Barista Magazine

APR-MAY 2016

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they seemed like they really wanted me! That's where I got introduced to my first coffee plant. I was in training in Lavras, Minas Gerais, and I stayed at a rich guy's house who owned a huge Arabica plantation not far away. I loved going to the plantation and we even trained a little on coffee agronomy. But when the training was over, they sent me to the far reaches of Rondonopolis, Mato Grosso. That was out there in the middle of nowhere. Dirt roads, dust all over, 100-plus degree temperatures, cowboys, guns, it was like the Wild West. Sometimes a guy would get shot in a bar like in the films. They put me in the research unit and I basically drove this little VW bug to different "progressive" farms and worked to test insecticides, fertilizers, etc., and then do a big farm demo day where all the farm- ers came and got drunk on caipirinha. The best thing I did was assist EMBRAPA to introduce soybeans, the first ones, into Mato Grosso! I used to work in soybeans, so I knew something about them. Today, Mato Grosso is a world leader in soybean production! I can't claim credit, but it was cool being in on the ground floor of a big production success that occurred 20 years later. SA: Then what, after your Peace Corps stint was over? TS: So after I came back from the Peace Corps Brazil experience, I interviewed as an extension agent in some of the backwoods south Georgia tobacco farms, cotton, why not come back and get your [mas- ter's of science] with me? We'll give you a stipend, pay for it." Me? An MS guy? A guy that barely made it out of high school? So I took the exam and my GRE scores were low but not too low for a try- out, so I did. I did the work and graduated with good grades in 1979. The same thing happened afterward: A peanut breeder in North Carolina I met at a conference said, "Hey, you want a PhD? I can give you a stipend to work on quantitative genetics of peanuts." Hmmm, OK. Why not? I made it through the MS degree with no problems, so who knows, maybe I'll make it through this! So, off [I went] to Raleigh, N.C., to do a PhD in plant genetics and breeding in the peanut program. Two years after, that my major profes- sor, the illustrious Dr. Jonny Wynne from Beargrass, N.C., came up and said, "Hey, Tim, people from USAID in Washington called me and they want a peanut breeder specialist for the country of Cameroon." He said, "Knowing how that kind of work interests you, maybe you'd like to give it a shot." "Hell yes, I would," I said. And off I went to Cameroon—North Cameroon right on up there next to Lake Tchad! It was supposed to be a one-year gig, but they liked me and I liked them, and I ended up there seven years breeding pea- nuts for export. I finished my PhD, and was back breeding the peanuts in North Cameroon as an official Doctor of Philosophy in Peanuts! Nice working with a crop that you can eat while you take notes on it. SA: So when does coffee become a major player in your life and work, and how? TS: OK, so after Cameroon we moved back to the U.S. and I had inter- views [to be] a cotton breeder in Mississippi; a biometrician in Nevada; or the associate director for an international sorghum and millet pro- gram. It didn't take me long to figure out that I preferred the interna- tional agriculture scene to that of the U.S. I went to the University of Nebraska to help run the international sorghum and millet program, mainly breeding, variety testing, pathology, and entomology projects in Africa, India, and Central America. While I was there in Lincoln from 1987 to 1992, I rode my bike down to the local cooperative on South Street where I was buying bulk coffee and found a very excellent coffee that I loved. It was from California, a place called Peet's. So I started ordering it by mail, then I got a Krups espresso machine, and I was in love with the whole culture and technicity of it all. In Nebraska, I was traveling to Southern Africa a lot, like five months a year. What wild fun that was. I recruited 104 MS and PhD African candidates for U.S. universities, and worked several collabora- tive research programs with the breeders, entomologists, and social sci- entists. Mali was another big sorghum country that I loved to go to with the sorghum program. And the Malians seemed to love me, too. At about that time, 1992 or 1993, there was an announcement for a big research project in Mali, and the University of Nebraska proposed me to lead it. I was all ready for it, but turned out that Texas A&M; won the project! Damn—oh well. But the Malians seemed to like me more than whomever Texas proposed, so they asked Texas to ask Schilling if he would lead the project for Texas. Everybody agreed and off I went to Mali to lead a big USAID Ag Research Enhancement project. I had always wanted to work with A&M.; Strong, applied, real, agri- cultural science. Mali is where I learned how you can spend millions and millions of dollars and not really make any difference at all. I realized the project, as written, was never going to do what they promised. It was plain-out impossible. Completely ridiculous, but you couldn't say that back then. The Malians didn't really care either that much because millions and million was millions and millions, no matter how you cut it. It was spent there some how, some way. Anyway, after I realized that, I said, "Man, I cannot just stand here and blow this money for nothing." So I changed the project where we tried to orient the project to only research themes that could help farm- ers make money. Kicking around, and drinking lots of beer, I noticed that the brewery used maize grits imported from France at $1/kg. I also noticed that in the market, maize was sold for $0.10/kg—10 times less. I saw that there was a major cereal mill for grinding wheat into flour, and got the idea to work with the milling industry, the food science depart- ment at Texas, and the Malian maize research program, and try to pro- duce an import substitute that would cost less to the brewery but give farmers five times more money, and make a little money for the mill, too. The only losers were the French. But who cared? I wasn't married to Michele yet! We had to select the right maize varieties to turn into grits, but that was what research is all about. The maize varieties in Mali were all high-oil content, which led to the beer not producing a "head." No prob- lem, we found the right varieties in just a year. I stayed five years there and came back to Texas A&M.; SA: Was it then that the PEARL Project was initiated? Whose idea was it? What did it seek to accomplish? TS: That's a good one. I was in my office at A&M; developing projects when Michigan State calls frantically stating that their proposed project director for a Rwandan ag project just backed down. They asked me if Texas [A&M;] would partner with them on the project, and if I would consider taking the directorship of the project in Rwanda! Whoa. OK. Why not? In the world of project development, you say lots of stuff in the proposal stage, and then when you actually "win" the project, it might not be exactly the same. So I said, "OK, let's go for it." I had perfect cre- dentials. My wife, who is French and a geographer, and was working as a researcher at A&M;, couldn't wait to get the hell out of Texas anyway, but she needed to know if there was opportunity for her, too. So we ended up winning it. I went to Rwanda in 2000 to scope it out. I was somewhat concerned for me and my family's safety since we were one of the first development projects after the genocide, but it wasn't that bad. In fact, it was gorgeous. It was all beat-up, bullet-holed, dirty, broken-down, but the people trying to rebuild the place were incredi- ble. Nice. Smart. Ambitious. Hard working. Avant garde. I went to the university and they needed professors in geography real bad, so it was beginning to look like a no-brainer. I went back home to report that hey, Rwanda looks good and we would both have good jobs there. Off we went with two little Frenchie-Texas babies in hand. The thing with PEARL was this: It was an MSU project that a Texas A&M; guy was director of. It was a project to get the University and Research Center back together after the genocide. All the professors were either killed or they were in prison for killing, so the idea was to 115 www.baristamagazine.com

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