Nigerian Lettuce- and how it led to on-the-spot courses

The decade of the 1950s was characterized in Israel by rapid development in many areas. Those were the years of the establishment of the State. Great political activity was directed abroad. The Ministry of Agriculture was host to many foreign visitors, and our know-how was made available to other developing countries.

At that time, a time of settling thousands of immigrants from many countries, the agricultural extension workers/trainers were confronted with many new challenges: language barriers, varying education levels, non-agricultural backgrounds, and more. The trainers themselves were not used to transferring knowledge in those conditions. Following consideration of these problems, and with the help of experts in the field, a new subject was consolidated: training techniques.

Personally, I had a special interest in the different training techniques: first, due to my studies on the subject abroad, second, given the fact that communications was one of the basic components of all the techniques and, mainly, because promoting training techniques involved efficiency par excellence, and this was always one of my favorite issues.

My good friend Gershon Fradkin and myself worked in full cooperation. We knew each other from those exhilarating Lachish days (one of the first major regional rural development areas of south-central Israel) and cooperated also when Gershon established the Foreign Training Department (the forerunner of CINADCO) at the Ministry of Agriculture. Gershon was devoted to the idea of training and demonstration techniques. He personally developed and implemented these techniques with great success.

The training techniques curriculum, which was successfully tested during the trainers' training sessions, became a mandatory study subject for all the training staff of the Ministry of Agriculture. It was a short way from there to begin offering courses on the subject to students from abroad. The subject of training techniques became an integral part of almost every course, and some time later whole courses were dedicated to this subject alone.

During the summer of 1962, such a course took place in Ohalo, near the Sea of Galilee. The trainees were English speakers from various African countries. I was in charge of imparting the Introduction to Training and Training Techniques. An innovation at the time was that each trainee would choose an individual subject and build around it a presentation to be offered to the rest of the students. That particular aspect is still used today.

I clearly remember a presentation by a trainee from Nigeria, who spoke with unexpected enthusiasm about growing lettuce. During the summation of the course, he said he considered himself lucky for having been able to participate in the course, and how sorry he was that his colleagues back home would not have such an opportunity.

The following morning I met Gershon and told him the Nigerian lettuce story. During the student's presentation I realized his lack of relevant knowledge for growing this crop in Nigeria, but I deliberately chose not to relate to this particular issue. This fact led me to think that if the course had taken place in Nigeria, a solution to the problem could certainly have been found.

And this led to another idea: Bringing the participants to Israel, their lodging in institutes around the country, providing suitable staff, etc., is expensive and only a small number people are chosen to participate in the courses. Why, I asked, don't we send a team of three of our experts abroad? They would be able to offer in each trip two or three courses on-the-spot at lower cost, and the subjects could be better adapted to fit the local conditions and needs. The participants would be from one country, or from a specific area, and working with a homogenous group would be more effective.

In cooperation with Gershon, I scheduled a meeting with MASHAV's director at the time, Aharon Remez. I presented my plan, and he accepted it right on the spot! It was agreed that I would leave for a short reconnaissance mission to Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika, to examine the practical aspects of the plan.

I had the feeling that MASHAV related very seriously to this mission which was expected to open yet another opportunity for effective cooperation with three East African countries.

Israel had Embassies in many African countries, but cooperation in agricultural matters was almost nonexistent. Following Aharon Remez's request, our people in Kampala arranged a first successful meeting with the Ugandan Minister of Agriculture.

I returned to Israel with a detailed plan to offer three courses, one after the other, in Uganda, with similar possibilities in the other two countries. A few months later, I left Israel as Head of Mission, together with Gershon Tavor and Shalom Sharar, to offer Israel's first on-the-spot courses. After the first course, which took place near Kampala, a Ugandan journalist wrote in his newspaper: "Never such an instruction before." This was the contribution of the Nigerian lettuce, which first inspired the idea.