The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is proud to partner with the Whole Grain Initiative in celebrating International Whole Grain Day on November 19, 2020.
In terms of diet and nutrition, ours is an age of contradiction. While populations in wealthy countries are faced with unprecedented levels of diet-related disease, close to 2 billion people globally remain food insecure. At the same time, global agriculture has an enormous role to play in the transition towards an environmentally sustainable future.
International Whole Grain Day 2020 is a good day to step back and consider the continued role of whole grains in the healthy, sustainable diets of today and tomorrow. Explore our content to learn what whole grains are, how we’re working to make whole grain wheat and maize even more nutritious, and discover some our favorite recipes.
For a deeper dive into the subject, check out our explainer on whole grains: What they are, why they are important for your health, and how to identify them.
The grain or kernel of maize and wheat is made up of three edible parts: the bran, the germ and the endosperm. (Graphic: Nancy Valtierra/CIMMYT)
CIMMYT’s “A Grain a Day” cookbook highlights the big role maize and wheat play in diets around the world, and brings global cuisine to your own kitchen. (Note: not all recipes call for whole grains.) Learn more.
Join members of the Whole Grain Initiative, the FAO and global leaders on November 19 as they discuss the role of whole grains in meeting the “triple challenge” of ensuring global food security and improving the livelihoods of agri-food workers in an environmentally sustainable manner. Join the webinar: Building Healthy, Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems.
Interested in learning more about how CIMMYT is working to make grain-based diets healthier and more nutritious? Check out our archive of health and nutrition content.
Featured image: Little girl eating roti, Bangladesh (S. Mojumder/Drik/CIMMYT)
There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen. So goes the old saw. In the social sciences, these “weeks” are often referred to as critical junctures. They are moments when the old rules of the game — the long-established ways of doings things — go out the window and new patterns begin to emerge. The breadbasket states of northwestern India seem to be having one of those weeks.
After years of research and advocacy that appeared to be making little headway, researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) are seeing a sudden and dramatic increase in the adoption of some of the technologies and techniques they have long argued are necessary in this region, including direct-seeding of rice, crop diversification and the adoption of Happy Seeder technology.
A case of unintended consequences
In March 2020 the Indian government decreed a national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This triggered the largest internal migration since partition, as millions of migrant workers and day laborers scrambled to return to their home villages. Estimates suggest that up to 1 million workers left the northwestern states of Haryana and Punjab alone.
Agriculture in the region is dominated by the labor- and input-intensive production of rice and wheat in rotation. This system is the most productive per hectare in India, but it is also extremely sensitive to external shocks. The success of both the rice and wheat crop depend on the timely transplantation of rice in mid-June.
As the results of a recently published study demonstrate, delays in this schedule can have devastating downstream effects not only on rice and wheat yields, but on regional air quality too. Models of the worst-case delay scenario predicted a total economic loss of nearly $1.5 billion. Moreover, they predicted that, if no action were taken, up to 80% of rice residue would be burned later in the autumn, when cooler conditions contribute to seasonally poor air quality.
Such an exacerbation of the region’s air pollution would be dire under normal conditions. During a global pandemic of a primarily respiratory illness, it could be devastating.
Fortunately, solutions and technologies that CIMMYT researchers had been studying for decades, along with ICAR, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) and other national partners, promised to help ward off the worst effects of the crisis. The adoption of direct-seeding technology could help reduce the labor-intensiveness of rice production, crop diversification could minimize the economic impacts of the crisis, and the use of Happy Seeder technology could alleviate the practice of residue burning.
A farmer burns rice residues after harvest to prepare the land for wheat planting around Sangrur, Punjab, India. (Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT)
Decades of work pay off
The study, co-authored by researchers at CIMMYT, ICAR and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), relied on a sophisticated ex ante model of four different rice-transplanting delay scenarios. It is published in the November 2020 issue of Agricultural Systems.
However, given the time-sensitivity and high-stakes of the issue, the lead researchers did not wait for the articles publication to press their case. Earlier this year they circulated their initial findings and recommendations to policymakers via their national partners. Notably, after receiving a one-pager summarizing these, the Chief Minister of Punjab released a video address echoing their points.
