Conservation agriculture (CA) encompasses the principles of minimum soil disturbance, retention of crop residues on the soil and diversification through crop rotations and associations. Worldwide, CA adoption exceeds 125 million hectares. Its benefits include reduced production costs and soil degradation, more effective and efficient use of resources like water and fertilizer, and greater overall cropping system productivity. CA-based practices have recently regained scientific attention as part of newly emerging concepts such as sustainable intensification, ecological intensification and climate-smart agriculture.

CIMMYT’s increasing efforts to promote CA in Sub-Saharan Africa began at a regional hub in southern Africa in 2004, moved to eastern Africa in 2009, and subsequently expanded to other Africa locations. In Africa, conservation agriculture has benefitted from significant donor attention and the call to address multiple agricultural challenges, which include the pressure of expanding populations on land resources, declining soil fertility, low productivity, and the negative effects of climate variability.

Research has proven the biophysical and economic benefits of CA for Africa, yet CA adoption and spatial expansion by African farmers is relatively low, compared to its acceptance in similar agro-ecologies in the Americas and Australia.

The lack of widespread adoption in Africa has led some researchers to question the suitability of CA for smallholder farmers in Africa or the wisdom of spending resources to study and promote it. A divide between CA-for-Africa proponents and opponents in the research community has opened, obscuring issues and hindering unbiased examination of CA opportunities and constraints. Adding to the uncertainty, there is little research in Africa to assess where CA might make the best impact or, more generally, where conditions are simply too marginal for cropping systems of any type.

AFTER 10 YEARS OF RESEARCH, WE FEEL IT IS CRITICAL TO LOOK OBJECTIVELY AT WHERE WE ARE WITH CA IN AFRICA. Specifically: What is CIMMYT’s comparative advantage in the research and development of CA systems? Does “business-as-usual” — that is, conventional tillage systems — provide better outcomes? Is there any form of alternative agriculture being adopted more quickly or widely than CA? Do we gain anything if we lose our comparative advantage as a leading global CA research institute and only focus on “good agronomic practices”?

We believe that CA has great promise for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa but CIMMYT and other organizations may have approached its study and extension from the wrong angle. In particular, CA has often been promoted in Africa as a way to raise yields. In fact, short-term yield gains are common from better moisture capture and retention under CA, in seasons with erratic and prolonged dry spells. But yield benefits from CA are normally not immediate; they generally begin to appear after two-to-five cropping seasons. Smallholder farm households often live at the edge of food insecurity year-in and year-out and are undisposed to risk an innovation that raises system productivity only in the medium term.

In contrast, the adoption of CA outside of Africa has been driven by benefits such as energy savings, reduced erosion, more timely sowing, and enhanced water- and nutrient-use efficiency. Furthermore, CA adopters worldwide have typically been large-scale commercial farmers who seek enhanced and sustainable profits and, as a consequence, ways to cut production costs. So how can their positive experience apply to smallholders and be used for proper targeting and extension of CA systems in Africa?

IN OUR OPINION, CIMMYT AND ITS PARTNERS SHOULD FOCUS ON (1) identifying the key drivers that have facilitated adoption of CA worldwide and (2) delineating the niches in Africa where these drivers are present, meaning where CA is likely to fit. As a start, we may wish to look at settings where:

• Farm energy is scarce or expensive (whether provided by motors, draft animals or human labor ).
• Timely planting is crucial, soil degradation extensive, and climate-related stress common. (This niche might be bigger than we think in Africa)

WE BELIEVE THAT CHALLENGES HAVE TOO OFTEN BEEN CONFUSED WITH BARRIERS TO ADOPTION. Too much time and effort have been spent highlighting challenges arising when implementing CA, instead of actively looking for ways to overcome them through technological and institutional innovations, including improved working arrangements between multiple actors. Furthermore, we feel that far too many resources are being channelled by CIMMYT’s Global Conservation Agriculture and Socioeconomics Programs into diagnostic studies, without commensurate investments in applied research for innovations to address the challenges.

Future research with farmers and other stakeholders should explore opportunities to ensure that CA systems meet smallholder farmers’ needs. It should also aim to target CA principles and practices in areas where highest returns are expected. In conclusion, we believe that BUSINESS AS USUAL IS NOT AN OPTION and that, in many places where CIMMYT works, CA IS IN DEMAND to alleviate labor bottlenecks, improve the timeliness of operations, control erosion and improve water- and nutrient-use efficiency. Should this demand be ignored? Of course challenges exist, but research – and international research in particular – should not simply document challenges but also provide solutions.

