Maria Orozco came to Cornell with a commitment to empowering farmers, namely through outreach and education that can address the ever-evolving needs of underserved and marginalized communities in our food systems. When a research opportunity arose to support educational initiatives for Kenyan farmers growing dragon fruit — a tropical fruit native to her home country of Mexico — Orozco was intrigued to connect with the international network of local farmers.
“I am driven by the possibility to close knowledge gaps by connecting growers, not just locally, but around the world,” said Orozco, a Master of Professional Studies (MPS) student in Global Development at Cornell.
“Farmer-to-farmer education thrives because there is no other source better than a fellow farmer who has been through the same experience.”
In her fieldwork for her MPS capstone project, Orozco visited and interviewed 20 smallholder dragon fruit farmers in Kenya, speaking with farmers from different backgrounds and at various stages of dragon fruit cultivation. Through these interviews, she gathered valuable insights into their reasoning for cultivation, how they’ve learned to grow the crop in a new environment, and the unique challenges they’ve faced, from pest and disease management to variety selection and communication within farming communities.
The introduction of dragon fruit into Kenya's cropping systems holds the promise of socio-cultural and economic empowerment for farmers, increased agricultural resilience, and access to new export markets, however, there is limited research on why smallholder farmers decided to grow dragon fruit, or how they have fared in its cultivation, according to Ndunge Kiiti, Orozco’s advisor and adjunct associate professor of global development.
“Dragon fruit could be a game changer for smallholder farmers to access the global supply chain, however, we must first understand the farmers who are cultivating it, and development implications surrounding its growing market,” Kiiti said.
