About five times each year, James Simon, PhD, a
professor of plant biology at Rutgers University, travels from New Jersey to
Africa to implement projects that improve the lives of rural villagers through fruit,
vegetable, and medicinal plant production. Since 1999, he has made more than 40
trips to Africa and taken about 30 additional flights to and from locations
within the continent. His work training educators and scientists,
non-governmental organizations, community growers, and associations of women
farmers has helped to create hundreds of jobs and enabled communities to make
higher profits on the plants they cultivate and process.
In September 2012, Dr. Simon — an American Botanical Council Advisory Board
member — was honored for his work with the Award for Scientific Excellence in a
USAID Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) from the Board for
International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD).1 An
advisory group appointed by the President of the United States, BIFAD councils
the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which President John F.
Kennedy established in 1961 to provide foreign assistance that encourages
economic prosperity, democracy, human rights, and other goals.2
Dr. Simon’s excitement for the award — which he currently has hanging on his
office wall — is balanced with a humility about his work; he credited the
contributions of other individuals and groups, as well as the larger medicinal
plant community.
“When you work in horticulture with aromatic and medicinal plants, versus the
millions of acres in corn and soybeans, you just never anticipate getting any
kind of national recognition along that line,” said Dr. Simon, who is the
director of Rutgers’ Center for New Use Agriculture and Natural Plant Products
(oral communication, November 26, 2012). “I was just so pleased that they
considered me for this, and also because it reflects the reality that
horticultural crops and aromatic and medicinal plants can truly lead to income
generating activities, empower those involved, and such systems can be both
scaled-up and replicated. I was very proud because it recognized my work, yet
also realized that my work is dependent on all those people with whom I work, that
I view it as an award for all those involved.”
According to BIFAD, the awards committee chose Dr. Simon for this award due to
“his significant contributions to improving horticultural crops across the
value-chain in several African countries,” particularly for “his work [that]
had an important impact upon thousands of small-holder farmers by connecting
these farmers to higher-return markets, which led to over $25 million in trade
to growers and processors during the five years of the project.”1
Just one day after speaking with ABC about the BIFAD award and his career, Dr.
Simon caught a plane to Zambia, where he held training sessions with
small-sized community farmer associations on vegetable cultivation, production
technologies and strategies, harvesting, post-harvest handling, and processing.
He also met with partnering organization AgriBusiness and Sustainable Natural
African Plant Products (ASNAPP), which he co-founded originally to focus on using
a country’s indigenous plants to economically develop impoverished villages.3
Dr. Simon currently is leading or involved in four projects in Africa. One in
Ghana has focused on higher-value forest commodities, spices, and medicinal and
aromatic plants. In Zambia, Dr. Simon and partners have been introducing the
production of fresh vegetables, often working with potential high-end buyers
like hotels, as well as training disabled heads-of-household such as blind
farmers. Another project in Zambia engages communities to become involved in
affordable post-harvest cooling systems, which consist of creative ways to preserve
produce from spoiling, such as growing near markets, ensuring shade is used
from the moment the product is harvested to where it is sold, using the natural
cooling temperature of the earth in old-fashioned root cellars (where land and
water tables permit), and — in concert with the Horticulture CRSP leadership — introducing
low-cost coolers. The fourth project, which is led by Rutgers and Purdue University,
focuses on indigenous African vegetables, including amaranth (Amaranthus spp.), nightshade (Solanum spp.),
and spiderplants (Chlorophytum
comosum),
as well as hibiscus
leaves and calyces (Hibiscus spp.)
and moringa leaves (Moringa oleifera).
All of these projects, Dr. Simon said, aim to help African farmers obtain improved
production strategies, like reducing pests and drying herbs to increase shelf
life, as well as providing access to higher-return markets, such as larger neighboring
villages or supermarkets in sizeable towns, so that they can increase profits and
thus create successful horticulture businesses. Most growers typically sell the
same fruits, vegetables, and medicinal plants year-round and also sell their
products to markets and small shops within their villages. Thus they often sell
to customers who have as little money as they do, said Dr. Simon.
“We’re trying to introduce concepts and approaches to have them view
horticulture as a business and not just something they do to keep them busy,”
he said. “We use a market-first, science-driven model in our work and these
models have taken years to develop and remain dynamic even today. Many farmers
in Africa can’t invest because they’re just trying to survive. We’re trying to work
with them to develop their business skills and investment skills to get them
out of that cycle of ‘let’s just plant more, even if we’re not planning better.’ The goal is at the
end of the year, they made more money than last year, and they can send their
children to school and increase their family earnings so they become both food
secure, economically secure, and healthier through increased consumption of
high-quality nutritious vegetables.”
Dr. Simon first traveled to Africa when he was a faculty member at Purdue. During
that time, he was awarded a Master Research License with the National Cancer
Institute and began working on a cross-institutional project — which also
included the Missouri Botanic Garden and Professor Harry Fong, PhD, and the
late Professor Norman Farnsworth, PhD, both of the College of Pharmacy at the
University of Illinois at Chicago — to develop sustainable collection practices
for Ancistrocladus korupensis, a
plant from the southwestern region of Cameroon that exhibited promising
activity against the AIDS virus.
“It brought me to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time, and I fell in love
with Cameroon and this type of project,” he said.
Dr. Simon has been working on these projects in Africa since the early 1990s and
has encountered many challenges along the way. These include identifying the
right communities, organizations, and partners who are interested in working
together on projects, as well as balancing different expectations and rewards,
and developing strong working relationships.
“Ensuring and building trust and confidence between international partners and
collaborators is always a massive challenge,” said Dr. Simon. “It takes a long
time to develop strong, true, productive working relationships.”
And although he cited long-term resource support as an additional challenge,
Dr. Simon has been commended on his ability to secure funding over these
decades. “[Dr. Simon] works with stakeholders from farmers to university
professors to help develop the industry of natural plant products for income
generation for the benefit of Africans,” said Roldolfo Juliani, PhD, a research
associate in Rutgers plant biology department who has known and worked with Dr.
Simon for over 10 years, adding that his colleague “is very talented at
obtaining grants that can be used to achieve development goals” (oral
communication, November 28, 2012).
“Jim is a real dynamo,” said ABC Founder and Executive Director Mark
Blumenthal. “He is one of the most active and prolific people dealing with
medicinal and aromatic plants I have ever known in the academic community, and
is a valuable member of the ABC Advisory Board. He is truly deserving of this
prestigious award.”
—Lindsay Stafford Mader
References
1. 2012 BIFAD Award for Scientific Excellence in a USAID Collaborative Research
Support Program [press release]. BIFAD; September 28, 2012. Available here. Accessed December 6, 2012.
2. Who we are. USAID website.
Available here. Accessed December 6, 2012.
3. Rutgers plant
biologist Jim Simon wins prize for scientific excellence for
African agricultural research funded by USAID [press release]. New Brunswick,
New Jersey: Rutgers University; October 22, 2012. Available here. Accessed December 4, 2012.
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