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A shop attendant displays drought-tolerant maize seed at the Dryland Seed Company shop in Machakos, Kenya. (Photo: Florence Sipalla/CIMMYT)

Out with the old, in with the new

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in Director General's corner.

A shop attendant displays drought-tolerant maize seed at the Dryland Seed Company shop in Machakos, Kenya. (Photo: Florence Sipalla/CIMMYT)
A shop attendant displays drought-tolerant maize seed at the Dryland Seed Company shop in Machakos, Kenya. (Photo: Florence Sipalla/CIMMYT)

For several decades, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has worked with partners and farmers to improve maize and wheat varieties. Packed with “upgrades” such as tolerance to environmental stresses, tolerance to diseases and pests, boosted nutrient content, higher yield potential and storage capabilities, and improved efficiency in using water and fertilizers, these seeds are rolled out by CIMMYT and its partners to create new opportunities for easier and better lives for farmers.

Together with national research partners, farmers, local governments and seed companies, CIMMYT’s work in seed systems has reaped results. Its experts are eager to put this experience into further action as CGIAR embarks on the next ten years of its journey to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis. And rightly so: investments in CGIAR research — mainly through their contributions to enhancing yields of staple food crops — have returned ten-fold benefits and payoffs for poor people in terms of greater food abundance, lower prices of food, reduced food insecurity and poverty and reduced geographical footprint of agriculture. A large part of this impact is the result of CIMMYT’s day to day efforts to create a better world.

A Bangladeshi woman cuts up feed for her family's livestock. They did not previously have animals, but were able to buy them after her husband, Gopal Mohanta, attended a farmer training from CIMMYT and its partners, which gave him access to better seed, technologies, and practices. Mohanta planted a wider range of crops, and in 2005 he planted maize for the first time, using improved seed based on CIMMYT materials. (Photo: S. Mojumder/Drik/CIMMYT)
A Bangladeshi woman cuts up feed for her family’s livestock. They did not previously have animals, but were able to buy them after her husband, Gopal Mohanta, attended a farmer training from CIMMYT and its partners, which gave him access to better seed, technologies, and practices. Mohanta planted a wider range of crops, and in 2005 he planted maize for the first time, using improved seed based on CIMMYT materials. (Photo: S. Mojumder/Drik/CIMMYT)

Replacing old varieties, not as easy as it sounds

Slow variety turnover — that of more than ten years — makes farmers vulnerable to risks such as climate change and emerging biotic threats. On the other hand, planting improved varieties that match farmers’ needs and the geography they work in, can increase productivity gains and improve the nutritional status of smallholders and their families. This, in turn, contributes to increased household incomes. Indirectly, the benefits can reach the surrounding community by providing increased employment opportunities, wage increases and affordable access to food.

Despite its tremendous benefits, varietal turnover is no small feat.

When it comes to seeds, detailed multi-disciplinary research is behind every new variety and its deployment to farmers. Just as the production of a new snack, beverage or a car requires an in-depth study of what the customer wants, seed systems also must be demand-driven.

Socioeconomists have to work hand-in-hand with breeders and seed system specialists to understand the drivers and bottlenecks for improved varietal adoption, market needs, and gender and social inclusion in seed delivery. Bottlenecks include the lack of access by farmers — especially for resource-poor, socially-excluded ones — to reliable information about the advantages of new varieties. Even if farmers are aware of new varieties, seeds might not be available for sale where they live or they might be too expensive.

Possibly the most complex reason for slow variety turnover is risk vulnerability: some farmers simply can’t afford to take the risk of investing in something that might be good but could also disappoint. At the same time, seed companies also perceive a certain risk: they might not be interested in taking on an improved variety that trumps the seeds from older but more popular varieties they have on stock. For them, building and marketing a new brand of seeds requires significant investments.

Agricultural seed on sale by a vendor near Islamabad, Pakistan. For improved crop varieties to reach farmers, they usually must first reach local vendors like these, who form an essential link in the chain between researchers, seed producers and farmers. (Photo: M. DeFreese/CIMMYT)
Agricultural seed on sale by a vendor near Islamabad, Pakistan. For improved crop varieties to reach farmers, they usually must first reach local vendors like these, who form an essential link in the chain between researchers, seed producers and farmers. (Photo: M. DeFreese/CIMMYT)

New approaches are yielding results

Despite the complexity of the challenge, CIMMYT has been making progress, especially in Africa where slow variety turnover is creating roadblocks for increased food security and poverty alleviation.

Recent analysis of the weighted average age of CIMMYT-related improved maize varieties in 8 countries across eastern and southern Africa reveals that the overall weighted average age has decreased from 14.6 years in 2013 to 10.2 years in 2020. The remarkable progress in accelerating the rate of variety turnover and deploying the improved genetics — with climate resilience, nutritional-enhancement and grain yield — are benefiting more than eight million smallholders in Africa.

In Ethiopia, CIMMYT, EIAR and ICARDA’s work led to the adoption of improved rust-resistant varieties, corresponding productivity gains and economic benefits that, besides the urgent need to fight against the damaging rust epidemic, depended on a combination of enabling factors: pre-release seed multiplication, pro-active policies and rust awareness campaigns. The estimated income gain that farmers enjoyed due to adopting post-2010 varieties in 2016/2017 reached $48 million. For the country itself, the adoption of these varieties could save $65 million that otherwise would be spent on wheat imports.

Bill Gates echoes this in Chapter 9 of his new climate book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, as he describes CIMMYT and IITA’s drought-tolerant maize work: “[…] experts at CGIAR developed dozens of new maize varieties that could withstand drought conditions, each adapted to grow in specific regions of Africa. At first, many smallholder farmers were afraid to try new crop varieties. Understandably so. If you’re eking out a living, you won’t be eager to take a risk on seeds you’ve never planted before, because if they die, you have nothing to fall back on. But as experts worked with local farmers and seed dealers to explain the benefits of these new varieties, more and more people adopted them.”

Bidasem director general María Ester Rivas (center) stands for a photo with her seed processing team. Bidasem is a small seed company based in the city of Celaya in the central Mexican plains region known as the Bajío. Despite their small size, Bidasem and similar companies play an important role in reaching small farmers with improved seed that offers them better livelihoods. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)
Bidasem director general María Ester Rivas (center) stands for a photo with her seed processing team. Bidasem is a small seed company based in the city of Celaya in the central Mexican plains region known as the Bajío. Despite their small size, Bidasem and similar companies play an important role in reaching small farmers with improved seed that offers them better livelihoods. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)

Holistic action needed if we are to reach farmers with genetic innovations

Now more than ever, with increased frequency and intensification of erratic weather events on top of the complications of the COVID-19 pandemic, successful seed systems require the right investments, partnerships, efforts across disciplines, and enabling policies.

Varietal release and dissemination systems rely greatly on appropriate government policies and adoption of progressive seed laws and regulations. CGIAR’s commitment to farmers and the success of national seed systems is described in the recently launched 10-year strategy: “CGIAR will support effective seed systems by helping national governments and private sector companies and regulators build their capacities to play their roles successfully. New initiatives will be jointly designed along the seed distribution chain, including for regional seed registration, import and export procedures, efficient in-country trialing, registration and release of new varieties, and seed quality promotion through fit-for-purpose certification.”

In line with CGIAR’s ambitious goals, to provide farmers with a better service, small- and medium-size seed companies need to also be strengthened to become more market-oriented and dynamic. According to SPIA, helping local private seed dealers learn about new technology increases farm-level adoption by over 50% compared to the more commonly used approach, where public sector agricultural extension agents provide information about new seed to selected contact farmers.

CIMMYT socioeconomics and market experts are putting this in practice through working with agrodealers to develop retail strategies, such as targeted marketing materials, provision of in-store seed decision support and price incentives, to help both female and male farmers get the inputs that work best.

Within the new CGIAR, CIMMYT scientists will continue to work with partners to strongly improve the performance of wheat and maize in smallholder farmers’ fields. Concerted efforts from all actors conforming the entire seed system are essential to achieve our vision: to transform food systems for affordable, sufficient and healthy diets produced within planetary boundaries. Wheat and maize seed systems will form the basis to fulfill that vision and provide a tried and tested roadmap for other crops, including legumes, vegetables and fruits. Together, we can keep a finger on the pulse of farmers’ needs and build healthy diets for a better tomorrow from the ground up.

A farmer in Nepal operates a water pump for drip irrigation. (Photo: Sharad Maharjan/IMWI)

Digital groundwater monitoring

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Blogs.

