Professor Fraser organizes his work into four distinct strands with the following questions.  First, What can we learn from past food security crises in order to understand where we might be vulnerable today?  "I have used historic cases to combine work from a number of disciplines (including comparative history, development studies, landscape ecology, ecological economics, and political science) to identify food systems “vulnerable” to environmental change and published comparative work where relatively minor weather anomalies sparked major food-crises as a way of understanding how our own society may respond to similar shocks.  In particular, I have explored the Irish Potato Famine, the “Great Famines” of the early 1300s, and the Ethiopian famine of the early 1980s." Second, What are the socio-economic forces that shape our food-producing landscapes today? "In my opinion, we have adequate scientific knowledge to sustainably produce food in many parts of the world.  However, farmers are not always able to use this knowledge.   Therefore, I am interested in understanding the socio-economic factors that shape farmer decisions.  This had led me to conduct empirical work (usually involving interviews, questionnaires or focus groups discussions) in a range of settings including:  urban Thailand, rural Belize, and rural British Columbia.  I have also supervised graduate students or post-doctoral researchers to do similar work in: the uplands of the UK, rural and urban Malawi, rural Ghana, and peri-urban Bangladesh."  Third, What are the implications of different types of landscapes for both food security and other ecosystem services? "Different landscapes provide different things: some provide low-cost food; some provide habitat conservation; others provide carbons sequestration; still others are resilient to climate change.  I am interested in conducting research that explores the synergies and tradeoffs implied by different types of landscape.  This work has been based on extensive collaboration with natural and social science colleagues and involved working on a range of topics in different ecological settings including: the contribution of the uplands of the UK to a range of ecosystem services, on land management in general and on the relation between crops and climate. My current work in this area is to explore trade offs between food, fibre and fuel production in different parts of the world."  Fourth, What regions of the world are likely to be vulnerable in terms of food in security in the 21st century?

"Different landscapes provide different things: some provide low-cost food; some provide habitat conservation; others provide carbons sequestration; still others are resilient to climate change.  I am interested in conducting research that explores the synergies and tradeoffs implied by different types of landscape.  This work has been based on extensive collaboration with natural and social science colleagues and involved working on a range of topics in different ecological settings including: the contribution of the uplands of the UK to a range of ecosystem services, on land management in general and on the relation between crops and climate. My current work in this area is to explore trade offs between food, fibre and fuel production in different parts of the world."

 

Getting group rates for tickets has gotten increasingly difficult.  People are coming from so many different places and usually you can get much better prices on line than we can get as a group rate.  So we are asking everyone to buy your own tickets directly but, you must coordinate your arrival and departure to match within an hour or so of the United flights shown above.  I know that American and some others have flights through Miami which closely match this schedule.  The ground travel, meals and hotel charges will be $570.00 per person (double occupancy in hotels). Add $180.00 per person if you require a private room. We will co-ordinate all of this as we always have in the past. If you will be on flights other than these United flights Please send me a copy of your tickets so that we will know when to meet you. Payments and sign-up sheets for this should be sent to:

 

                  Hope & Relief International Foundation, Inc.

                  10700 Gerke Rd.

                  Brenham, Texas 77833

                  Fax  979-836-0614

 

We will schedule everyone on a first come, first served, basis as of the date we receive your payment.  No one will be scheduled before payment is received.  Attached is a reservation form which should be sent in by everyone, with the information and your payment. Please provide ALL the information. In order to secure all the hotel reservations we need to have your registration by November1,2013 or we will not be able to be sure that we can have hotel reservations for you. We will be staying at a different hotel in Managua than the one we have stayed at in the past and our cut-off date for reservations is November 1, 2103. AFTER THIS DATE WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO GET ADDITIONAL RESERVATIONS.

 

The group will spend the first night in Managua and leave the next day for Chinendega to visit the city dump, the clinic for the children of the dump, and the school built for children of the dump.  Lunch will be served at La Batania, a trade school built in partnership with Rotarians and the Quen of Spain.  Rotary donated all of the machinery and equipment used in their metal and woodworking shop.  A tour of the San Martin Hospital will take the group to the new wing for hemodiali sis which was donated by Rotarians.  The House of Santa Lucia will also be toured which is a house for the blind.  The next day the group will visit the Refugio Belen, a pregnant women's shelter where the mother's receive Rotary bags filled with layette supplies for their newborn babies before heading home.  Other Rotary built villages will also be toured.  Some vacation time is also planned at an all inclusive resort, Montalymar Resort.  Shopping at Mercado and visiting the volcano park near Masaya are also planned activities before the trip ends.

The Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships. The test has been translated into more than 100 languages, and Rotarians recite it at club meetings:
Of the things we think, say or do

 

First, Is it the TRUTH?
Second, Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Third, Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
and Fourth, Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?