Last graduate of the year

Esteban Ojeda is our last graduate this year -- he defended his research project on Friday morning, a project about whether growing beans and corn together was better than growing them as monocrops in this region.


Photo: Esteban prepares for his presentation.

Corn and beans are friends, growing better together than apart in most cases. And this was true for our region, too: Esteban calculated that it would take almost twice as much land to grow beans and corn apart than when grown together. His calcualtions also showed that for a modest investment of $85 on a half acre of land, a farmer can earn $825 in the four months it takes these crops to grow -- that's almost 10 as much as the original investment. This is the kind of research that makes a difference for farmers in the area.


Photo: Esteban poses with (L to R) his advisor Felix Choque, the ag department head José Luis Beltrán, the Research Institute's Vice Director Rubén Darío Gómez, the department's botanist Desiderio Flores, yours truely, his father and his brother.

Esteban's father and brother came to the defense. The brother expressed his gratitude for the college taking his little brother in and helping him become a professional; his father expressed siminar sentiments -- in his own indigenous language, Quechua. It is something that the child of a man who didn't finish even elementary school has a child with a university degree. Who says that progress is always slow?