A farmer in Nepal operates a water pump for drip irrigation. (Photo: Sharad Maharjan/IMWI)
A farmer in Nepal operates a water pump for drip irrigation. (Photo: Sharad Maharjan/IWMI)

Taken together, digital monitoring and readily available data on the status of groundwater resources provide a critical foundation for sustainable irrigation development. While much is known about surface water resources and hydrological and meteorological linkages between the Terai, Mid-Hills and Himalaya regions of the country, Nepal currently lacks a comprehensive system for groundwater resource monitoring.

To respond to this crucial information gap, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) are partnering with the Government of Nepal’s Groundwater Resources Development Board to conduct a pilot which will develop and test a potential groundwater monitoring system with the goal of identifying an approach which can be gradually scaled out after project completion.

To this end, the project team organized an Inception and Consultation Workshop, which took place virtually on October 14, 2020. This was the first in a series under the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) Nepal COVID-19 and Resilience project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Nepal, which supports farmers and rural economies in their response to COVID-19 and addresses, among others, various issues and ways forward for sustainable irrigation development.

The session aimed to introduce the digital groundwater monitoring pilot to local stakeholders, identify monitoring objectives and information needs, facilitate multi-stakeholder and inter-ministerial dialogue, and generate feedback and endorsement of the project plan. Participants were from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, and included members of local and national authorities, research centers and universities.

Participants meet virtually at the multi-stakeholder dialogue for Nepal’s Digital Groundwater Monitoring pilot (Photo: Tim Krupnik/CIMMYT)
Participants meet virtually at the multi-stakeholder dialogue for Nepal’s Digital Groundwater Monitoring pilot (Photo: Tim Krupnik/CIMMYT)

Madhukar Rajbhandari, director general of the Government of Nepal’s Department of Water Resources and Irrigation, opened the event and during his address highlighted the importance of groundwater irrigation for Nepal’s farming systems and livelihoods. He also captured the challenges which the country faces when developing groundwater irrigation, from polluted water resources through urbanization to lack of market access and the high maintenance costs of irrigation infrastructure. Rajbhandari noted that “agricultural and irrigation projects lack coordination” and expressed his hope that “through this pilot, the way is paved for a collaborative approach to develop practical groundwater solutions for farmers.”

The session introduced participants to the project and its background, leading breakout sessions for two groups: the first containing local, state and national government representatives; the second comprising farmers, researchers and members of industry. Each group was asked to identify the groundwater monitoring objectives and information needs that they would have as different types of users, and to provide feedback and recommendations to improve the project work plan.

The feedback showed that while government representatives are largely interested in developing a better understanding of the groundwater development potential, researchers and farmers are more concerned with possible discharge and water quality. Monitoring frequency was also identified as useful for daily to monthly timescales.

The group discussion revealed participants’ keen interest in consolidating and monitoring groundwater information, which highlights the importance of stakeholder engagement when developing pilots such as these, to ensure that when scaling is achieved, it caters to specific needs. Participants also expressed a strong interest in bringing the results of the project within the ambit of national policy, which would achieve the streamlining of data collection protocols for standardized, publicly accessible, data collection mechanisms.

“It is very encouraging to see such active participation and engagement from all the participants throughout the workshop,” noted Timothy Krupnik, project leader and a senior scientist at CIMMYT. “We look forward to maintaining this momentum, to support Nepal’s efforts in strengthening its capacity for sustainable irrigation.”

Douglas Mungai holds up soil on his farm in Murang’a county, Kenya. (Photo: Robert Neptune/TNC)

Crop breeding and soil management must go hand in hand

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Blogs.

Douglas Mungai holds up soil on his farm in Murang’a county, Kenya. (Photo: Robert Neptune/TNC)
Douglas Mungai holds up soil on his farm in Murang’a county, Kenya. (Photo: Robert Neptune/TNC)

There is a growing crisis beneath our feet. Scientists, soil specialists and policy-makers around the world are sounding the alarm about degrading soil conditions. And it is particularly stark in developing countries. In fact, about 40 per cent of soils in sub-Saharan Africa are already of poor quality.

Declining soil health causes poor crop yields, leading to further pressure on the soils as farmers struggle to meet food demands and eke out a living. Many farmers lack access to information or technologies to get out of this vicious cycle. If you are a farmer with the need to increase your yield in the face of these challenges, crop breeding and soil management offers a range of solutions as part of an Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) approach.

For instance, breeding programs which partner with CGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB) are working to deliver the best seed varieties for farmers to help them withstand harsh conditions and increase yields. Alongside this work, researchers are supporting farmers to adopt better agronomic practices, such as minimum tillage farming, crop rotation, proper spacing and planting date practices, the use of terracing or intercropping, or techniques to reduce water use.

Of course, breeding cannot happen in a vacuum. To protect soils and produce quality yields, these cropping measures should be closely matched to the best, context-appropriate soil management practices available to farmers, for instance around the type and timing of mineral fertilizer, along with organic sources like crop residues, compost or manure.

Indeed, a combination will bring the best results.  But most of the time accessing either improved variety or best agronomic practice represent a challenge for farmers in low income countries.

Here are three ways crop breeders can ensure they deliver the best seeds and create the best conditions for long-term crop production.

Include farmers, agronomic experts and extension services when defining product requirements

Strong connections among public breeding programs and extension and agronomic groups are vital. There is growing discussion regarding how to broaden our work to better consider all the factors that contribute to a successful breeding scheme: genotyping, environment and management (GxExM). However, defining the management component is not easy. Do we breed for conditions that farmers are actually working with, or breed for conditions that they should adopt?

A key to answer this question is a strong breeding team defining the traits needed and wanted by farmers. To design the best product profile, it is imperative to involve extension teams and other groups that work on the development of sustainable agronomic practices.

A farmer inspects a drought-tolerant bean plant on a trial site in Malawi. (Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT)
A man inspects a drought-tolerant bean plant on a trial site in Malawi. (Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT)

Properly manage research stations

Attention also needs to focus on the sustainability practices within research stations. It is all too easy to find degraded soil in public research stations. There are many reasons for this: inadequate long-term planning, lack of organized management structures, insufficient connections between breeding and agronomic teams, and lack of resources, to name a few.

Public research stations must serve as an example for the farmers in that specific region. Thus, it is not only what products we develop that matters, but also how we develop them. If we develop a good variety at the research station, but do so without adopting good agronomic practice, what example has been set for farmers and future generations? We need to ensure we invest in the best soil management practices along every step of the research phase.

Breed for specific soil characteristics

Once the breeding target is known, breeding for specific soil conditions is critical. This means developing varieties for soil conditions such as nutrient deficiencies or high salinity levels. CGIAR breeding programs have put in tremendous efforts with great impact here.

For example, AfricaRice and partners developed rice varieties branded ARICA (Advanced Rice Varieties for Africa) to be salt or iron toxicity tolerant, among other traits. This is helping farmers who farm under predominantly rainfed conditions, in which soils and yields are threatened by floods, droughts and toxicity.

Another standout product is Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA), led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Breeders have developed varieties that can thrive in low soil fertility conditions, along with resistance to other stresses such as pests and drought. The project has seen the adoption of new maize varieties by more than six million households across 13 countries, with some farms increasing yields by over 150 per cent.

Our soils depend on breeding for the future. Breeding is showing real results for improving yields, delivering better food, and increasing smallholder incomes. But its impact on ecosystems could go either way. With the right investments in relationships, good research practices, and delivering varieties matched to particular soil conditions, we can breed for the present and for the future.

It is time to invest in both crop breeding and soil management — as one vital package of innovations.

A young man uses a precision spreader to distribute fertilizer in a field. (Photo: Mahesh Maske/CIMMYT)

Too much or never enough

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Blogs.

A young man uses a precision spreader to distribute fertilizer in a field. (Photo: Mahesh Maske/CIMMYT)
A young man uses a precision spreader to distribute fertilizer in a field in India. (Photo: Mahesh Maske/CIMMYT)

Although nitrogen has helped in contributing to human dietary needs, there are still large areas of the world — namely sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia — that remain short of the amounts they need to achieve food and nutritional security.  

Conversely, synthetic nitrogen has become increasingly crucial in today’s intensive agricultural systems, but nearly half of the fertilizer nitrogen applied on farms leaks into the surrounding environment. It is possible that we have now transgressed the sustainable planetary boundary for nitrogen, and this could have devasting consequences.  

Given this conflicting dual role this compound plays in agricultural systems and the environment — both positive and negative — the nitrogen challenge is highly relevant across most of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations. 

Facing a global challenge 

The challenge of nitrogen management globally is to provide enough nitrogen to meet global food security while minimizing the flow of unused nitrogen to the environment. One of the key approaches to addressing this is to improve nitrogen use efficiency – which not only enhances crop productivity but also minimizes environmental losses through careful agronomic management – and measures to improve soil quality over time. 

Globally, average nitrogen use efficiency does not exceed 50%. Estimates show that a nitrogen use efficiency will need to reach 67% by 2050 if we are to meet global food demand while keeping surplus nitrogen within the limits for maintaining acceptable air and water qualities to meet the SDGs. 