“Policymakers realized the need for these kinds of solutions,” says Balwinder Singh, a CIMMYT scientist and lead author of the paper. They then moved quickly to incentivize their adoption through various mechanisms, such as subsidizing direct-seeding drills and ensuring the timely availability of machines and other inputs.
Singh and Jat have been carrying out a multi-year survey to assess farmer willingness to adopt Happy Seeder technology and have documented a drastic increase in farmer interest in the technology during 2020. For Jat, this highlights the power of partnerships. “If you don’t include your partners from the beginning, they will not own what you say,” he argues.
Such changes are to be celebrated not only as an important response to the current labor shortage, but also as key to ensuring the long-term sustainability of agricultural production in the region, having important implications for the stewardship of water resources, air pollution and soil health.
“Policies encouraging farming practices that save resources and protect the environment will improve long-term productivity and sustainability of the nation,” says S. K. Chaudhari, deputy director general for Natural Resource Management at ICAR.
A farmer in India uses a tractor fitted with a Happy Seeder. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT)
Warding off catastrophe
Although the agricultural cycle is not yet over, and early data are still partial, Singh and Jat estimate that thanks to the dramatic adoption of alternative agricultural practices this year, their worst-case estimates have been avoided. Given the rapid response from both policymakers and farmers, the real-world effects of the COVID-19 labor crisis are likely closer to the mid-range severity scenarios of their analysis. Indeed, early estimates predict no rice yield losses and minor-to-no wheat yield losses over baseline. For the researchers, the relief is palpable and the lessons couldn’t be clearer.
“These technologies were there for decades, but they were never appreciated because everything was normal,” says Jat. “This clearly indicates a need for investment in the technology and the research. You may encounter a problem at any time, but you cannot generate the technology overnight.”
A farmer in Morogoro, Tanzania, discusses differences in his maize ears caused by differences in on-farm conditions. (Photo: Anne Wangalachi/CIMMYT)
Global climate change represents an existential threat to many of the world’s most vulnerable farmers, introducing new stresses and amplifying the unpredictability and risk inherent in farming. In low- and middle-income countries that are heavily reliant on domestic production, this increased risk and unpredictability threatens disastrous consequences for the food security and wellbeing of rural and urban populations alike.
Given the stakes, substantial investments have been made towards developing climate-resilient crops. But what happens when the innovations widely considered to be beneficial don’t gain traction on the ground, among those who stand to lose the most from inaction? What can researchers, policymakers and funders do to ensure that the most vulnerable rural populations don’t lose out on the benefits?
These are the questions posed by a new scoping review co-authored by Kevin Pixley, interim deputy director general for research and partnerships and director of the Genetic Resources Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
The paper relies on a descriptive analysis of 202 studies from the past 30 years which assess the determinants of climate-resilient crop adoption by small-scale producers in low- and middle-income countries. These were identified through an extensive search and screening process of multiple academic databases and grey literature sources, and selected from an initial pool of over 6,000 articles.
Taking stock
The authors identified interventions determining adoption across the literature surveyed. A key theme which emerged was the need for context-sensitive technical and financial support for climate-resilient crop adoption. Nearly 16% of the studies found that adoption depended on access to relevant extension programs. Around 12% identified access to credit and other financial instruments as key, while a further 12% identified the implementation of community programs supporting climate-resilient crops as a determining factor.
However, the study stresses that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Increased adoption of climate-resilient agricultural innovations will depend on interventions being highly context informed. For example, the review shows that while some studies identified older farmers as more reluctant to adopt new technologies, an equal number of studies found the opposite.
Moreover, the review identified important opportunities for further research. Gender-based approaches, for example, remain a blind spot in the literature. The majority of studies reviewed only included women if they were household heads, thus overlooking the role they may play in influencing the adoption of new agricultural technologies in male-headed households.