Christian Thierfelder is a CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist based in Harare, Zimbabwe. He has worked since 2004 in CA projects in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe and has conducted applied and strategic research on-farm and on-station to adapt CA to the needs of smallholder farmers in southern Africa. Through effective partnerships he has reached out to more than 10,000 farmers in southern Africa. He guided the research programs of 25 B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. students, and has authored and co-authored more than 30 research articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals and books.

A CIMMYT systems agronomist based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Frédéric Baudron trained as a tropical agronomist, specialized as a livestock scientist and worked for various development programs targeting the interface between people (mainly farmers) and wildlife. He then completed a PhD in plant production systems. Projects he leads include Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI), implemented in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Isaiah Nyagumbo is a CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist based in Harare, Zimbabwe. He has worked in water harvesting and soil conservation research initiatives and was a pioneer of CA work on smallholder farming systems in Zimbabwe since the 1990s. Isaiah currently leads the agronomy component of the CIMMYT managed and ACIAR funded regional program ‘Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Systems in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA)’ operating in 5 countries of Eastern and Southern Africa. Isaiah has also authored and contributed to regional research publications focusing mainly on CA, agricultural water management, water harvesting and technology dissemination.

For further detail regarding these views, stay tuned for the upcoming paper:

Baudron, F., Thierfelder, C., Nyagumbo, I., Gérard B., 2015. Where to target conservation agriculture? How to overcome challenges associated with its implementation? Experience from Eastern and Southern Africa. Forthcoming (expected in early-July) in Environments.

For Ethiopian smallholder farmers who have for millennia used the traditional animal-drawn maresha plow, two-wheel tractors could increase their productivity while reducing labor. They appear better suited to the Highlands of Ethiopia, characterized by small, fragmented farms and hilly terrain, than four-wheel tractors, which are only well-suited for large- and medium-scale farmers who comprise about 10% of the country’s estimated 14.7 million farmers. Two-wheel tractors are also very versatile and can be used for seeding, pumping water, threshing wheat and transporting heavy loads.

Although two-wheel tractors and their attachments are relatively cheap (about US $1,400) and easy to maintain, it is evident that most Ethiopian farmers won’t be able to purchase them individually. Still, they could hire the services of dedicated providers trained to use two-wheel tractors. To make mechanization accessible to smallholder farmers, on 1-5 June 2015 CIMMYT and its partners organized a training course for service providers from Debre Birhan, Sinana and Lemo woredas (districts). They were trained in the operation, maintenance, business, financial management and marketing of two-wheel tractors.

The service model being tested by CIMMYT and its partners has been adopted in Bangladesh, where a single two-wheel tractor can service up to 30 farmers. The initiative to disseminate two-wheel tractors in the Highlands of Ethiopia is supported by the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program. After the course, trainees returned to their respective areas equipped with two-wheel tractors and various attachments, to start providing seeding, transport and water pumping services to local farmers.

Since the Growth and Transformation Plan was established by the Government of Ethiopia in 2011, tremendous progress has been made in the agricultural sector. Farmers now have access to better seeds and adequate quantities of fertilizer. Yields have increased dramatically, and improved connections between farmers and markets mean higher incomes for farmers and more food available for consumers in both rural and urban areas.

Sustaining such an increase in agricultural output, however, will require a proportionate increase in farm power. In response, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency developed a draft national mechanization strategy in 2014, with the goal of increasing the farm power available to Ethiopian farmers 10-fold by 2025.

Edward Mabaya is a Research Associate in the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and a development practicioner. All views expressed are his own.

There are many crops that conjure up an image of the African continent – maize, sorghum, millet, turf, matoke and cassava. These staples form the basis of African’s daily diet and have been established over many years through close interaction between culture and agro-ecological conditions.

Yet there is one less talked about food that you will find in every African urban area. Bread.

In 2013, African countries spent about $12 billion dollars to import 40 million metric tons of wheat, equating to about a third of the continent’s food imports. This arises as a result of the fact that only 44% of Africa’s wheat demand is met by local production. The only country on the continent with a significant production base is South Africa with over 2 million metric tons per year.

As if the current deficit was not bad enough, the demand for wheat in Africa is growing at a faster rate than for any other crop. By 2050, wheat imports are anticipated to increase by a further 23.1 million metric tons. In the last 20 years wheat imports have increased fourfold from about $3 billion in 1989 and doubled from a rate of $5 billion in 2005 (see table below). This demand is being driven by population growth, urbanization, as well as from a growing female work force who prefer wheat products, like bread or pasta, because they are faster and easier to prepare than traditional foods.