This target may seem ambitious — especially given the biological limits to achieving a very high nitrogen use efficiency — but it is achievable.  

Earlier this year, J.K. Ladha and I co-authored a paper outlining the links between nitrogen fertilizer use in agricultural production systems and various SDGs. For instance, agricultural systems with suboptimal nitrogen application are characterized with low crop productivity, spiraling into the vicious cycle of poverty, malnutrition and poor economy, a case most common in the sub-Saharan Africa. These essentially relate to SDG 1 (no-poverty), 2 (zero-hunger), 3 (good health and well-being), 8 (decent work and economic growth) and 15 (life on land).  

On the other hand, excess or imbalanced fertilizer nitrogen in parts of China and India have led to serious environmental hazards, degradation of land and economic loss. Balancing the amount of N input in these regions will contribute in achieving the SDG 13 (climate action). Equally, meeting some of the additional SDGs (5, gender equality; 6, clean water and sanitation; 10: reduced inequalities; etc.) requires optimum nitrogen application, which will also ensure “responsible consumption and production” (SDG 12). 

A diagram shows the impact of fertilizer nitrogen use on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. (Graphic: CIMMYT/Adapted from CCAFS)
A diagram shows the impact of fertilizer nitrogen use on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. (Graphic: CIMMYT/Adapted from CCAFS)

So, how can we achieve this?  

Increased research quantifying the linkages between nitrogen management and the SDGs will be important, but the key to success lies with raising awareness among policy makers, stakeholders and farmers. 

Most agricultural soils have considerably depleted levels of soil organic matter. This is a central problem that results in agroecosystems losing their ability to retain and regulate the supply of nitrogen to crops. However, poor knowledge and heavy price subsidies are equally to blame for the excess or misuse of nitrogen.  

While numerous technologies for efficient nitrogen management have been developed, delivery mechanisms need to be strengthened, as does encouragement for spontaneous adaptation and adoption by farmers. Equally — or perhaps more importantly — there is a need to create awareness and educate senior officials, policy makers, extension personnel and farmers on the impact of appropriate soil management and intelligent use of nitrogen fertilizer, in conjunction with biologically integrated strategies for soil fertility maintenance.  

An effective and aggressive campaign against the misuse of nitrogen will be effective in areas where the compound is overused, while greater accessibility of nitrogen fertilizer and policies to move farmers towards soil quality improvement will be essential in regions where nitrogen use is currently sub-optimal. 

It is only through this combination of approaches to improved system management, agricultural policies and awareness raising campaigns that we can sufficiently improve nitrogen use efficiency — and meet the SDGs before it’s too late. 

Read the full study “Achieving the sustainable development goals in agriculture: the crucial role of nitrogen in cereal-based systems” in Advances in Agronomy. 

Maize and wheat fields at the El Batán experimental station. (Photo: CIMMYT/Alfonso Cortés)

Scientific opportunities and challenges

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Blogs.

Maize and wheat fields at the El Batán experimental station. (Photo: CIMMYT/Alfonso Cortés)
Maize and wheat fields at the El Batán experimental station. (Photo: CIMMYT/Alfonso Cortés)

The first meetings of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) wheat and maize science and technical steering committees — WSC and MSC, respectively — took place virtually on 25th and 28th September.

Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) sit on both committees. In the WSC they are joined by wheat experts from national agricultural research systems (NARS) in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, India, and Nepal; and from Angus Wheat Consultants, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), HarvestPlus, Kansas State University and the Roslin Institute.

Similarly, the MSC includes maize experts from NARS in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Zambia; and from Corteva, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), SeedCo, Syngenta, the University of Queensland, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

During the meetings, attendees discussed scientific challenges and opportunities for AGG, and developed specific recommendations pertaining to key topics including breeding and testing scheme optimization, effective engagement with partners and capacity development in the time of COVID-19, and seed systems and gender intentionality.

Discussion groups noted, for example, the need to address family structure in yield trials, to strengthen collaboration with national partners, and to develop effective regional on-farm testing strategies. Interestingly, most of the recommendations are applicable and valuable for both crop teams, and this is a clear example of the synergies we expect from combining maize and wheat within the AGG project.

All the recommendations will be further analyzed by the AGG teams during coming months, and project activities will be adjusted or implemented as appropriate. A brief report will be submitted to the respective STSCs prior to the second meetings of these committees, likely in late March 2021.

Usman Kadir and his family de-husk maize on their farm in Ethiopia. (Photo: Apollo Habtamu/ILRI)

Faster results at a lower cost

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Blogs.

Usman Kadir and his family de-husk maize on their farm in Ethiopia. (Photo: Apollo Habtamu/ILRI)
Usman Kadir and his family de-husk maize on their farm in Ethiopia. (Photo: Apollo Habtamu/ILRI)

The current COVID-19 pandemic — and associated measures to reduce its spread — is projected to increase extreme poverty by 20%, with the largest increase in sub-Saharan Africa, where 80 million more people would join the ranks of the extreme poor. Accelerating the process of delivering high-quality, climate resilient and nutritionally enriched maize seed is now more critical than ever.However, developing these varieties is not a rapid or cheap process. Over the course of five years, researchers on the Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) project developed a range of tools and technologies to reduce the overall cost of producing a new high yielding, stress tolerant hybrids for smallholder farmers in the region.

Maize breeding starts with crossing two parents and essentially ends after testing their great-great-great-great grandchildren in as many locations as possible. This allows plant breeders to identify the new varieties which will perform well in the conditions faced by their target beneficiaries — in the case of STMA, smallholder farmers in Africa. In other parts of the world, new tools and technologies are routinely added to breeding programs to help reduce the cost and time it takes to produce new varieties.

Scientists on the STMA project focused on testing and scaling new tools specifically for maize breeding programs in sub-Saharan Africa and began by taking a closer look at the most expensive part of the breeding process: phenotyping or collecting precise information on plant traits.

“Within a breeding program, phenotyping is the single most costly step,” explains CIMMYT molecular breeder Manje Gowda. “Molecular technologies provide opportunities to reduce this cost.” The research team tested two methods to speed up this step and make it more cost efficient: forward breeding and genomic selection.

Speeding up a long and costly process

Two important traits maize breeders look for in their plant progeny are susceptibility for two key maize diseases: maize streak virus (MSV) and maize lethal necrosis (MLN). In traditional breeding, breeders must extensively test lines in the field for their susceptibility to these diseases, and then remove them before the next round of crossing. This carries a significant cost.

Using a process called forward breeding, scientists can screen for DNA markers known to be associated with susceptibility to these diseases. This allows breeders to identify lines vulnerable to these diseases and remove them before field testing.

Scientists on the STMA project applied this approach in CIMMYT breeding programs in eastern and southern Africa over the past four years, saving an estimated $300,000 in field costs. Under the AGG project, research will now focus on applying forward breeding to identify susceptibility for another fast-spreading maize pest, fall armyworm, as well as extending use of this method in partners’ breeding programs.

A CIMMYT research associate inspects maize damaged by fall army worm at KALRO Kiboko Research Station in Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
A CIMMYT research associate inspects maize damaged by fall army worm at KALRO Kiboko Research Station in Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Forward breeding is ideal for “simple” traits which are controlled by a few genes. However, other desired traits, such as tolerance to drought and low nitrogen stress, are genetically complex. Many genes control these traits, with each gene only contributing a little towards overall stress tolerance.

In this case, a technology called genomic selection can be of service. Genomic selection estimates the performance, or breeding value, of a line based largely on genetic information. Genomic selection uses more than 5,000 DNA markers, without the need for precise information about what traits these markers control. The method is ideal for complicated traits such as drought and low nitrogen stress tolerance, where hundreds of small effect genes together largely control how a plant grows under these stresses.

CIMMYT scientists used this technology to select and advance lines for drought tolerance. They then tested these lines and compared their performance in the field to lines selected conventionally. They found that the two sets of resulting hybrid varieties — those advanced using genomic selection and those advanced in the field — showed the same grain yield under drought stress. However, genomic selection only required phenotyping half the lines, achieving the same outcome with half the budget.

Innovations in the field

While DNA technology is reducing the need for extensive field phenotyping, research is also underway to reduce the cost of the remaining necessary phenotyping in the field.

Typically, many traits — such as plant height or leaf drying under drought stress — are measured by hand, using the labor of large teams of people. For example, plant and ear height is traditionally measured by a team of two using a meter stick.

Mainasarra Zaman-Allah, a CIMMYT abiotic stress phenotyping specialist based in Zimbabwe, has been developing faster, more accurate ways to measure these traits.  He implemented the use of a small laser sensor to measure plant and ear height which only requires one person. This simple yet cost effective tool has reduced the cost of measuring these traits by almost 60%. Similarly, using a UAV-based platform has reduced the cost of measuring a trait known as canopy senescence — leaf drying associated with drought susceptibility —by over 65%.