A community-based seed producer in Kiboko, Kenya, inspects her crop of drought-tolerant maize. (Photo: Anne Wangalachi/CIMMYT)
Driving evidence-based policymaking
The review was published as part of a collection of 10 research papers produced as part of Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger. The project, a partnership between Cornell University, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), distills decades of scientific and development research into a clear menu of policy options for funders committed to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 2: Ending world hunger by 2030.
Speaking at a German government event on achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2, Bill Gates praised the Ceres2030 initiative, noting that “nothing on this scale has ever been done because we lacked the tools to analyze this complex information. But with the new research, solid evidence will drive better policymaking.”
He went on to highlight the CGIAR’s leadership role in these efforts, saying: “The CGIAR system is a key global institution that is investing in these approaches. It’s a critical example of how innovation can lead the way.”
In the early days of organizations like the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the answer to improving global food security was obvious. Help people grow more food. Today the situation is far more complex. Many exciting developments in breeding are either protective or corrective in nature. Stress-tolerant seed varieties are meant to help protect against the worst effects of global climate change. Efforts to develop widely cultivatable, high-yielding varieties based on local landraces seek to reintroduce some of the biodiversity lost through the runaway success of just a handful of commercial varieties.
Yet problems of food insecurity and poverty persist, not least among smallholders. The good news is that it is precisely among these farmers that important gains remain to be made, especially if we consider the many steps from planting to final consumption where technical and processual improvements can be made. “Just having a seed is not sufficient,” said CIMMYT postharvest specialist Sylvanus Odjo. “Of course having good seed is important, but you also need good agronomic practices.”
Globally, Odjo pointed out, one third of agricultural production is lost in the postharvest phase. In tropical Mexico, postharvest losses among smallholder maize farmers can reach up to 40%.
As the recently published findings of a two-year-long research project led by CIMMYT researchers show, such losses are entirely avoidable. The study, which was conducted in 2017 and 2018 across dozens of sites in Mexico representing a broad range of altitudes and ecologies, tested multiple storage technologies to determine which are most effective at avoiding postharvest losses using real-world smallholder practices and regardless of climatic and environmental factors.
Filling hermetic metal silo in Peto, Yucatán. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Researchers compared storage outcomes using conventional methods such as storing untreated maize in 50 kg polypropylene bags, storing maize in polypropylene bags and treating it with one of various agents — including aluminum phosphide, deodorized malathion or inert dusts — and hermetic storage options such as hermetic metal silos, two types of GrainPro hermetic plastic bags, and low-cost alternatives like plastic bottles and silage bags.
Under controlled conditions, they found that loss outcomes were highly variable for conventionally stored maize, with or without treatment agents. While untreated grain stored in polypropylene bags in temperate conditions at Texcoco only exhibited only 2.2% insect-damaged maize, grain treated with aluminum phosphide and stored in conventional bags in tropical conditions at Cotzocón suffered 46.3% insect damage.
In contrast, maize stored in low-cost hermetic alternatives such as plastic bottles and silage bags exhibited a maximum of 1.2% insect-damaged grain across all sites. Hermetic metal silos and GrainPro bags performed similarly well across climates, with a couple of important exceptions. The percentage of insect-damaged grain for maize stored in hermetic metal silos at Zacaultipán was 13.5%. Maize stored in GrainPro bags at this site suffered 8.1% insect damage.
Overall, the study convincingly demonstrated the effectiveness of hermetic storage technologies at minimizing insect and mycotic damage as well as weight loss of stored maize regardless of climate or altitude. However, important obstacles to the effective adoption of the technologies remains. In the case of the hermetic metal silos, it was determined that despite the existence of a stringent national norm for their construction in Mexico, silos occasionally did not meet the national standard and had to retrofitted to ensure hermeticity. And, as the example of Zacaultipán demonstrated, poor pre-storage processing of grain can compromise the effectiveness of hermetic storage technologies.
CIMMYT researchers tested multiple storage technologies to determine which are most effective at avoiding postharvest losses. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Over the course of carrying out the experiment, the researchers discovered other challenges. In Mexico, as is often true among smallholders globally, women are largely in charge of postharvest activities. “But we noticed that it was largely men who showed up to the trainings,” Odjo said. Researchers had to think of strategies—from being more careful about meeting timings to enlisting the support of local women leaders—to ensure that the trainings were reaching the women who actually carry out this work.