What can African countries do to reduce their wheat imports?

A short-term measure is to mandate or promote the use of composite flours that mix wheat with locally abundant starches such as cassava and starchy bananas (matoke). This practice is already in place in some countries. Nigeria, for example, mandates flour millers to include five percent cassava flour in wheat flour. Tooke flour, developed by Uganda’s Presidential initiative on Banana Industrial Development (PIBID) shows some promise. However, composite flours are only a Band-Aid solution to the growing demand for wheat based products especially given the fact that you can only substitute up to 5% before quality diminishes significantly. The only viable long-term solution is for African countries to meet a large portion of domestic demand through local production.

Like most of my African colleagues, I have always unquestioningly assumed an agronomic basis for Africa’s wheat import, that wheat is a northern hemisphere crop that does not grow well in Africa. A 2012 joint study by CIMMYT and IFPRI exploring “The Potential for Wheat Production in Africa” was an eye opener for me. Based on an integrated biological and economic simulation-based model for 12 countries, the study concluded that Africa has great potential to produce wheat in an economically viable way. The limiting factors, it turns out, are more to do with policy, institutional and social-cultural environments than agro-ecological ones. One example of which is that the heavy subsidies on wheat imports by most African governments have crowded out potential investment in domestic wheat production.

The good news is that enabling policy and institutional environments are cheaper to fix and more environmentally sustainable than making agro-ecological adaptations. The not so good news is that decades of history will be difficult to change – importing wheat is a lucrative business with strong political ties. Boosting Africa’s wheat production will require a coordinated approach with a range of partners to build the requisite enabling environment. This will need more investment in research and development, improved research infrastructure, better agricultural extensions, effective farmer associations and farmer training, better storage and improved access to affordable high quality agro-inputs (seed, fertilizers, chemicals, and machinery).

This enabling environment for wheat production in Africa will not be achieved overnight. It will take years of coordinated strategic investments and policy transformation. Key policy makers on the continent are making the first steps. In 2012, the Joint African Ministers of Agriculture and Trade “endorsed wheat as one of Africa’s strategic commodities for achieving food and nutrition security” at a meeting held in Addis Ababa. A high level Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) meeting held in Accra in July 2013 developed a strategy for promoting African wheat production. It is especially encouraging that African governments have chosen a regional approach and multi-stakeholder approach to lower the continent’s wheat imports.

As the old African saying goes: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

“The most obvious question is also the most difficult to answer: How could gluten, present in a staple food that has sustained humanity for thousands of years, have suddenly become so threatening?” asks an article published in the November 3, issue of The New Yorker. The article, “Against the Grain” by Michael Specter, examines the gluten-free movement and the various theories surrounding the recent rise in “non-celiac gluten sensitivity,” the name given to those who report discomfort after eating gluten yet do not suffer from celiac disease. According to Specter, “there are many theories but no clear, scientifically satisfying answers.”

Among the theories is the notion that wheat genes have drastically changed in the past 50 years and the grain can no longer be properly digested by humans, an idea promoted by “Wheat Belly” author William Davis. Little scientific evidence supports this claim however, and the true cause of “non-celiac gluten sensitivity” symptoms remains unknown.

Specter contends that the culprit is more likely to be FODMAPs, a group of carbohydrates present in numerous food items (including wheat) that can cause abdominal pain, bloating and diarrhea; industrial bread additives such as vital wheat gluten; or unhealthy modern dietary patterns. “Although dietary patterns have changed dramatically in the past century, our genes have not,” attests Specter. “The human body has not evolved to consume a modern Western diet, with meals full of sugary substances and refined, high-calorie carbohydrates.”

For those without celiac disease, cutting gluten and wheat products from their diet may not answer the underlying cause of the symptoms, and may do more harm than good. Gluten-free products are often high in sugar and calories to make up for missing ingredients. More investigation and longterm dietary studies are necessary, Specter argues, before blaming wheat or gluten as the culprit of a growing percentage of the nation’s reported dietary sensitivities.

Dr. Mahmoud Solh is Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)

Wheat is a staple and strategic crop across most of North Africa and West Asia, accounting for almost 40 percent  of the region’s total food supply, including 40 percent of its calorific, and 20 percent of its protein intake. ¹

However, due to a combination of environmental, policy and human constraints the region is unable to produce enough high quality wheat for its growing population – currently 417 million and expected to reach almost 500 million by 2020.²

Agricultural productivity is hampered by water scarcity: rainfall is generally very low; groundwater extraction rates are mostly unsustainable; and, growing domestic and industrial demand is putting pressure on the amount of water available for agriculture, leading to shortages in irrigated production systems. The region’s wheat production potential is also restricted by a lack of arable land.