The identification of plants which are tolerant to key diseases has traditionally involved scoring the severity of disease in each plot visually, but walking through hundreds of plots daily can lead to errors in human judgement. To combat this, CIMMYT biotic stress phenotyping specialist LM Suresh collaborated with Jose Luis Araus and Shawn Kefauver, scientists at the University of Barcelona, Spain, to develop image analysis software that can quantify disease severity, thereby avoiding problems associated with unintentional human bias.

Plant breeders need uniform, or homozygous, lines for selection. With conventional plant breeding this is difficult: no matter how many times you cross a line, a small amount of DNA will remain heterozygous — having two different alleles of a particular gene — and reduce accuracy in line selection.

A technology called doubled haploid allows breeders to develop homozygous lines within two seasons. While this technology has been used in temperate maize breeding programs since the 1990s, it was not available for tropical environments until 10 years ago. In 2013, thanks to joint work with Kenyan partners at the CIMMYT Doubled Haploid facility in Kiboko, this technology was made available to African breeding programs. Now Vijay Chaikam, a CIMMYT doubled haploid specialist based in Kenya, is working towards reducing the cost of this technology as well.

The efforts begun by the STMA research team is now continuing under the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) project. As this work is carried forward, the next crucial step is ensuring that the next generation of African maize breeders have access to these technologies and tools.

“Improving national breeding programs will really drive success in raising maize yields in the stress prone environments faced by many farmers in our target countries,” says Mike Olsen, CIMMYT’s upstream trait pipeline coordinator. Under AGG, in collaboration with the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Program, these tools will be scaled out.

Dharma Devi Chaudhary (right) stands next to her flourishing cauliflower crop in Kailali, Nepal. (Photo: Uttam Kunwar/CIMMYT)

Balanced fertilizer application boosts smallholder incomes

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Blogs.

Agriculture is largely feminized in Nepal, where over 80% of women are employed in the sector. As a result of the skills gap caused by male out-migration, many women farmers are now making conscious efforts to learn techniques that can help improve yields and generate greater income — such as balanced fertilizer application — with support from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Studies have shown that many farmers lack knowledge of fertilizer management, but balanced fertilizer application using the right ratio of nutrients is key to helping crops thrive Through the Nepal Seed and Fertilizer (NSAF) project, CIMMYT researchers are working towards promoting precision nutrient management through multiple trials and demonstrations in farmers’ fields.

Through this initiative, Dharma Devi Chaudhary, a smallholder farmer from Kailali district, has been able to increase her annual earnings by adopting balanced fertilizer application in cauliflower cultivation — a key cash crop for the winter season in Nepal’s Terai region.

Her inspiration to use micronutrients such as boron came from the results she witnessed during a CIMMYT-supported demonstration conducted on her land in 2018. During the demonstration, Chaudhary learned the principles of the four ‘Rs’ of nutrient stewardship: the right rate, the right time, the right source and the right placement of fertilizers. She became familiar with different types of fertilizer and the amount to be used, as well as the appropriate time and place to apply urea top-dressing, diammonium phosphate (DAP) and muriate of potash (MoP) for optimal utilization by the plant.

Chaudhary also learned how boron application can increase crop yields while helping prevent plant diseases, especially in cauliflower, where boron deficiency can lead to a disorder known as ‘dead heart’ and cause significant yield loss. This is particularly useful knowledge for farmers in Nepal, where the boron content in soil is generally low.

A digital soil map developed by the NSAF project shows medium to high boron deficiency in Kailali district and the surrounding area. (Map: CIMMYT)
A digital soil map developed by researchers on the NSAF project shows medium-to-high boron deficiency in Kailali district. (Map: CIMMYT)

Benefitting from best practices

Cauliflower is cultivated on 615 hectares of land across Kailali and produces a yield of 15 tons per hectare — far less than the potential yield of 35-40 tons. As a standard practice, farmers in the area have been applying nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (NPK) at a ratio of 27: 27.6: 9 kilograms per hectare and three tons of farmyard manure per hectare. During a CIMMYT-led demonstration on a small parcel of land, Chaudhary observed that balanced fertilizer application yielded about 64% more than when using her traditional practices, fetching her an income of $180 that season compared to her usual $109.

Following this demonstration, Chaudhary decided to independently cultivate cauliflower on a plot of 500 square meters, where she applied farmyard manure two weeks before transplantation and then used DAP, MOP, boron and zinc as a basal application during transplanting. She also applied urea in split doses, first at 25 days and then 50 days after transplantation. Using this technique, Chaudhary was able to yield 46 tons of cauliflower per hectare, nearly twice as much as was yielded by farmers using traditional practices. As a result, she was able to generate an income increase of $800 for her household, compared to the previous season’s earnings.

“I was able to buy education resources, clothing and more food supplies for my children with the additional income I earned from selling cauliflower last year,” said Chaudhary. “Learning about the benefits of using micronutrients is essential for smallholder farmers like me who are looking for ways to improve their farming business.”

Smallholder farmers tend to be risk averse, which can make technology adoption difficult. However, on-farm demonstrations help reduce the risks farmers perceive and facilitate new technology adoption easily by exhibiting encouraging results.

Chaudhary now serves as a lead farmer at Janasewa Krishak Multi-purpose Cooperative and supports the organization by disseminating knowledge on balanced fertilizer management practices to hundreds of farmers in her community. After seeing the impact of adopting the recommended techniques, the use of balanced fertilizer is reaping benefits for other farmers in her district, helping them achieve better income from higher crop yields and maintain soil fertility in their area.

Dharma Devi Chaudhary (right) stands next to her flourishing cauliflower crop in Kailali, Nepal. (Photo: Uttam Kunwar/CIMMYT)
Dharma Devi Chaudhary (right) stands next to her flourishing cauliflower crop in Kailali, Nepal. (Photo: Uttam Kunwar/CIMMYT)
Shivali Sharma (right), pre-breeding research leader at ICRISAT, explains pearl millet pollination techniques to visitors at the ICRISAT campus. (Photo: Michael Major/Crop Trust)

CGIAR breeding programs need more than just tech upgrades — they need change management

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in Blogs.

Shivali Sharma (right), pre-breeding research leader at ICRISAT, explains pearl millet pollination techniques to visitors at the ICRISAT campus. (Photo: Michael Major/Crop Trust)
Shivali Sharma (right), pre-breeding research leader at ICRISAT, explains pearl millet pollination techniques to visitors at the ICRISAT campus. (Photo: Michael Major/Crop Trust)

Did you know that vehicles with steering wheels on the left are often cheaper to make than right hand-drive cars? They are mass-produced in much larger batches. But many drivers and governments were just unwilling to change to this dominant design.

We humans are not so adept at change. Instead of embracing novel ways of thinking, we’d rather stick to the old ones. We cling onto what is safe, what is familiar or what we are already good at. We see this in the workplace, in our personal lives and in society as a whole. The world still can’t agree on using the metric system!

Within the domain of plant breeding, we are both driving and responding to rapid change. It is mesmerizing to visualize the changes gene editing is about to deliver, not to mention what genomic prediction is already delivering. We are being challenged on every single aspect of plant breeding.

Change of a different sort is about to cascade through the world’s main network of agricultural research centers — which includes centers at the global forefront of plant breeding. CGIAR is embarking on a transition into a much more integrated One CGIAR organization.

An overarching goal of this integration is no other than to ensure breeding improvement plans — and the changes they aim to drive — are implemented as seamlessly and quickly as possible. The Excellence in Breeding Platform is both driving and supporting this change among CGIAR centers and international and national partners.

The case for change in plant breeding programs

Plant breeders are in fact missing some vital opportunities. For example, there continues to be a rather limited use of real market insights to inform resource allocation within programs. This in turn results in a selection of traits weighted towards what breeders and associated scientists think are needed, which may not necessarily meet actual market needs.

With new goals and structures foisting change on breeding programs, their success depends on one thing above all else: savvy change management. Fortunately, there are some steps we can take to manage change well.

1. Drive out complacency with a sense of urgency

Most change management efforts fail when insufficient urgency is built early enough in the process. But this urgency can be the most effective antidote against complacency. Organizations that have either secured a very dominant and successful position in the market, or lack effective and threatening competition, can very easily slide into a sense of self-righteousness and an inward-looking perspective.

Although CGIAR breeding efforts could be thought of as an example of the latter — lacking competitors — seasoned managers in industry and marketing like to think that “there is no such thing as a lack of competition.” Funding, for one, is by nature a competition. Funding agencies might look at other fields and/or players to support if they deliver a higher return on investment, not only financially but also socially.

