Bettie Sindi Kawonga always “had a feel” for agriculture. She started off helping out on her family’s small backyard farms in Blantyre, Mzuzu, and Lilongwe, Malawi, and on her grandmother’s farm in the village. “I used to help my father grow vegetables and look after chickens at home,” she says. With this background, it seemed natural that Kawonga would opt to study animal science at university and work in agricultural extension, conducting training sessions with farmers to disseminate her research findings.