The engineer at the helm

Engr. Gummert makes sure farmers' produce is in top shape until it is sold in the market.

Rice-growing has never been an easy task: planting at the right time with good-quality seeds, giving the right amount of water and fertilizer, protecting the crops from pests and diseases. You’d think that after you’ve harvested healthy plants, you can let out a sigh of relief and relax. But no, the job isn’t finished yet, not even close. You have to mill the grains, dry them, and store them well until they reach the markets and get sold. But most farmers find it hard to take care of the grains after the harvest, mostly because of delay in drying, poor storage, poorly maintained or old rice mills, and losses to pests. Indeed, a rice farmer’s life is a hard life.

But people like Martin Gummert are trying to make their lives a bit easier. A postharvest development specialist at the International Rice Research Institute, Engr. Gummert works with partners in various countries to develop new technologies and methods for everything that is done with rice after the harvest until it is sold in the market. “For example, using a mechanical rice dryer instead of drying the paddy in the sun keeps it safe from chickens eating it or from the rain,” he says. “The family can now send their kids to do their homework because they don’t have to watch the sun-dried paddy anymore and the farmers can sell healthier paddy with better quality for a higher price. With dryers and other postharvest technologies, we therefore help farmers and their families have better lives.”

Engr. Gummert finds his job at IRRI rewarding, meeting exciting and outstanding people who do their share in moving their countries toward a better future. “The Irrigated Rice Research Consortium (IRRC),” he says, “is part of that network because it focuses on improving the lives of farmers and rice consumers by getting good research results out to them. I really enjoy contributing as a facilitator of the Postproduction Work Group. And it is good fun working with the multidisciplinary ‘Dream Team’ of the IRRC.”

He was with IRRI from 1993 to 1997 and, since 2003, he has been working in Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. He got into postharvest development by accident while designing a combine harvester test rig at Hohenheim University in Germany. During his professional career, he has also worked as a team leader of an industry promotion project in Indonesia, as a freelance consultant for donor-funded development projects, and for firms in electronics and software development in his native Germany. His interest has remained in agricultural engineering in general, but he was drawn to and stuck to postharvest because many people, especially the farmers, relied on it. And, because of the high losses in the postharvest chain, every new development was rewarding.

When he’s not busy working with harvesters or dryers, he might be out building boats. He enjoys sailing and traveling with his wife and two daughters, and he likes vintage motorcycles, scuba diving, skiing, and listening to mostly 1970s music. “During the ‘spring’ break, I plan to tour around the Mountain Province (Philippines) on motorcycle, and every year when I go home to Germany, I tour Europe on my 1,000cc BMW motorcycle,” he says.

For now, though, he has a lot of work on his plate. His work group has piloted and verified harvesters, dryers, and storage systems with farmers in the field and shown the benefits from using them. They’ve also worked with the private sector in improving their milling and processing systems. Lately, they’ve introduced village market information systems in Cambodia and shown that making markets more transparent can help farmers increase their incomes.

His group is also looking at new approaches to get the message out to users by working with the IRRI Rice Knowledge Bank group and national extension systems: “I strongly believe that farmers are able to make their own decisions as long as they are provided with good information about the options they have,” he explains. “If we are going to buy a car, we want information on color options, performance, fuel consumption. What we don’t want is a salesperson telling us ‘this car is the best for you and you can’t get another one’.”

As for goals that he still wants to achieve, he says, “Well, it’s difficult to say, could be coming up with a product that really makes a difference in many people’s lives, but generally speaking, since our job is to help people and countries develop their own capacity to solve their problems, I guess my ultimate goal in my professional life is to work myself out of the job. If our clients don’t need me anymore because they can do the job themselves—mission accomplished.”

Trina Mendoza (t.mendoza@cgiar.org)

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