The impact of high complacency cultures can be seen in plant breeding. For instance, a rather large number of breeding programs still lack a high enough rate of what is called “elite x elite crosses.” Unless breeding pipelines run on such crosses, they achieve less than optimal genetic gains and delivery at the field. And donors get a lesser return on investment. Moreover, this complacency means not delivering the best varieties smallholder farmers need to support their families.

The parable of the slowly boiling frog is oftentimes used to portray the consequences of complacency. In any complacency-filled organization, no matter how intelligent, educated and well-intentioned its members are, change is often dead on arrival.

You may already have an inkling of what it takes to create enough urgency: bold and sometimes risk-taking leadership. For instance, some years ago, Unilever was one of the first global companies to decouple its financial growth from its environmental footprint, and it established the then outrageous sounding goal of halving its environmental footprint by 2030.

A good urgency-raising example that could inspire our line of work may be this one: let’s renew at least 50% of a current portfolio of cultivars within the next five years in a given Target Population of Environments (TPE). A second could be: let’s deploy sparse testing in at least 90% of field trials within six months.

To create urgency we need to articulate the gap between opportunities available, and the current ability of the organization to pursue such opportunities. But we must also spell out — upfront — the risks if we don’t bridge such a gap.

2. Build a guiding coalition

These days, driving change is too complex to be led by single individuals. We live in fast-paced times. And situations are full of evident and not-so-evident links among myriad moving pieces. We cannot expect one individual to be able to gather enough information fast enough, and then to consistently make the right decisions. Instead, a guiding coalition is needed, with sufficient determination, commitment and thought diversity. Such coalitions require five traits: a position of power, credibility, leadership, expertise, and individual egos held at bay. Once such teams are assembled, the main drivers of success are having a common goal, and enough trust and safety so the real issues are unearthed and addressed.

3. Develop a vision and a strategy

When leadership tries to drive change by applying dated approaches such as micromanagement or an authoritarian stance, plans are likely to fail upon arrival. These methods may breed compliance, but certainly not a fierce and sincere commitment. Because of the extreme uncertainty and organizational survival being at stake, crafting a vision plays a bigger role during change management than during business as usual.

Two main aspects of developing a vision are especially relevant to CGIAR breeding programs.

Firstly, academic and R&D organizations often keep doing what has worked well in the past. But any change management effort ought to be very explicit about what it is known as “strategic dismissal.” This is the ability to stop and phase out activities no longer providing enough value, or where the outcomes of which are not wanted/needed by funding agencies or beneficiaries. For instance, programs investing in developing hybrid cultivars for the first time in a crop could downsize previous cultivar development efforts. Alternatively, they could scale down efforts in countries that have their own strong local breeding programs. These changes are no small feat, but the inability to phase out activities clashes with the very first posit of any effective strategy: don’t just “keep doing.”

Secondly, a vision provides an invisible fabric that pulls all efforts together in a cohesive way. Therefore, its scope is much wider than most people realize, stretching across strategies, plans, and the budgets and means needed to exert change at the depth and speed needed.

4. Encourage constructive confrontation

One characteristic of a complacent organization stands out: a rather low-candor, low-confrontation culture. No one needs excessively high-confrontation, “take no prisoners”, toxic cultures. But low-confrontation cultures tend to breed under-performance, status quo maintenance and deeply ingrained complacency. And perhaps the most negative consequence is that they fail to instill a strong enough sense of ownership and accountability among its members.

Change is coming (it has arrived already…)

Yes, change is hard, but it is coming. Maybe not for drivers of right-hand drive cars. But certainly for those who want to modernize and optimize their breeding programs. Now is the time for us to invest in a smart and forward-looking change management processes.

Hugo Campos is the Chair of the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform Steering Committee and Director of Research for the International Potato Center (CIP). This blog was developed with support from EiB’s communications lead Adam Hunt.This is the second in a series of blogs on change in the breeding domain. See the first.

A farmer in Banke district during monsoon season drought in 2017. (Photo: Anton Urfels/CIMMYT)

Supporting smallholder farmers to better combat drought

Written by Alison Doody on . Posted in Blogs.

A farmer in Banke district during monsoon season drought in 2017. (Photo: Anton Urfels/CIMMYT)
A farmer in Banke district during monsoon season drought in 2017. (Photo: Anton Urfels/CIMMYT)

Researchers from the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project have been exploring the drivers of smallholder farmers’ underuse of groundwater wells to combat in-season drought during the monsoon rice season in Nepal’s breadbasket — the Terai region.

Their study, published in Water International, finds that several barriers inhibit full use of groundwater irrigation infrastructure.

Inconsistent rainfall has repeatedly damaged paddy crops in Nepal over the last years, even though most agricultural lands are equipped with groundwater wells. This has contributed to missed national policy targets of food self-sufficiency and slow growth in cereal productivity.

A key issue is farmers’ tendency to schedule irrigation very late in an effort to save their crops when in-season drought occurs. By this time, rice crops have already been damaged by lack of water and yields will be decreased. High irrigation costs, especially due to pumping equipment rental rates, are a major factor of this aversion to investment. Private irrigation is also a relatively new technology for many farmers making water use decisions.

After farmers decide to irrigate, queuing for pumpsets, tubewells, and repairs and maintenance further increases irrigation delays. Some villages have only a handful of pumpsets or tubewells shared between all households, so it can take up to two weeks for everybody to irrigate.

To address these issues, CSISA provides suggestions for three support pathways to support farmers in combatting monsoon season drought:

1. Raise awareness of the importance of timely irrigation

To avoid yield penalties and improve operational efficiency through better-matched pumpsets, CSISA has raised awareness through agricultural FM radio broadcasts on the strong relationship between water stress and yield penalties. Messages highlight the role of the plough pan in keeping infiltration rates low and encouraging farmers to improve irrigation scheduling. Anecdotal evidence suggests that improved pump selection may decrease irrigation costs by up to 50%, and CSISA has initiated follow-up studies to develop recommendations for farmers.

Social interaction is necessary for purchasing fuel, transporting and installing pumps, or sharing irrigation equipment. These activities pose risks of COVID-19 exposure and transmission and therefore require farmers to follow increased safety and hygiene practices, which may cause further delays to irrigation. Raising awareness about the importance of timely irrigation therefore needs to go hand in hand with the promotion of safe and hygienic irrigation practices. This information has been streamlined into CSISA’s ongoing partnerships and FM broadcasts.

2. Improve community-level water markets through increased focus on drought preparedness and overcoming financial constraints

Farmers can save time by taking an anticipatory approach to the terms and conditions of rentals, instead of negotiating them when cracks in the soil are already large. Many farmers reported that pump owners are reluctant to rent out pumpsets if renters cannot pay up front. Given the seasonality of cash flows in agriculture, pro-poor and low interest credit provisions are likely to further smoothen community-level water markets.

Quantified ethnographic-decision tree based on households’ surveys of smallholder decision to use groundwater irrigation in Nepal’s Terai. (Graphic: Urfels et al. (2020))
Quantified ethnographic-decision tree based on households’ surveys of smallholder decision to use groundwater irrigation in Nepal’s Terai. (Graphic: Urfels et al., 2020)

3. Prioritize regional investment

The study shows that delay factors differ across districts and that selectively targeted interventions will be most useful to provide high returns to investments. For example, farmers in Kailali reported that land access issues — due to use of large bullock carts to transport pumpsets — and fuel shortages constitute a barrier for 10% and 39% of the farmers, while in Rupandehi, maintenance and tubewell availability were reported to be of greater importance.

As drought is increasingly threatening paddy production in Nepal’s Terai region, CSISA’s research shows that several support pathways exist to support farmers in combatting droughts. Sustainable water use can only be brought up to a scale where it benefits most farmers if all available tools including electrification, solar pumps and improved water level monitoring are deployed to provide benefits to a wide range of farmers.

Read the study:
Drivers of groundwater utilization in water-limited rice production systems in Nepal

Kiyasi Gwalale walking through her baby trial in Chebvute, Masvingo. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT

When mothers learn from babies

Written by Alison Doody on . Posted in Blogs.

Kiyasi Gwalale walking through her baby trial in Chebvute, Masvingo. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT
Kiyasi Gwalale walking through her baby trial in Chebvute, Masvingo. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT

It was an early morning on March 12, 2020, when we entered Kiyasi Gwalale’s field in the Chebvute area of Masvingo, southern Zimbabwe. Gwalale participates in the Zambuko Livelihoods Initiative, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Zambuko initiative aims to increase rural resilience against the negative effects of climate change. More than 70% of smallholders in Zimbabwe farm on sandy soils that are low in soil fertility and are increasingly affected by the vagaries of climate. The Gwalale family is an example of one of the millions affected.

