I’m following with interest:

Instagramer @vincentlemonde, who posts amazing and very personal photos from Southern Africa, and in particular with the Himba tried in Namibia. Personal in the sense that although the people he photographs lead lives that seem lightyears away from mine, his portraits make them seem as if they were my neighbors. He is also publishing a graphic novel about his time there later this summer.

Learning this week:

Spanish on Duolingo for the first leg of my summer vacay!

Food of the week:

Not so much food but tea, as I am trying South Korean Jeju tea bags that my friend brought back from a trip last week. Delicious and in an adorable package!

Cause of the week:

Climate change, or more specifically to keep the U.S, in the Paris Climate Agreement. I just signed this petition. If there are other, please let me know!

This week, these words by Dalai Lama inspire me:

“The planet doesn’t need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.” For more inspiration, do like me and follow Dalai Lama on Twitter @DalaiLama!

Stockholm at its Best

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under My Travels

Going to Stockholm around my birthday has become a bit of a tradition, and so I booked a trip also this year. Not just for my birthday, I was actually here for it – but for Swedish spring holiday Valborgsmässoafton. Or Valborg, as usually refer to. The history behind this tradition is a little vague, but we lit bonfires and sing welcome songs to spring, and then eat dinner with our neighbors while teens are out partying. A main concern around the country that is frequently brought up in the media is to make sure that no hedgehog is sleeping in the stack of leaves and branches before lighting the bonfire. Sweden is quite a peaceful country…

I didn’t go to a bonfire this year, but Jonas and I had Valborg dinner at Villa Godthem on Djurgården, one of the national park islands in Stockholm. As the evenings are already light, it is a beautiful time of the year to visit! Here are a few evening pics from our way to Valborg dinner:

Snapshots from Zambia

Posted on April 12, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under My Travels, On Agriculture and Food

I’m back after a week in Zambia, where I together with one of my favorite colleagues from Uganda held a training on agricultural risk management. The impacts of risks such as droughts, floods, pests, and diseases are increasing around the world because of climate change. This, in turn, impacts people’s livelihoods but also food supplies and food prices, and it sometimes cause countries that normally would export surpluses to neighbors to close their borders. This training was about how it’s possible to develop effective ways to measure the impacts of these (and other) risks, and how they can be managed better.

I was only there for a week but the actual training was located about an hour outside of Lusaka, in the middle of a wildlife reserve, so I got to see some of Zambia’s nature. It was beautiful, of course! The last morning, before we left for the airport, we went on a one-hour tour around the park, so I got to see a few new animals that I’ve never seen before. That – and the fact that I thoroughly enjoy holding trainings – made this a very pleasant trip!

As always, there are more pics on my IG @asagiertz

I Love Sunday Mornings!

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under My life, On Agriculture and Food, Our World

Sunday mornings is one of my favorite time of the week! I’m often more rested than Saturday, without anything that I need to get to, and with a whole day in front of me. Sometimes, like this morning, I make scones or no-sugar breakfast muffins to have with my morning tea, which an hour or so later is later replaced with a coffee. I then take some time to go over what I got done over the past week, next week’s to-do list, and creative projects, while listening to my favorite CNN programs on TuneIn: Fareed Zakaria’s GPS and Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources. It’s two of the few programs on CNN when they actually do analytical interviews and have discussions with non-politician.

Otherwise, non-local tv news here are quite sad – there is little real information, and instead news programs mainly consist of politicians coming on for a couple of minutes for a few questions that they rarely answers and instead take airtime to get their message through, without any nuances and often not fact based. (The last part being extra depressing for me since I am always advocating for evidenced-based policy making in my work…) And with massive amounts of commercials. I noticed when I was watching CNN in Addis Ababa last week that some of the programs that I listen to in the U.S. broke for a proper news update together with a few adds, while here in the U.S., the same break is just one long commercial break. It’s of course good news for quality printing media, since we are all subscribing – subscriptions to papers like The New York Times have gone up since the election.

