Willy Mulimbi

For more than a decade I used to work on coffee, cassava and banana in Africa. I was involved in improving cassava and banana production through seed multiplication and pest & disease management in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). I also worked for two years on coffee value chain. I helped coffee farmers improve processing, aquire better management skills and get access to market. Right now, as a researcher, my main focus is on sustainable agricultural production. I work on sustainable agricultural practices, especially conservation agriculture (CA). To achieve sustainability, food production needs to be able to take care of soils (natural resources) while helping the producers to cope with climate change. Such goals can be achieved with CA. More importantly, food production should find ways to involve the consumers as they could be supportive to producers and know environmental issues. Consumers positive involvement can be an incentive for the producers. I recently conducted a field work in the DRC to explore if consumers would be willing to promote sustainable agriculture. I found that only consumers who self-idenfied as producers, especially women farmers, are willing to support sustainable farming.