In Chebvute, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has established trials to test the effectiveness and productivity of conservation agriculture and climate resilient crop species since 2018. This has been in the form of “mother and baby” trials.

A traditional tool of breeders, “mother trials” show different technologies to farmers to allow them to select the best option. In Chebvute, these trials were amplified to demonstrate farmers’ crop management practices such as conservation agriculture, crop rotation with legumes and different drought-resilient crop varieties.

A baby trial with DT maize, cowpea and white sorghum in Chebvute. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT
A baby trial with DT maize, cowpea and white sorghum in Chebvute. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT

Baby trial farmers taking after their ‘mothers’

Since 2019, the best options have been taken on by follower farmers in so called “baby trials”, where they use a subset from the mother trials to gain first-hand experience with the technology. Learning by doing is a central concept of this approach.

Gwalale as a “baby trial farmer” learned from the mother trials that drought-tolerant maize varieties out-yield traditional varieties under conservation agriculture, but need to be rotated with legumes to also improve the soil and the nutrition of the farm household. In addition, she realized that planting white sorghum is a drought-resilient strategy in this area as small grains are less affected by in-season dry-spells.

Gwalale and her family have been resident in Chebvute for 15 years but farm only on 0.4 ha of land. With her husband and three children, she grows maize, sorghum, groundnuts and Bambara nuts. What she gets from these fields is barely enough to survive.

In the 2019/20 cropping season, a devastating drought lasting from mid-December to mid-January destroyed all her hopes that this year would be a better season. Instead, she went on an educational journey to find out how improved farming practices can make a difference in her own life.

“We planted this baby trial for the first time in December 2019, as we had seen from the nearby mother trials that these varieties planted under no-tillage seem to grow better than our own. We planted the baby at the same times as our own crops, but instead of tilling the soil and clearing the land, which we are used to, we just planted in riplines without tillage and covered the soil with mulch,” explains Gwalale.

“When the drought came, all my other crops in the tilled fields started to wilt and die — some did not even germinate. We could not believe what was happening in this baby trial”.

CIMMYT scientist Christian Thierfielder pleased with the results in another baby trial plot in Chebvute. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT
CIMMYT scientist Christian Thierfielder pleased with the results in another baby trial plot in Chebvute. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT

Resounding results in the baby trial

All crops in the baby trial survived the dry-spell and when the rains started to fall again in January, they continued to grow very well. Gwalale replanted the crops in the affected fields but they never caught up with the baby trial. Even after using the ripper to make more riplines, it was too late to experience the same wonder seen in the baby trial. “For now, we are yet to see how much we will get from this small field, but we learned a big lesson and want to expand our land area with this way of planting next year,” she says.

More than 200 baby trial farmers in Chebvute, the majority of which are women, have experienced the same in their own baby trials and realized that it does not take much effort to achieve food security.

Timely planting, conserving the soil and the moisture with conservation agriculture, effective weeding and application of adequate plant nutrients are the key ingredients of success. This can be learned effectively in a small plot such as a baby trial. Farmers have realized that it is possible to make a difference when they apply the principles of sustainable agriculture in their farming systems. The interventions introduced will help them to become more climate-resilient and ultimately more food secure.

A woman sells maize at the market in Sidameika Tura, Arsi Negele, Ethiopia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Don’t forget about the impact of COVID-19 on the rural poor and on food security

Written by Mary Donovan on . Posted in Blogs.

A woman sells maize at the market in Sidameika Tura, Arsi Negele, Ethiopia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
A woman sells maize at the market in Sidameika Tura, Arsi Negele, Ethiopia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views or position of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

While all eyes are on Lombardy, Madrid, New York and Wuhan, what do we know about the impact of COVID-19 on the rural poor and on food security in developing countries? How can the impact of the crisis be moderated? What positive breakthroughs could be provoked by this shock to move us into a better “new normal”? What can donors and implementing organizations do to support low- and middle-income countries during and beyond this crisis?

Members of the Agriculture and Rural Development working group of the international Scaling Up community of practice held a virtual meeting to discuss these questions and how scaling-up innovations could help to recover from the current crisis and mitigate future ones.

Poor rural communities are particularly vulnerable

When it comes to a highly contagious disease, being in a rural area sounds better than being in a busy city, but that is a deceptive impression. Smallholder farmers often are older than average and hence more vulnerable to the virus, and they have less access to health services.

They also depend on field laborers that are not able to travel from surrounding villages to help with planting, weeding and harvesting. To process crops, smallholder farmers need to transport crops to processing centers, which may be closed, as are the markets where they obtain agricultural inputs or sell farm products. Large international agrobusiness firms, which supply inputs and purchase local famers’ products may withdraw, at least temporarily, from the rural economies. There are already reports of farmers feeding cattle strawberries and broccoli in India, as they are unable to get their goods to the market.

Most farmers also depend on non-farm and off-farm activities for their livelihoods, as they may be field laborers for other farmers, work in the processing industry or work in construction. Interrupted transportation and closures pose serious challenges to maintain safe business continuity throughout the rural economy. The risk is not only that immediate rural production, food deliveries, exports, employment and incomes will collapse, but also that planting for next year’s crops will be disrupted.

It is key to differentiate between global and local supply chains, which will suffer in different ways. For example, in Uganda, supermarkets are open but small, informal markets are closed. In past crises, governments have focused on the survival of global value chains over local ones. Small, rural businesses are more likely to close permanently than large international ones.

Globally, international support for agriculture and rural development has been lagging in recent years.  Today, the international support from aid agencies and NGOs is interrupted, as travels are restricted and community meetings are prohibited. With increased donor attention to a domestic and international health crisis, aid for rural communities may drop precipitously.

Men transport wheat straw on donkey karts in Ethiopia’s Dodula district. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Men transport wheat straw on donkey karts in Ethiopia’s Dodula district. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

Opportunities for an improved “new normal” as we respond to the crisis

The short-term response to help minimize the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the rural poor is critical, but we also need to support the shaping of a “new normal” where rural food systems are resilient, profitable and inclusive for poor rural communities. Members of the Scaling Up community of practice explored various ideas.

First, the COVID-19 pandemic could present opportunities to break silos and show how closely health and agriculture are related.

“COVID-19 cuts across sectors and jurisdictions in ways that single organizations and established governance structures are ill-equipped to accommodate,” said Larry Cooley, Scaling Expert and Founder and President Emeritus of Management Systems International (MSI)

For example, rural agricultural extension networks could be used to disseminate information on health awareness and education around COVID-19 and collect data on local impacts. This may cause and provide relief in the short term, but may also provide opportunities for collaboration in the long run.

“Our agricultural networks go deep into the rural areas and we are training our agri-entrepreneurs in India to disseminate health messages, products and services to help address COVID-19,” said Simon Winter, Executive Director of the Syngenta Foundation.

“At the African Development Bank we are providing emergency relief finance and re-purposing funding to have a link with COVID-19,” said Atsuko Toda, the bank’s Director of Agricultural Finance and Rural Development.

Second, a “new normal” could also mean an even stronger independence from externally funded projects, experts and solutions to more local ownership and expertise in rural areas, something that the community of practice has been promoting strongly. We could help to support more autonomy of the farmer, a strong local market and scale-up local value chains. Strengthening the capacity of small and medium enterprises linking farmers to urban markets could help ensure stability in future economic shocks.

“Governments and donor ‘projects’ looked too much at export and global value chains. I see great opportunities to scale up local and regional input and output value chains that benefit local farmers and small and medium enterprises,” said Margret Will, expert on value chains.

Third, the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to accelerate the scaling of innovations.

“Lack of access to labor could be disrupting harvesting and planting in our Feed the Future countries, accelerating an already predominant trend of migration, especially among the young, to urban areas. We see a looming need for mechanization of farms at scale, using mini-tillers, planters, harvesters and other time- and labor-saving equipment,” said Mark Huisenga, Senior Program Manager for the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security.

Masimba Mawire collects bare maize cobs after removing the grain using a mechanized maize sheller in Zimbabwe. (Photo: Matthew O’Leary/CIMMYT)
Masimba Mawire collects bare maize cobs after removing the grain using a mechanized maize sheller in Zimbabwe. (Photo: Matthew O’Leary/CIMMYT)

Rural communities that use more ecological intensive practices, such as conservation agriculture and push-pull farming or safe storage practices are less dependent on external inputs and labor.

The current crisis forces us to use digital communication systems, replace human work with digital tools where possible and use technology to help target interventions. Both the public and private sector could build on this opportunity to invest in increased access to internet, electricity and other digital resources, including in impoverished areas. All these technological innovations can help farmers to better cope with the constraints of COVID-19 and any future crises or stresses to the food system, while also making agriculture more productive and more attractive to the young.

