b'up for agriculture classes and started doing ag-related extracurriculars before my mom could convince me to be a doctor or a lawyer, he says. He is now pursuing a M.S. in plant breeding at Texas A&M University working with sorghum. There wasnt a lot of positive representation for a young Mexican in central Kentucky agriculture, so I had to look globally pretty early on for role models.Two of those role models were activist Cesar Chavez (who founded the founded the National Farm Workers Association, which would go on to become the United Farm Workers) and Norman Borlaug, whose work with CIMMYT in Mexico led to the Green Revolution.Leon was drawn to sorghum partly due to the fact it can serve subsistence farmers while also scaling up commercially with mechanization. More personally, sorghum is an important crop in the region of Mexico where my family is from, and we grow it on our family farm, he adds. Texas A&Ms Fabian Leon says his Chicano identity is inextricably connected Leon says despite his success finding his way intoto his work as a plant breeder.PHOTO COURTESY FABIAN LEONplant breeding, many barriers exist for people like himself. He notes that current immigration and labor policies still exploit agricultural workers who are ofcontributions to family food security and income, but Mexican or Native American descent. All of this makesalso as actors in seed selection, pest and disease con-crop sciences and agricultural sciences a hard sell fortrol and managing soil fertilitythree characteristics young brown kids to buy into, he says. that link to breeders efforts in developing new varie-Nevertheless, Chicanx and Native Americanties. people have some of the proudest agricultural tradi- Take, for example, the relationship between gender tions and will undoubtedly persist in our sphere. Plantequality and nutrition. New biofortified varieties may breeders have to be ready to welcome those back- be developed and intended for home consumption to grounds and adapt with them. We have to rememberimprove food security and household nutrition. But in that we owe our major crops to indigenous peopleRwanda, high-iron bean varieties also turned out to be first, and not modern breeding techniques. higher yielding and have become a lucrative cash crop. As a result, womens activities in bean produc-Inclusivity tion processing and trading are changing. Some haveActivist Cesar The importance of inclusivity in plant breeding wasjoined cooperatives that have helped them to maintainChavez (who made evident at this years NAPB meeting in workdecision-making control over seed selection and sales,founded the being carried out by the Innovation Lab for CropRubin says.founded the Improvement (ICLI) at Cornell. ICLI equips NationalOur goal is to carry out new research that deliber- National Farm Agricultural Research Institutes with the power toately gives attention to these themes and considers theWorkers define their unique goals and drive advancement inneeds of end users in research programs. ConsideringAssociation, crop improvement to reduce malnutrition, hunger andpotential tradeoffs early in the product developmentwhich would go provide equitable benefits to women and youth. process can increase adoption while also ensuring theon to become Deborah Rubin works with ICLI and co-foundedgoal of do no harm. Were confident that this work willthe United Farm Cultural Practice LLC, which works with internationallead to important outputs and helped to change howWorkers) has development actors to build healthier, more prosper- crop improvement research is conducted. been an ous societies. Rubin is working with ILCI to analyzeinspiration to the cross-cutting themes of gender equality, youthBreaking Barriers Borlaug Scholar engagement, nutrition and resilience in the field of cropReaching as many people as possible to transformFabian Leon. improvement, which she emphasises is not the samethe discipline of crop improvement can be challeng-thing as plant breeding. ing but is happening more and more thanks to people We have to recognize researchers who soughtlike Borlaug scholar Catherine Danmaigona Clement. to systematically identify preferences of smallholderShes a PhD candidate in the plant breeding program farmers and to incorporate that information into breed- at Texas A&M University working on cotton breeding, ing efforts, she says. Other pioneering researchersgenetics and genomics.deserve credit for explicitly recognizing the importanceShe obtained her undergraduate degree in Nigeria of womens work in agriculture, not only for womensand has experienced firsthand the difficulty students 16/ SEEDWORLD.COMOCTOBER 2021'