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Are cows the next development boom for smallholder farmers?

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HARARE, Zimbabwe- Smallholder livestock farmers in Zimbabwe are beginning to flip every notion about the country’s industry on its head.

zim_fact1Dairy and beef livestock production play an important economic and nutritional role in the lives of many Zimbabwean farm households. However, rearing livestock has traditionally been expensive as livestock take a lot of space and suck up a lot of money for feed and maintenance, leaving poor farmers to rarely see a significant return on investment in these animals, let alone compete with larger livestock producers in the country.

Zimbabwe’s small-scale livestock producers face a wide range of challenges but key among these is the lack of adequate supplementary feed, particularly during the dry winter months when natural grazing pastures are dry. As a result, productivity of the animals is often very poor, and livestock producers miss out on the prospects of increasing their incomes from beef and dairy cattle production.

In addition, increasing human populations associated with expansion in arable land area continues to put pressure on pastures which continue to dwindle in both quality and area leading to insufficient grazing to sustain livestock throughout the year. Because of this and a decreasing natural resource base, farming systems are under greater pressure to provide sufficient food and to sustain farmers’ livelihoods.

In Zimbabwe’s sub-humid Mashonaland East Province, groups of innovative farmers, extension workers and experts in crop-livestock integration are making livestock sustainable and lucrative for more than 5,000 farmers who are now beginning to increase their profits – for some up to 70 percent – thanks to new efforts led by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in collaboration with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and other partners. This initiative seeks to integrate crops and livestock technologies with a major focus on food, feed and soil.

Joyce Chigama, working in her mucuna field, feeds her six livestock on legume diets. Her animals gained an average of nearly one kilogram (kg) per day for 60 days, allowing her to later sell five of these livestock for USD 3,000. Photo: Johnson Siamachira/CIMMYT.
Joyce Chigama, working in her mucuna field, feeds her six livestock on legume diets. Her animals gained an average of nearly one kilogram (kg) per day for 60 days, allowing her to later sell five of these livestock for USD 3,000. Photo: Johnson Siamachira/CIMMYT.

Together, this consortium is working with the smallholder farmers to introduce forage legumes such as mucuna and lablab using conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification practices.

With this approach, maize productivity for food security is improved through forage and pulse legume rotations under conservation agriculture while livestock benefit from feeding on increased biomass output and conserved supplementary feed prepared from the forage legumes.

Maintaining the availability of adequate feed for livestock is crucial to rural smallholders in Zimbabwe. Most smallholders could not afford to buy commercial supplements for their natural pastures, especially during the long dry winter season when livestock usually run short of feed. Also, they did not know how to produce cost-effective home-grown feeds. Thanks to this agribusiness, the farmers learned to improve on-farm fodder production.

Conservation agriculture is a cropping system based on the principles of reduced tillage, keeping crop residues retention on the soil surface, and diversification through rotation or intercropping maize with other crops. The immediate benefits of conservation agriculture are: labor and cost savings, improved soil structure and fertility, increased infiltration and water retention, less erosion and water run-off–thus contributing to adaptation to the negative effects of climate variability and change. Through improved management and use of conservation agriculture techniques maize yields were increased from the local average of 0.8 tons per hectare to over 2.5 tons per hectare depending on rainfall and initial soil fertility status.

Mucuna (also known as velvet bean), is well-adapted to the weather conditions in Zimbabwe and can grow with an annual rainfall of 300 mm over four to six months. Growing this cover crop is an agroecological practice that helps farmers address many problems such as poor access to inputs, soil erosion and vulnerability to climate change.

Ben Makono (left) has fed his cattle a legume-based diet and seen their selling price rise by an average of USD 200 per cow. Photo: Johnson Siamachira/CIMMYT.
Ben Makono (left) has fed his cattle a legume-based diet and seen their selling price rise by an average of USD 200 per cow. Photo: Johnson Siamachira/CIMMYT.

In addition, mucuna’s high biomass yield also smothers weeds so farmers do not have to spend time weeding. Mucuna also improves soil by fixing up to 170 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare and producing up to 200 kilograms of nitrogen from its residues. Moreover, the biomass produced effectively controls wind and water erosion.

Under the conservation agriculture systems employed here, cattle are used for reduced tillage using an animal drawn direct seeder or rippers in the cereal-legume production systems. Cattle manure is also used for fertilization. In turn, cattle benefit from the system through fattening on home formulated mucuna-based diets and feeding on crop residues.