These problems will be exacerbated by climate change, since projections show that North Africa and West Asia will be hardest hit by shifting climate patterns. Precipitation is expected to decrease while temperatures will rise, driving ever-increasing pressure on already-limited resources.³

Climate change is worrying in another respect, as it creates optimal conditions for aggressive wheat diseases and pests. A particularly destructive threat to wheat production in the region is stripe rust, a fungal disease that attacks wheat early in the growing season, weakening crops and causing significant grain losses.

Aggressive new strains of the disease are adapting to more variable rainfall and increased temperatures, and are expected to become more widespread and strike more frequently. Farmers have already endured significant losses due to stripe rust when a major epidemic struck the region four years ago.

These constraints are driving an economically unsustainable dependence on wheat imports. North Africa and West Asia are the most food-import dependent areas in the world. In 2010 alone the region imported 65.8 million tons of cereal – an amount expected to grow to more than 73 million tons by 2020.⁴

Potential crop shortages and related food-price hikes expose consumers to the vagaries of global commodity markets. The poorest members of society who spend a disproportionate amount of their income on food will be particularly hard hit.

Derek Byerlee is a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
Any views expressed are his own.

Over the last 50 years or so, the big increases in agricultural production have come through improved yields largely as a result of the Green Revolution.

From 1961 to 2011, per capita cereal production increased by 40 percent, while the amount of cropland per capita fell by half. In most regions, the total area of cropland has either reached a peak or declined. However, in three tropical regions, land expansion has been and still is a significant source of agricultural growth: Southeast Asia, tropical South America and sub-Saharan Africa.

Since 1990, wheat is the only major crop to experience an overall decline in area.

Looking to the future, how much land can be expected to come into production for cropping?

Currently, about 1,500 million hectares (Mha) of land is used for crops.

I project that additional demand for land will be 6 to 12 Mha each year for a total of 120 to 240 Mha increase from 2010 to 2030.

The higher projection allows a greater role for trade and thereby production by the lowest-cost producers who are often located in land-abundant countries.

These estimates are broadly in line with a synthesis by Erik Lambin & Patrick Meyfroidt who also include projections of the loss of land due to expansion of urban settlements and infrastructure as well as losses due to land degradation. Taking these losses into account, Tony Fischer provides an estimate of total additional gross cropland demand from 2010 to 2030 of 160 Mha to 340 Mha. Global models also suggest expansion of cropland to 2050 of about 300 Mha, given projected yield growth.

Is there enough land to satisfy demand? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’s World Agriculture Towards 2030/2050 report estimates that some 1.4 billion hectares of currently uncultivated land that is not forested or in protected areas is suited to crop agriculture although they note that this is an optimistic estimate. A more conservative estimate of available land with at least moderate suitability for rainfed cultivation in low population-density areas – that is, non-forested, non-protected and with a population density of less than 25 people per square kilometer – is approximately 450 Mha.

At first glance, it would thus seem that projected demand for land (even under the scenarios of the higher demand estimates) over the next two decades can be accommodated by available uncultivated land.

However, most of this uncultivated land is concentrated in a few countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia and is often far from ports and roads.

A global analysis may also miss key constraints at the local level such as human diseases and unrecorded current land use that reduce effective land supply.

In addition, an expansion of land area of the order of 160 Mha (the lower-bound estimate of the estimated future land needs) could have significant biodiversity costs from conversion of natural ecosystems, even in the non-forested areas considered above.

Indeed, one of the sustainable development goals currently under discussion in international fora is to reduce deforestation to zero by 2030 – implying a closing of the land frontier. Finally with the exception of some areas in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, most of the available land is in the tropics and is unsuitable for wheat production.

Overall then, projections of future land availability for agriculture suggest a growing land scarcity, particularly for wheat, especially when taking into account that demand for food and feed will continue to rise with growing affluence in rapidly industrializing countries, as well as the use of land for biofuel feedstocks.

Growing scarcity together with high commodity prices have combined to stimulate global investor interest in farmland that underlies much of the recent discussion on intensification as a strategy to save land and concerns about a global ‘land grab’ by investors from land-scarce countries.

Wheat area is also being pushed out by other crops in many countries. Over the period 1993 to 2013, wheat area has fallen by 4.5 Mha, exceeded only by other winter cereals (barley, rye, and oats) that have collectively lost over 40 Mha.

