Greeshma and the Moringa

::January 17, 2011::

It was a beautiful day today. An early start at 8:30 helped us get to our destination - Zamorano, a US credited university focusing on Agricultaral studies and sustainability by 10 am. The day started with a tour of "Moringa" project by Tom Curin. Moringa project is about the use of Moringa, a plant that grows really fast; whose leaves are rich for in nutrition, pods used by certain Indian and African communities for food, the plant itself used as cattle fodder and also useful to avoid soil erosion-in short, a "Miracle plant" also as bio fuel. This is a experimental and innovative venture as there are no known projects using Moringa for bio fuel. He described the thought process that went into this venture - the various technical reports, the research and extrapolation of experimetns. Unfortunately, we were witness to some of the problems faced by agriculture, in this case, where a neighbor's cows had distroyed more than half the field. It was sad to see the destruction all around.