Howard-Yana Shapiro: An Unprecedented and Uncommon Collaboration
Howard-Yana Shapiro is the Global Director of Plant Science and External Research, Mars Incorporated. He talks about unprecedented and uncommon collaboration, that is, people who don’t normally work together. Howard has guided Mars toward the goal of 100% sustainably sourced cacao production since joining up with the company in the late 1990s.
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ABOUT Howard-Yana Shapiro
“Howard-Yana Shapiro has been involved with sustainable agricultural and sustainable tree cropping systems for over thirty years with projects in the USA, the EU, Mexico & Latin America (Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica), South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), West Africa (Ghana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast) and South East Asia (Papua New Guinea, Sulawesi, Vietnam).
A collaboration among MARS, USDA-ARS, IBM, NCGR, Clemson University, HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Indiana University and Washington State University has combined their scientific resources to sequence and analyse the entire cocoa genome.
A two-time Ford Foundation Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award, he is a former university professor and for eleven years was the VP for Agriculture for Seeds of Change, an organic seed and food company.
Mars purchased Seeds of Change in 1997, and since then he has also served as Senior Scientist in Agroforestry/Agro-ecology for M&M, Mars. He has worked with local, state, and federal governments throughout the world and with many NGO’s over the last three decades. He farms on the banks of the Rio Grande in Northern New Mexico on land that was first farmed by the Tewa, then by Spanish Conquistadors, and has been cultivated continuously for over 3000 years.
The farm, which includes orchards and a seed cleaning facility, has been certified organic for more than a decade. His work in plant breeding has included capsicums, brassicas, helianthus, tagetes, maize, theobroma and a wide variety of temperate and tropical legumes. He considers himself a biodiversifarian or one who is interested in all plants.”
The VIDEO