I truly hope that poor-quality news programs are not a trend among tv news around the world – democracy and progress need reliable news and tv can have a lot of positive development impacts – but that the U.S. will instead see higher quality in their news over time. It seems like the election was kind of the bottom mark here, and that there are some attempts by media executives to turn this around. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the Sunday morning shows, and get the rest of my news from diverse sources from around the world.

My plans for today? Work. More specifically, detangling how agricultural risks impact public expenditures for – yep – evidence based policy making!

Up in the Air: When a 14 h Flight Seems Like a Bliss!

Posted on March 2, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under My life, My Travels

It’s early morning and I’m in Doha, about to get on my second flight. I can’t wait for 14 more hours up in the air! No e-mails, no-one interrupting, no social media, and with hours and hours to truly disconnect and be able to work for hours consecutively, with the only interruption being meals and a movie or two! These days, my phone (including data streaming) is free in some 170 countries or so, so I am rarely disconnected. I know I am not the only one at work who is not overly enthusiastic about flights with internet, although it seems like many travelers are eagerly waiting for free wifi up in the air. But it’s just so nice to for once be completely unreachable, if only for a few hours. I know it’s today’s first world problem; yet, at the same time, it is so bizarre to long for a 14 hour flight just to be able to focus on – that’s right – work!

On-flight office…

A Bientôt Ethiopia!

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under My life, My Travels

I’m saying goodbye to Ethiopia for this time, but it seems like I will be back soon again, and probably many times over the next couple of years. It’s been a good stay: work has gone well, I’ve seen a little bit of Addis’ surrounding as I went on a day trip to Adama, some 100 km south-east of Addis (although I didn’t meet any farmers this time), had Ethiopian food for lunch and dinner several days, and had lots and lots of fantastic coffee. I also managed to see a few more places around Addis, including a little art gallery with some intriguing paintings.

A funny thing is that everyone I meet here knows about Sweden and shine up when I tell them that’s where I’m from. Ah – Sweden! Good country! I guess the around 1 percent of GDP a year that Sweden provides in development assistance has paid off in at least one way!

Finally, I am very happy that I met the taxi driver that took me around this time – he spoke English fluently and told me so many interesting things about Ethiopian culture and history! If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have learned as much about Ethiopia as I did during my eight days long stay there!

More pics on Instagram @asagiertz

Four Hours of Sightseeing in Addis Ababa

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Åsa Giertz under My Travels

After having started my Saturday with a 9 o’clock meeting and then spent the rest of the day in the office, I snuck out in the afternoon to do a few hours of sightseeing in Addis. Upon the recommendation of my taxi-driver, who has taken me to and from the office all week, I went to see the Holy Trinity Cathedral. Actually, my driver really thought I should see Lucy, who was of course found in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia in 1974, and who is here at the Natural History Museum, but I wanted to be outdoors after the few hours I was off work. When I got back from the guided tour, my driver asked me if I enjoyed it, and I told him that my guide had shown told me bible stories about the pictures in the stained glass windows, and told me to go to see a palace in Northern Ethiopia where one of the figures allegedly was from, to see for myself that archeology proved the bible stories true. My driver smiled and said “I think that here, you have learned about 10 percent of our history, but now you need to go and see Lucy!” Not very impressed with the bible stories, in other words!

After that, I met up with a colleague from a partner organization and we went to a little crafts center, where women were making traditional Ethiopian textiles, baskets, and jewelry, and also giving classes. It was very nice and I bought a textile bag.

We ended the day with dinner at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant. Since I am garlic intolerant, Ethiopian food can be tricky, but the chef managed to make a delicious meal for me, with vegetables wrapped in injera. So four well-spent hours off work! Here are a few pics, with more on my IG: @asagiertz, including why the Holy Trinity Cathedral has a fresco of the League of Nation’s Assembly Room in it’s dome!

Shopping at Salem’s and dinner at Yod Abyssinia.