Since 2012, smallholder farmers have received training and technical assistance on improved agricultural and animal husbandry practices for animal breeding, animal health and nutrition, fodder production and herd management. For example, farmers have learned to prepare nutritious feed rations for their livestock using locally available resources such as molasses and maize residues. As a result of these newly acquired skills, farmers have been better able to adapt to the severe drought currently affecting much of southern Africa.

As part of strengthening the project’s multi-stakeholder platform, a workshop was recently held at CIMMYT’s southern Africa regional office in Harare, Zimbabwe. The meeting brought together 40 participants including farmers and personnel from non-governmental organizations, the government and the private sector. The workshop sought to further enhance crop-livestock integration through facilitating agribusiness deals between the private sector and farmers. Farmers clinched a contract farming agribusiness deal with Capstone Seed Company to supply lablab seed. This means farmers have a guaranteed market for their lablab seed.

Makera Cattle Company also offered opportunities to farmers to improve their cattle breeds through crossing their local breeds with pedigree bulls. They agreed to supply bulls as breeding stock to interested farmers on a loan scheme.

Theresa Gandazha is a smallholder dairy farmer whose first cow produced about 12 liters of milk per dayThe high cost of feed resulted in her barely breaking even when she sold the milk she produced. However, after adopting a legume-based diet for her cow, she has witnessed a dramatic increase in her income due to significantly reduced feed costs. The cow’s milk has increased its yield to 16 liters per day, earning Gandazha nearly USD 130 per month. Photo: Lovemore Gwiriri/ILRI
Theresa Gandazha is a smallholder dairy farmer whose first cow produced about 12 liters of milk per day. After adopting a legume-based diet for her cow, she has witnessed a dramatic increase in her income due to significantly reduced feed costs. The cow’s milk has increased its yield to 16 liters per day, earning Gandazha nearly $130 per month. Photo: Lovemore Gwiriri/ILRI

Thanks to the spread of the crop-livestock project, Zimbabwean farmers are now able to engage in new market opportunities and improve their incomes by increasing crop and livestock productivity at a sustainable, affordable rate.

By focusing on a commercial approach, the project is ensuring long-term sustainability of the dramatic income increases and other benefits that the farmers have already witnessed. Helping farmers improve their productivity and living standards is an important first step, but the project also has to make sure the farmers have access to reliable markets.

CIMMYT’s Integrating Crops and Livestock for Improved Food Security and Livelihoods in Rural Zimbabwe (ZimCLIFs) project is working with more than 5,000 smallholder farmers to introduce fodder production. ZimCLIFs is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and implemented by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as the lead agency, in collaboration with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Ecosystem Sciences, the University of Queensland, the Community Technology Development Organization (CTDO), the Cluster Agricultural Development Services (CADS) and the government of Zimbabwe. It seeks to strengthen potential synergies offered by crop-livestock integrated farming systems.

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Syngenta-CIMMYT collaboration on helping smallholders stay safe

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Javier Valdés is country head at Syngenta Mexico, a global seeds and crop protection company. Any opinions expressed are his own.

Improving productivity, fighting rural poverty and protecting the environment are among the significant challenges the Mexican agricultural sector faces. For Syngenta and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), responding to such demands is a priority and a key component of collaboration projects for promoting sustainable agricultural practices. That is why we have worked together since 2010.

More recently, under an agreement signed in 2013, we strengthened our joint commitment to meet the challenges that Mexican farmers are facing. This public-private collaboration is forged on CIMMYT’s aim to work with various sectors throughout society to establish strategic alliances and on the “Good Growth Plan” an initiative by which Syngenta has made six ambitious commitments with farmers and the environment to contribute to the global fight for food security.

One of these objectives has to do with Syngenta’s commitment to train 20 million smallholder farmers worldwide in the proper use and management of crop protection products, which play a key role in ensuring food security.

In Mexico, CIMMYT-trained technicians working on MasAgro (a research and capacity building project for sustainable intensification of maize and wheat systems funded by Mexico’s Agriculture Department, SAGARPA) are receiving specialized advice from Syngenta experts on the correct use and management of agrochemicals or BUMA, its acronym in Spanish.

https://vimeo.com/164620285

To date, Syngenta has offered the BUMA training to 130 technicians of the States of Mexico, Sonora and Guanajuato, who have, in turn, offered advice to groups of about 25 small farmers each. Moreover, CIMMYT’s knowledge-sharing methodology has a multiplier effect on the transfer of knowledge that increases the number of small farmers trained exponentially.