During the same period, the area of oil crops (mostly soybeans, rapeseed and oil palm) has increased by an astonishing 100 Mha, maize by a hefty 53 Mha and rice by 20 Mha.

This year for example, North Dakota, a quintessential wheat-producing state in the United States, for the first time planted more soybeans than wheat.

In Argentina, soybeans rotated with maize have also displaced a significant wheat area, while in northern China, increasing maize area appears to be at the expense of spring wheat. Wheat area in the United States and China has fallen by 7 Mha and 6 Mha respectively since 1993. The major exceptions to these trends are India and Australia, where wheat area is up sharply.

All of this, of course, implies that increasing wheat yields will be especially critical to maintain its competitiveness and to save further land expansion into forests.

Norman Borlaug, the pioneer of the Green Revolution, long recognized that increased yields were not only essential to increasing global food security but also to saving forests.

This has now been enshrined in the environmental literature as the Borlaug Hypothesis. The real world is not so simple since there are situations where increasing yields may enhance crop profitability and encourage its expansion at the expense of forests. However, we found that just the CGIAR investment in germplasm is likely to have saved from 18-27 Mha of land from 1965-2000.

The bottom line is that increased spending on research and development (R&D) by national programs and CGIAR is a priority to achieving not only food security but confronting land scarcity.

None of the above considers the negative impacts of climate change, but a recent thoughtful analysis by David Lobell of Stanford University has shown that investing in R&D to adapt to climate change and maintain yields in the face of rising temperatures and increased drought is one of the most cost-effective ways to save forests and therefore mitigate climate change.

Surprisingly, wheat is the crop that faces the strongest headwind from both land scarcity and climate change. Wheat also appears to be grossly underfunded at the international level as measured by the budget provided to the WHEAT CRP – one of the lowest among the 15 CRPs. Tony Fischer, Honorary Research Fellow, at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in a companion piece has shown that there are many promising avenues to higher R&D spending, both to raise yield potential and close large yield gaps.

 Go back to: Wheat Matters

David Lobell is an associate professor in environmental earth system science and deputy director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University.

Scott Chapman is a principal research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Wheat likes it cool. More than any other major food staple, wheat yields suffer when weather gets warm. Although wheat has been adapted to grow in almost every country of the world through 10,000 years of farmer selection and a century of breeding, it is still most productive in the cooler places and seasons. Given this reality, it is not surprising that most projections of climate change impacts indicate decreases in wheat production, with an average of roughly 5 percent yield loss expected for each 1°C of warming.

Indeed, many studies indicate that in recent decades global yield productivity has already been hit by warmer average temperatures.

But how important will global warming really be in shaping future wheat supply? The answer is hard to pin down, partly because it will depend on where and how quickly the world heats up.

The expected average rate of warming over current wheat areas for the next few decades is a little less than 0.5 °C per decade, which implies a negative yield impact of about 2 percent per decade.

Compared to the anticipated yield growth needed to keep pace with demand for wheat – about 15 percent per decade – this is a significant but modest addition to an already hard task.

But there is no guarantee that the expected rate of warming will happen, and models suggest that warming of as much as 1.0 °C per decade is plausible over the next couple of decades. Therefore, it is reasonable to view global warming as a major risk to future wheat supply.

What can the wheat community do to reduce these risks to the wheat supply, or more specifically, what might be done differently than business-as-usual wheat breeding? We have three suggestions.

First, in a shifting environment, it is expected that crops will face different conditions in farmers’ fields than they did in breeding trials. Physiological models that can skillfully predict crop growth then become an indispensable tool, because they can help breeders better anticipate what traits will prove useful even if those traits don’t confer yield advantages in their trials. This is an extension of a long-standing challenge of understanding gene-by-environment interactions, but requires new skill in modeling mechanisms behind crop responses to heat.

Second, these desired traits should be more reliably and quickly incorporated into elite wheat germplasm. This work will require a combination of methods to rapidly identify desirable traits among a large population (for example, rapid phenotyping) and methods (such as marker and genomic selection) to introduce and recombine new genetic variability when needed (for example, by using wild relatives).

A challenge here is that potentially adaptive traits, such as changes in flowering time, increased water-use efficiency or expression of “sunscreens” (surface waxes), might exist in current germplasm, but be genetically linked to less desirable traits. An ability to generate and test many combinations of different traits is more important, and harder, than simply having access to extreme values of a particular trait.