As Odjo pointed out, resolving these kinds of implementation and advocacy challenges—from ensuring adequate training and familiarity with the technologies on the ground to encouraging public and private sector partners to make the technologies more broadly available—is the next step for the project. “The less complex part of this work is the technical part,” he said. “Our job now at CIMMYT is to bring these innovations to farmers… We need to get all the relevant stakeholders involved in the game.”
The project was carried out in partnership with the Mexican government via MasAgro, and received funding from the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE). Its implementation involved collaboration with dozens of local partners throughout Mexico and was carried out in response to the suggestions of smallholder farmers.
When we talk about the impact of agricultural research we often rely on numerical metrics: percent increase in yield, percent decrease in crop loss, adoption rates, etcetera. For farmers on the ground, however, the impact can be much harder to boil down to a few numbers. Hiding behind every statistical table are real stories of dreams dashed or fulfilled, of everyday people trying to survive and flourish.
A new educational video powerfully dramatizes this point through the story of Jamal Mia and his daughter Rupa. Jamal’s dreams to own a house and see Rupa enroll in college are threatened when his maize crop is attacked by fall armyworm. An encounter with an agricultural extension officer puts Jamal on track to tackle the infestation, save his crop and secure his family’s wellbeing.
The video was developed by CIMMYT with support from Bangladesh’s Department of Agricultural Extension and the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI), as part of a project titled “Fighting back against fall armyworm in Bangladesh.” Supported by USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative and Michigan State University, this CIMMYT-led project works in synergy with the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and with national partners to mitigate the impact of this invasive pest on smallholder farmers’ livelihoods.
The video was filmed in Dinajpur district, Bangladesh, and is available in Bangla with English captions.
It is no secret that Africa is urbanizing at breakneck speed. Consider Lagos. In 1950 the Nigerian city boasted a population of a few hundred thousand. Today that number has soared to around 14 million. It is estimated that by 2025 half of Africa’s population will live in urban areas.
This demographic transformation has had dramatic consequences for human health and nutrition. Urban dwellers are far more likely to rely on cheap highly-processed foods, which are shelf-stable but poor on nutrients.
These statistics, presented by moderator Betty Kibaara, Director of the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, framed the 2020 African Green Revolution Forum’s policy symposium on “Advancing Gender and Nutrition.” The forum comprised two tracks. One focused on addressing the needs of nutritionally vulnerable urban consumers, particularly women; the other on gender-based financing in the African agri-food system
Speaking in the first track, Natalia Palacios, maize quality specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), underlined the enormity of the challenge. “We need to provide affordable, nutritious diets … within planetary boundaries,” she said.
Many of the panelists pointed out further dimensions of the challenge — from evidence deficits around the continent’s urban populations to the amplifying effects of the COVID-19 crisis. Palacios stressed that the bedrock of any response must be effective partnerships between governments, companies and non-profit actors working in this area.
“The really important thing is to start working together,” she said, “to start developing the strategies together instead of providing things or demanding things.” Speaking to the role of organizations like CIMMYT, Palacios highlighted the need to work closely with the private sector to understand the demand for agricultural raw materials that can be converted into nutritious diets.
Rich nutrition within reach
Palacios’ most recent research efforts focus on precisely this question. She and a team of researchers, including CIMMYT senior scientist Santiago Lopez-Ridaura, explored how various innovations in maize production have improved the macro- and micro-nutrient content of the grain and led to healthier maize-based agri-food systems.
CIMMYT, HarvestPlus and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), together with several stakeholders, have been deeply involved in work to improve the nutritional quality of staple-dependent food systems. In partnership with a broad network of national and private-sector partners, they have released over 60 improved maize and wheat varieties fortified with zinc or provitamin A in 19 countries.
Cover photo: Unlike white maize varieties, vitamin A maize is rich in beta-carotene, giving it a distinctive orange color. This biofortified variety provides consumers with up to 40% of their daily vitamin A needs. (Photo: HarvestPlus/Joslin Isaacson)
