Two White Feet

Dr Alan R. Quartermain has devoted almost 28 years of a long and varied, sometimes exciting, oft-times amusing professional life to higher education and research for agriculture in Papua New Guinea. Although born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1936 and remaining a New Zealand citizen, the needs of rural people in developing countries have engaged most of his time and energies since gaining his basic agricultural science degrees in New Zealand and a PhD from Iowa State University. He has taught in five universities, two in Africa (Zambia and Zimbabwe) and three in PNG, and worked for research institutions in New Zealand and for the PNG National Agricultural Research Institute. Alan Quartermain has been fortunate to have been engaged in many international consultancies in 28 developing countries, mainly for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and focused on livestock and rural development, agricultural education and research institutional development. In the midst of all this he took time out for five years in New Zealand farming a 40ha sheep and cattle unit all by himself and all along or from time to time has been a father, a democratic socialist, a pacifist, a connoisseur of wildlife and wilderness, a lover of rugby (both codes), an amateur thespian and a practitioner of strathspey and reel. Alan currently works and lives with his PNG family at the University of Natural Resources and Environment, Vudal, in East New Britain. In 2011 he was invested as an Officer of the Order of Logohu (OL) in the PNG New Year's Honours.