“The pandemic creates an opportunity to accelerate the use of digital technologies in smallholder agriculture, not only for extension advice but to crowdsource information about COVID-19 impacts,” said Julie Howard, Senior Advisor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Finally, COVID-19 will change our global governance system, and the agriculture, research and development sector has a role to play in this transformation. A systems change must focus on dietary diversity and food safety and security, paying attention to the rural poor in low- and middle-income countries. We can work together to scale cross-sector platforms to build solid networks and scale-up innovations to strengthen sustainable and resilient food systems.

Systems change beyond the agricultural sector, sustainability through local ownership and uptake of innovations that support profitable and resilient agricultural and related rural activities are key components of how the Scaling Up Community of Practice approaches scaling. A systems change is imminent, and it is important to support a transformation in a direction where local markets, rural labor and regional economies come out stronger in the long term. This requires vision, expertise, mobilization of resources, information sharing and crowdsourced leadership, and the network of scaling experts can contribute to this.

The Agriculture and Rural Development working group of the international Scaling Up community of practice is made up of individuals from more than 100 official donors, foundations, think tanks, research and development organizations united by their interest in scaling the impact of innovations on food security and rural poverty. Areas of particular interest for the group include designing for scale, using scaling frameworks, learning about scaling, responsible scaling, sustainability and system thinking. Members of the working group include professionals with vast experience from the field, and the group explicitly tries to learn from the application of complex concepts such as sustainability, systems change and scaling in real world settings by local actors. In addition to quarterly virtual meetings, the working group encourages and supports exchanges among its members on a variety of subjects. Participation in, and management of, the Agriculture and Rural Development working group is done on a purely voluntary basis.

About the Authors:

Lennart Woltering — Scaling catalyst at CIMMYT and chair of the Agriculture and Rural Development working group.

Johannes Linn — Non-resident Senior Fellow at Brookings and former Vice President of the World Bank.

Maria Boa — Scaling coordinator at CIMMYT and secretary of the Agriculture and Rural Development working group

Mary Donovan — Communications Consultant at CIMMYT.

Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.

Moving out of poverty or staying poor

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in Blogs. 1 Comment on Moving out of poverty or staying poor

Farmer Dhansa Bhandari (left) sows maize seed while Bikram Daugi (right) ploughs with his oxen in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)
Farmer Dhansa Bhandari (left) sows maize seed while Bikram Daugi (right) ploughs with his oxen in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)

Although the conventional wisdom in South Asian rural villages is that men are principally responsible for pulling their families out of poverty, our recent study showed the truth to be more subtle, and more female.

In our new paper we dig into focus groups and individual life stories in a sample of 32 farming villages from five countries of South Asia. Although we asked about both men’s and women’s roles, focus groups of both sexes emphasized men in their responses — whether explaining how families escaped poverty or why they remained poor.

“Women usually cannot bring a big change, but they can assist their men in climbing up,” explains a member of the poor men’s focus group from Ismashal village (a pseudonym) of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The focus group testimonies presented rich examples of the strong influence of gender norms: the social rules that dictate differential roles and conducts for men and women in their society. These norms significantly influenced how local people conceived of movements in and out of poverty in their village and in their own lives.

According to the women’s focus group from Rangpur district in Bangladesh, women “cannot work outside the home for fear of losing their reputation and respect.”

However, in these same communities, men’s and women’s productive roles proved far more variable in the mobility processes of their families than conveyed by the focus groups. We encountered many households with men making irregular or very limited contributions to family maintenance. This happens for a number of reasons, including men’s labor migration, disability, family conflict and separations, aging and death.

What’s more, when sharing their life stories in individual interviews, nearly every woman testified to her own persistent efforts to make a living, cover household expenses, deal with debts, and, when conditions allowed, provide a better life for their families. In fact, our life story sample captured 12 women who testified to making substantial contributions to moving their families out of poverty.

Movers and shakers

We were especially struck by how many of these women “movers” were employing innovative agricultural technologies and practices to expand their production and earnings.

“In 2015, using zero tillage machines I started maize farming, for which I had a great yield and large profit,” reports a 30-year-old woman and mother of two from Matipur, Bangladesh who brought her family out of poverty.

Another 30-year-old mover, a farmer and mother of two from the village of Thool in Nepal, attests to diversification and adoption of improved cultivation practices: “I got training on vegetable farming. In the beginning the agriculture office provided some vegetable seeds as well. And I began to grow vegetables along with cereal crops like wheat, paddy, maize, oats. […] I learnt how to make soil rows.”

Among the women who got ahead, a large majority credited an important man in their life with flouting local customs and directly supporting them to innovate in their agricultural livelihoods and bring their families out of poverty.

Across the “mover” stories, women gained access to family resources which enabled them to step up their livelihood activities. For example, three quarters of the women “movers” spoke of husbands or brothers supporting them to pursue important goals in their lives.

Women’s most important relationship helping them to pursue goals in life: women "movers" (on left) versus "chronic poor" (right).
Women’s most important relationship helping them to pursue goals in life: women “movers” (on left) versus “chronic poor” (right).

Sufia, from a village in the Rajshahi district of Bangladesh, describes how she overcame great resistance from her husband to access a farm plot provided by her brother. The plot enabled Sufia to cultivate betel leaves and paddy rice, and with those profits and additional earnings from livestock activities, she purchased more land and diversified into eggplant, chilies and bitter gourd. Sufia’s husband had struggled to maintain the family and shortly after Sufia began to prosper, he suffered a stroke and required years of medical treatments before passing away.

When Sufia reflects on her life, she considers the most important relationship in her life to be with her brother. “Because of him I can now stand on my two feet.”

We also studied women and their families who did not move out of poverty. These “chronic poor” women rarely mentioned accessing innovations or garnering significant benefits from their livelihoods. In these life stories, we find far fewer testimonies about men who financially supported a wife or sister to help her pursue an important goal.

The restrictive normative climate in much of South Asia means that women’s capacity to enable change in their livelihoods is rarely recognized or encouraged by the wider community as a way for a poor family to prosper. Still, the life stories of these “movers” open a window onto the possibilities unlocked when women have opportunities to take on more equitable household roles and are able to access agricultural innovations.

The women movers, and the men who support them, provide insights into pathways of more equitable agricultural change. What we can learn from these experiences holds great potential for programs aiming to relax gender norms, catalyze agricultural innovation, and unlock faster transitions to gender equality and poverty reduction in the region. Nevertheless, challenging social norms can be risky and can result in backlash from family or other community members. To address this, collaborative research models offer promise. These approaches engage researchers and local women and men in action learning to build understanding of and support for inclusive agricultural change. Our research suggests that such interventions, which combine social, institutional and technical dimensions of agricultural innovation, can help diverse types of families to leave poverty behind.

Read the full study:
Gender Norms and Poverty Dynamics in 32 Villages of South Asia

Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.
Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.

‘Sharing’ or ‘sparing’ land?

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in Blogs. 4 Comments on ‘Sharing’ or ‘sparing’ land?

Any fifth grader is familiar with the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, which saw dinosaurs — and three quarters of all species alive at that time — disappear from Earth, probably after it was struck by a very large asteroid. However, few people are aware the planet is currently going through a similar event of an equally large magnitude: a recent report from the World Wide Fund for Nature highlighted a 60% decline in the populations of over 4,000 vertebrate species monitored globally since 1970. This time, the culprit is not an asteroid, but human beings. The biggest threat we represent to other species is also the way we meet one of our most fundamental needs: food production.

As a response, scientists, particularly ecologists, have looked for strategies to minimize trade-offs between agriculture and biodiversity. One such strategy is “land sparing,” also known as the “Borlaug effect.” It seeks to segregate production and conservation and to maximize yield on areas as small as possible, sparing land for nature. Another strategy is “land sharing” or “wildlife-friendly farming,” which seeks to integrate production and conservation in the same land units and make farming as benign as possible to biodiversity. It minimizes the use of external inputs and retains unfarmed patches on farmland.

A heated debate between proponents of land sparing and proponents of land sharing has taken place over the past 15 years. Most studies, however, have found land sparing to lead to better outcomes than land sharing, in a range of contexts. With collaborators from CIFOR, UBC and other organizations, I hypothesized that this belief was biased because researchers assessed farming through a narrow lens, only looking at calories or crop yield.

Many more people today suffer from hidden hunger, or lack of vitamins and minerals in their diets, than lack of calories. Several studies have found more diverse and nutritious diets consumed by people living in or near areas with greater tree cover as trees are a key component of biodiversity. However, most of these studies have not looked at mechanisms explaining this positive association.