Third, agronomy will play a key role in helping the world adapt to climate change. For example, new planting methods that allow earlier sowing can help to escape the end-of-season heat and targeted use of mulches and irrigation can help to lower canopy temperatures. Widespread testing of these techniques, ideally in combination with the testing of various genotypes, would help to ensure that promising approaches are more quickly identified and scaled up.

In a world without climate change, these issues are still relevant. But they become crucial in a world where the risks of large heat waves rise each year.

We see global warming as an important strategic issue for international groups like CIMMYT, because: (i) warming is expected to be fast enough to significantly slow global yield growth; (ii) it is difficult to predict exactly which countries will see the most severe heat waves in the next couple of decades; and (iii) it is likely that some (if not all) countries will need germplasm that is currently grown elsewhere to adapt. Thus, the global threat is serious, but individual countries have limited incentives to devote significant effort to adaptation (because they may be spared the worst of it) and limited capacity to achieve success on their own (because of the need for imported germplasm).

It will take global institutions to successfully adapt to global warming.

Tony Fisher is Plant Industry Honorary Fellow with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). Any opinions expressed are his own

The release of the bread wheat variety Borlaug100 earlier this year in the irrigated Yaqui Valley of northwest Mexico was both apt and reassuring.

The 100th anniversary of the late scientist Norman Borlaug’s birth was also celebrated in 2014. The performance of his namesake wheat variety represented a notable jump in potential yield, lifting bread wheat up to the potential of the best durum wheat variety, currently dominant in the valley.

Borlaug, who is credited with saving more than 1 billion lives, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and its predecessor organization, the Office of Special Studies, where he began breeding wheat in the 1940s. Scientist Sanjaya Rajaram took over leadership of breeding in 1972, followed by Maarten van Ginkel in 1995, and Ravi Singh as breeder for irrigated areas in 2005. Between 1950 and 2014, potential yield of the approximately 160,000 hectares (400,000 acres) of wheat in the valley increased from about 5 metric tons (5.5 tons) per hectare to 9 metric tons per hectare, while farm yield rose five-fold, from 1.3 metric tons per hectare to 6.5 metric tons per hectare as varieties and agronomic management improved hand in hand.

These technologies have also had an impact on many developing countries with similar or related wheat agro-ecologies.

Many people are quick to point out that yield is not everything in global food security, that other issues are also important, including grain nutritive value, yield stability in the face of pests and diseases, crop input requirements, and more broadly, access of the poor to food (income and price), diversion of grain to animal feed and biofuel, and losses due to wastage.

However, nutritive value of the staples has not greatly changed, nor have yields become less stable, while input use per kilogram of grain produced has decreased, so that none of those issues are as fundamental to food security as farm yield increase.

Indeed yield increase has contributed more than 80 percent of the huge global consumption increase over the last 50 years (incidentally supplying of the burgeoning world population with more calories per capita). The increase in arable land area contributed only about half of the remaining supply increase, since cropping intensity (crops per year per hectare of arable land) also increased. This yield increase has saved vast areas of land from the plow. It is for these reasons that the subtitle of my recent book, Crop yields and global food security: will yield increase continue to feed the world?, asks whether yield increase will continue to feed the world.

While the book looked at past and prospective farm yield change across many crops, here space permits only a brief look at the global wheat yield situation.

The importance of wheat as a food calorie and protein source has already been pointed out in this “Wheat Matters” series of blogs: suffice to say wheat, being produced equally in developing and developed countries, is the top global source of calories (rice is actually the top source for poor consumers) and the top traded food grain, a position it is unlikely to lose.

Estimates of wheat-demand increase from 2010 to 2050 vary considerably: if prices are to be kept no greater than 2010 average real prices, I estimate a supply increase of about 50 percent is needed. Thus production needs to grow at 1.25 percent a year linear relative to the 2010 yield in order to meet estimated demand growth, but currently world wheat yield is growing at only 1 percent a year (relative to the 2010 trend yield of 3.0 metric tons per hectare).

While the potential yield of wheat has been lifted remarkably by breeding, as was seen in the example above, current rates of potential yield progress have slowed, averaging only 0.6 percent a year (range 0.3 to 1.1 percent) across 12 case studies around the world.

Experience suggests that the newest varieties are adopted relatively quickly by farmers and should as a consequence lift farm yield by about the same relative amount (i.e. 0.6 percent a year).

A separate source of progress in farm yield comes from farmers adopting new management practices, which close the gap between farm and potential yield. Actually, the current gap averaged only 48 percent (of farm yield itself), ranging from 23 percent to 69 percent across the case studies, with little difference between developing and developed countries, or irrigated and rainfed environments.

