Maria Beatriz “Pilu” Giraudo and Dr. Gilbert arap Bor are farmers and members of the Global Farmer Network. In the lead-up to the United Nations Food Systems Summit, it’s important to keep in mind that sustainable solutions cannot be handed from the top-down: they must be developed in collaboration with the full agriculture value chain, and farmer voices are crucial to finding those solutions.
One of the goals of the United Nations Food System Summit is to engage people in dialogues across the entire food chain — from policymakers and business professionals to farmers and scientists — to champion sustainable production in a way that’s beneficial to everyone. In this spirit, CropLife brought together two Global Farmer Network farmers on different continents to speak about food security, plant science technologies, sustainability, and collaboration to improve equity and livelihoods.
- Dr. Gilbert arap Bor is a farmer in Uasin Gishu County, northwest Kenya, which is the largest producer of milk and grains in the country. Having grown up on a farm with cattle and grain production, he now has 25 acres of land and 30 dairy cows. He is also an instructor at Catholic University of Eastern Africa in the city of Eldoret, where he teaches marketing and business management.
- Maria Beatriz “Pilu†Giraudo is a fifth-generation farmer located in the center of Santa Fe Province in Argentina, where she produces corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, sorghum and more. She grew up with links to sustainability as her father is a founder of the Argentina No Till Farmers Association (Aapresid). Additionally, she works as an agronomist and a consultant, having studied at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.
This September 22, 2021 piece originates at croplife.org.