Forests for food

Studying seven tropical landscapes in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nicaragua and Zambia, we found evidence that tree cover directly supports diets in four landscapes out of seven. This may be through the harvest of bushmeat, wild fruits, wild vegetables and other forest-sourced foods. The study further found evidence of an agroecological pathway — that forests and trees support diverse crop and livestock production through an array of ecosystem services, ultimately leading to improved diets — in five landscapes out of seven. These results clearly demonstrate that although land sparing may have the best outcomes for biodiversity, it would cut off rural households from forest products such as forest food, firewood and livestock feed. It would also cut off smallholder farms from ecosystem services provided by biodiversity, and smallholders in the tropics tend to depend more on ecosystem services than on external inputs.

In Ethiopia, previous research conducted by some of the same authors has demonstrated that multifunctional landscapes that do not qualify as land sparing nor as land sharing may host high biodiversity whilst being more productive than simpler landscapes. They are more sustainable and resilient, provide more diverse diets and produce cereals with higher nutritional content.

The debate on land sparing vs. sharing has largely remained confined to the circles of conservation ecologists and has seldom involved agricultural scientists. As a result, most studies on land sparing vs. sharing have focused on minimizing the negative impact of farming on biodiversity, instead of looking for the best compromises between agricultural production and biodiversity conservation.

To design landscapes that truly balance the needs of people and nature, it is urgent for agronomists, agricultural economists, rural sociologists and crop breeders to participate in the land sparing vs. sharing debate.

Read more:
Testing the Various Pathways Linking Forest Cover to Dietary Diversity in Tropical Landscapes

This study was made possible by funding from the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the project Agrarian Change in Tropical Landscapes, and by the CGIAR Research Programs on MAIZE and WHEAT.

General view of the experimental field in Lempira, Honduras. (Photo: Nele Verhulst/CIMMYT)

Closing the yield gap: Why localized analysis matters

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on . Posted in Blogs. 1 Comment on Closing the yield gap: Why localized analysis matters

General view of the experimental field in Lempira, Honduras. (Photo: Nele Verhulst/CIMMYT)
General view of the experimental field in Lempira, Honduras. (Photo: Nele Verhulst/CIMMYT)

Populations in Central America are rising rapidly, but staple crop production seems unable to keep up with increasing food demands.

Maize yields are particularly low compared to other regions. Cumulatively, farmers in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua produce maize on nearly 2.5 million hectares, with a large proportion of these maize systems also including beans, either through relay cropping or intercropping. Though potential yields are estimated to be as high as 10 metric tons per hectare, average production remains low at around 2.28.

There is clearly immense opportunity for improvement, but it is not always obvious which issues need tackling.

Yield gap analysis — which measures the difference between potential and actual yield — is a useful starting point for addressing the issue and identifying intensification prospects. It is not a new concept in applied agronomy, but it has not been adequately applied in many regions. For example, Analyses of Central America tend to be grouped with the rest of Latin America, making it difficult to provide recommendations tailored to local contexts.

I see a more comprehensive understanding of the region’s specific crop production limitations as the first step towards improving food security.

Along with fellow researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and other institutions, we set out to identify the main factors limiting production in these areas. We established field trials in six maize and bean producing regions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which represent about three-quarters of the maize producing area. We assessed factors such as water stress, nutrient deficiency, pressure from pests and diseases, and inter-plant competition, hypothesizing that optimized fertilization and supplementary irrigation would have the greatest effects on yields.

A maize cob in La Libertad, El Salvador, shows kernels affected by tar spot complex which have not filled completely (Photo: Nele Verhulst/CIMMYT)
A maize cob in La Libertad, El Salvador, shows kernels affected by tar spot complex which have not filled completely (Photo: Nele Verhulst/CIMMYT)

We found that while improved fertilization improved maize yields by 11% on average, it did not have a significant effect on bean production. Irrigation had no effect, though this was mainly due to good rainfall distribution throughout the growing season in the study year. On average, optimized planting arrangements increased maize yields by 18%, making it the most promising factor we evaluated.

It was interesting though perhaps unsurprising to note that the contribution of each limiting factor to yield gaps carried across all sites and no single treatment effectively increased yields consistently across all sites. The trial results confirmed that production constraints are highly dependent on local management practices and agroecological location.

With this in mind, we recommend that development actors aiming to increase crop production begin by conducting multi-year, participatory experiments to understand the primary causes of yield gaps and identify the limitations specific to the areas in question, as this will allow for more effective research and policy efforts.

Read the full article “Factors contributing to maize and bean yield gaps in Central America vary with site and agroecological conditions” in The Journal of Agricultural Science.

Researchers visit maize fields in Ethiopia's Wondo Genet Agricultural Research Center. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

New tools guide interventions against acid soils in Africa using lime

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on . Posted in Blogs.

Researchers visit maize fields in Ethiopia's Wondo Genet Agricultural Research Center. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Researchers visit maize fields in Ethiopia’s Wondo Genet Agricultural Research Center. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

One major reason why maize productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is very low is poor soil health. Soil acidity is often mentioned because of its impact on crop yields and the extent of acid soils in the region. A recent soil mapping exercise, conducted by the Ethiopian Soil Information System (EthioSIS) under the administration of the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), estimated that 43% of arable lands were affected by acid soils and that 3.6 million people, about 10% of the total rural population, live in areas with acidic soils.

Very acid soils — those with a pH below 5.5, roughly one hundred times more acidic than neutral soils — are associated with certain toxicities, like aluminum and iron excess, and some nutrient deficiencies. Soil acidity pushes soil nutrients out of reach of the plant, leading to stunting of root system and plant. As a result, the plant becomes also less tolerant to drought.

Soil acidification depends on soil nature, agroecology and farming systems. It happens through natural leaching of CO2 after rainfall and excess application of nitrogenous fertilizer or organic matter, for instance.

As a result, soil acidity significantly affects maize yields. In Ethiopia, studies have revealed substantial impacts on crop productivity related to acid soils and the importance of acid soil management for Ethiopia’s food security. The Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) estimated that soil acidity on wheat production alone costed the country over 9 billion Ethiopian Birr, about $300 million per year.

Acidic soils in the limelight

Preliminary analysis led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) suggests that yields of major cereal crops, such as wheat and barley, could increase by 20 to 40% with the application of lime in acidic areas of the country.

While these preliminary results are significant, we need to know more about local farmers’ experience with acidic soil and their mitigation strategies. Such impact assessments are however typically determined at either the national or experimental plot level and do not map where mitigating against acid soils would be the most profitable.

To improve acid soils, farmers may apply lime on their fields to raise the pH, a practice known as liming. How much lime to apply will depend on the crop, soil type but also on the quality of lime available. Liming has multiple beneficial effects like improving nitrogen fixation of legume nodules, boosting yields of legume crops.

But liming has a cost. It can quickly become a very bulky affair as we need to apply 3 to 4 tons per hectare for sandy soils and up to 8 tons per hectare for clay and humifere soils.

Furthermore, existing lime markets are quite limited or even non-existent in many areas, even those where acidic soils are prevalent. Developing supply chains from scratch is difficult and costly. Understanding the costs and potential returns to such investments is important. There are many questions to ask at different levels, from the farm and farming system to the lime supply chain. What are the available lime sources — calcitic, dolomite or blend — and lime quality? Where are the lime processing units and how could you assess the transport cost to the farms? What could be the crop yield response depending on the lime application?

User-friendly and scalable dashboard

IFPRI, in collaboration with EIAR, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the German aid agency GIZ, developed a pilot in Ethiopia’s Amhara region to help better target lime interventions for a greater impact. Amhara region was chosen because of the importance of acid soils, and access to extensive soil data.

Combination of several spatial datasets on soil quality, agroecological, weather, long-term agronomic trials and crop modelling tools enabled to generate at scale, georeferenced estimates of crop yield responses for different lime applications. Calibration of this spatial model for wheat estimated a yield increase of approximately 30% increasing the pH from 5.5 to 6.5, which is relatively consistent with general research data and expert opinion.

Mapped estimates of the grain prices and the delivered costs of lime, based on the location of the lime crushers in the region and transport costs, enables then to map out the spatial profitability of lime operations.

Initial calculations revealed a great variability of lime costs at the farmgate, with transportation representing at least half of total lime costs. It showed also that farmers often do not use the most cost-effective combination of inputs to tackle soil acidity.

Another possible application is to determine maize growing areas where lime benefits outweigh the costs, which would be ideal sites for demonstrating to farmers the positive impact lime applications could have to their livelihoods.

This Amhara lime dashboard prototype demonstrated its scalability. A national dashboard is currently being developed, which includes lime sources GPS location, grain prices and district-level soil quality mapping. This approach is tested also in Tanzania.

CIMMYT and its partners plan to package such tool in a user-friendly open-access web version that can be rapidly updated and customized depending on the area of intervention, for instance integrating a new lime source, and applied for different crops, and across the Eastern African region. Such dashboards will help development organizations and government make better informed decisions regarding lime investments.