Since the minimum yield gap, due to considerations of costs and risk, is around 30 percent (of farm yield), the scope for further yield gap closing is more limited in wheat than in the other major cereals, which, in contrast to wheat, showed many larger yield gaps, especially in developing countries.

Besides, the gap-causing constraints in the cases of wheat are generally multiple, related to small deficiencies in soil fertility, weeds and disease management and in the timing of operations. This puts special pressure in the case of wheat on lifting potential yield progress, and justifies substantial increases in research in this area. There is certainly no sign that a biological limit in wheat potential yield has been reached, and several new tools and strategies of sufficient promise are available to justify such investment.

Finally, although increasing carbon dioxide is probably lifting both potential and farm yields of wheat about 0.2 percent a year, it is suggested that out to 2050, this will be cancelled by the negative effect of mean temperature increase, which is now becoming more evident.

There is wide-spread misperception that wheat is mainly produced in rich countries, exported to developing countries and then consumed by those societies’ wealthiest. In fact, for hundreds of millions of poor people their main staple is not maize, rice or cassava – they grow and eat wheat.

Wheat provides around one-fifth of all calories and protein for people globally. More food products are made from wheat than from any other cereal. In developing countries, wheat feeds around 1.2 billion people who live on less than US$ 2 a day. For every three poor rice consumers, there are two poor wheat consumers.

The global wheat trade is bigger than all other staples combined. Of the 150 million tons of wheat exported annually, 125 million tons go to developing countries, where nearly all wheat is consumed as food. Half of the wheat traded globally is exported to Africa and western Asia. Sixty million tons (40 percent) are imported by countries in North Africa and Central and West Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa, which is not considered a traditional wheat-eating region, buys 15 million tons (10 percent of the total).

In Sub-Saharan Africa, demand for wheat is growing faster than for any other commodity. Main drivers include population growth (need for more food), urbanization (wheat is a convenient food for migrating males) and the demand for wheat products by the increasing female work force. Female workers prefer wheat products because of they are fast and easy to prepare, freeing time the women otherwise would spend on traditional food processing and preparation.

Though trade statistics indicate developing countries depend on wheat imported from developed countries, of the 700 million tons wheat harvested globally, around 60 percent of that tonnage is produced and around 70 percent is consumed in developing countries. China, the world’s biggest producer, harvests twice as much wheat as the United States.

In North Africa and Central and West Asia, wheat is more critical for food security than in any other region worldwide, since it provides 35 to 50 percent of all calories and protein. Increases in wheat and bread prices have and will continue to lead to social unrest.

So is wheat a rich man’s crop? These statistics prove otherwise. With increasing income, diets change; they become more diverse and shift to wheat and eventually meat products. But in spite of progress in reducing poverty, challenges remain. The number of people living on less than US$ 1.25 a day declined from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 1.2 billion in 2010, mainly due to a reduction in East Asia. Less progress was made in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where today as many people live in extreme poverty as in 1980. If the absolute number of people living with an income of less than US$ 2 a day is considered, the progress is much smaller – 2.4 billion in 2010 vs. 2.59 billion in 1981.

Mahatma Gandhi best described what wheat means for these people: “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” To end this unacceptable situation, increased wheat production is vital.

In the next 35 years, production of wheat needs to increase by at least 60 percent to meet the increased demand. In other words, the global average yield will need to increase from 3 metric tons per hectare (mt/ha) to 5 mt/ha, in spite of global warming, eroded soils, land scarcity and competition for fertile land and water from higher-valued crops. Considering current production constraints and market realities, the world’s primary wheat-exporting countries are unlikely to provide the extra wheat needed to feed the 2050 global population of 9.6 billion.

Wheat productivity must first increase in developing countries, where yield gaps continue to be unacceptably high. Through increased adoption of improved wheat varieties, better agronomic practices and effective post-harvest storage, developing countries could develop sustainable food systems, become less dependent on imports and stay more resilient against food price increases. These huge challenges can be met, provided investments in breeding and agronomy increase significantly and quickly. Policy-makers must recognize that increasing investments in agriculture is not a problem – it is the basis and solution to improve the livelihoods of the poor.

Thomas Lumpkin served as director general at CIMMYT from 2008 to 2015.

The history of wheat is the history of civilization. Over 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent our ancestors ascended from an existence as hunter-gatherers and began tending and domesticating crops. Thus began wheat’s symbiotic relationship with the history of civilization and humankind’s responsibility as stewards of planet Earth.

