This week, discount Phoebe and I have been hosting a group of friends/co-workers/fellow ag-dev people from ECHO in Florida. One of them was my former farm manager when I was an intern at the ECHO farm in Florida and the other two are current interns in their early 20’s.

Living up in Mae Ai, I don’t spend a lot of time around foreign development people so a chance to talk at length about global food security, community and NGO development topics is always welcome. We’ve spent the past few evenings talking and sharing thoughts and perspectives, and it’s really nice to know, too, that my own ideas have “grown up”. My grassroots, rural-development leanings are shifting to include more economic, governmental and institutional perspectives and my understanding of the development sector allows for more grey than several years ago.