Wheat is not only a major diet component but wheat-based products are the personification of cultural heritage and pride. Imagine Italians without pasta, North Africans without couscous, Indians without Chapattis or Chinese without noodles or steamed bread. It is time to pay homage to this grass, which was the basis for the development of modern civilizations and has done so much for the human race.

Wheat is the staple food of humankind, and its history is that of civilization. Yet today wheat is losing its crown. Many perceive wheat to be a food eaten and produced only by rich countries. Atkins, Davis (wheat belly) and other diets have convinced even more that wheat is bad for you and less wholesome than other crops. Although wheat remains an important crop, funding for wheat research has decreased significantly in recent years.

In spite of all these challenges, the demand for wheat is not dropping. Wheat is the staff of life for 1.2 billion poor people who live on less than US$ 2 a day; providing 20 to 50 percent of daily calories and 20 percent of protein. From South Asia through to Central Asia across the Middle East and on to North Africa, wheat is a staple food. Demand for wheat is not isolated to these traditional wheat-eating regions. Today African countries spend about US$ 12 billion annually to import some 40 million tons of wheat. What was once considered a minor crop for consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa, demand for wheat is now growing faster than for any other commodity and is now considered a strategic crop for food security by African leaders.

Perhaps what is most concerning are the predictions for the near future. Demand for wheat in the developing world is projected to increase 60 percent by 2050. India, the largest wheat-consuming country after China, has 17.5 percent of total world’s population and 20.6 percent of the world’s poor. If you look at a map showing the locations of recent food riots, it is almost identical to one showing where wheat provides more than one-third of a person’s daily calories. Households in developed countries spend less than 10 percent of their income on food supplies, in many countries, that percentage is much more. For example, in Pakistan and Egypt this figure is around 40 percent.

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published earlier this year predicts that wheat will be the first of the main staple crops to be significantly affected by climate change, because of its sensitivity to heat and the fact that it is grown all over the world. Current projections predict that with every Celsius degree increase in temperature, wheat yields in semi-tropical areas could drop by 10 percent. Changes in weather may also lead to an increased risk in the severity of wheat diseases, which may cause severe losses in areas that were previously thought of as unimportant.

Recurrent food crises combined with climate change, depletion of natural resources and rising food prices are threatening the lives of millions of poor people who depend on wheat for both diet and livelihood. Demographers predict that by 2050 the earth’s population will peak at 9.6 billion. Developing countries, especially those in Africa and South Asia, are experiencing tremendous population growth. Based on current crop yields and food distribution methods, feeding nearly 10 billion people will not be trivial. Sustainably increasing wheat production will have a crucial impact on food security.

Wheat’s significant contribution to humankind is not yet over.

Nearly 40 years after the United Nations established March 8 as International Women’s Day, we have seen great progress in achieving equality for women – there is greater parity in primary education between boys and girls, maternal mortality has declined by around two-thirds and 4 of every 10 jobs in the non-agricultural sector are held by a woman. However, despite a push through the Millennium Development Goals, gender equality and the empowerment of women still have not been achieved. Women continue to face discrimination in access to economic assets, work, education, health care and political participation. As a result, women are more likely to live in poverty, have less access to finance and information and fewer opportunities to break free from this cycle, especially in agricultural sectors.

At CIMMYT, we are working hard to close the gender gap and generate gains in agricultural output, food security, economic growth and social welfare. Across our projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America, CIMMYT actively seeks women’s participation in breeding and seed sector development, the value chain and agricultural mechanization. CIMMYT is working to integrate gender into the project design cycle and into project implementation. Both the CGIAR Research Programs on MAIZE and WHEAT have an approved gender integration strategy and in 2014 and 2015 all CRPs will jointly conduct a cross-gender study.

Women are the backbone of the rural economy in the developing world; they constitute much of the agricultural labor force but receive only a fraction of the land, financial credit and training compared to men. The gender gap in agriculture imposes costs not only on women themselves, but on their families, society and the sector as a whole. The FAO estimates that if women had access to the same resources as men they could increase yield on their farms by 20 to 30 percent and would spend this additional income on improving the health, nutrition and education outcomes of their children. If women had equal access to resources, agricultural production in developing countries would be 2.5 to 4 percent greater, feeding up to 150 million more people.

These are important achievements, but the job is not yet done and CIMMYT must place even more emphasis on gender and diversity. Promoting equal access to resources, improving gender awareness in CIMMYT projects and involving women in decision-making at all levels can help to close the gender gap in agriculture. This March, let us look for new avenues to empower women and think about how our interventions empower men and women alike.

For more information:

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml

http://www.genderinag.org/content/gender-agriculture-sourcebook