The BUMA training focuses on five key rules of pesticide application: understand products labeling; follow the labeling; regularly maintain equipment used for pesticide application; proper use of protective equipment and safe clean up practices. Furthermore, the training includes additional basic information about what to do in an emergency, and general information on first aid, among other topics.

Crop protection is vital for modern-day farming because it can substitute soil nutrients absent or depleted in poor soils and eradicate pests or control diseases that affect yields. While large scale farmers in developed countries often have access to crop protection products, smallholder farmers in developing countries face the challenges of applying optimal doses of fertilizer or pesticides to make products affordable but also to prevent environmental damage and increase yields.

The overall intention of the Syngenta-CIMMYT collaboration in Mexico is to improve the working conditions of smallholder producers who make up the majority of farmers, provide security for their families, highlight the importance of the role of crop protection and encourage them to continue using them sustainably.

Syngenta Mexico is a Gold Sponsor of CIMMYT’s 50th anniversary celebration in Mexico from 27-29 September 2016.

Maize: From Mexico to the world

Written by Matthew O'Leary on . Posted in Blogs.

Scientists agree maize originated in Mexico thousands of years ago. CIMMYT/ Peter Lowe
Scientists agree maize originated in Mexico thousands of years ago. CIMMYT/ Peter Lowe

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – For Mexicans, the “children of corn,” maize is entwined in life, history and tradition. It is not just a crop; it is central to their identity.

Even today, despite political and economic policies that have led Mexico to import one-third of its maize, maize farming continues to be deeply woven into the traditions and culture of rural communities. Furthermore, maize production and pricing are important to both food security and political stability in Mexico.

One of humanity’s greatest agronomic achievements, maize is the most widely produced crop in the world. According to the head of CIMMYT’s maize germplasm bank, senior scientist Denise Costich, there is broad scientific consensus that maize originated in Mexico, which is home to a rich diversity of varieties that has evolved over thousands of years of domestication.

The miracle of maize’s birth is widely debated in science. However, it is agreed that teosinte (a type of grass) is one of its genetic ancestors. What is unique is that maize’s evolution advanced at the hands of farmers. Ancient Mesoamerican farmers realized this genetic mutation of teosinte resembled food and saved seeds from their best cobs to plant the next crop. Through generations of selective breeding based on the varying preferences of farmers and influenced by different climates and geography, maize evolved into a plant species full of diversity.

The term “maize” is derived from the ancient word mahiz from the Taino language (a now extinct Arawakan language) of the indigenous people of pre-Columbian America. Archeological evidence indicates Mexico’s ancient Mayan, Aztec and Olmec civilizations depended on maize as the basis of their diet and was their most revered crop.

Maize is entwined in the history and traditions of Mexico. Artwork by Marcelo Ortiz
Maize is entwined in the history and traditions of Mexico. Artwork by Marcelo Ortiz

As Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation story, goes, the creator deities made the first humans from white maize hidden inside a mountain under an immovable rock. To access this maize seed, a rain deity split open the rock using a bolt of lightning in the form of an axe. This burned some of the maize, creating the other three grain colors, yellow, black and red. The creator deities took the grain and ground it into dough and used it to produce humankind.

Many Mesoamerican legends revolve around maize, and its image appears in the region’s crafts, murals and hieroglyphs. Mayas even prayed to maize gods to ensure lush crops: the tonsured maize god’s head symbolizes a maize cob, with a small crest of hair representing the tassel. The foliated maize god represents a still young, tender, green maize ear.

Maize was the staple food in ancient Mesoamerica and fed both nobles and commoners. They even developed a way of processing it to improve quality. Nixtamalization is the Nahuatl word for steeping and cooking maize in water to which ash or slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) has been added. Nixtamalized maize is more easily ground and has greater nutritional value, for the process makes vitamin B3 more bioavailable and reduces mycotoxins. Nixtamalization is still used today and CIMMYT is currently promoting it in Africa to combat nutrient deficiency.

White hybrid maize (produced through cross pollination) in Mexico has been bred for making tortillas with good industrial quality and taste. However, many Mexicans consider tortillas made from landraces (native maize varieties) to be the gold standard of quality.

“Many farmers, even those growing hybrid maize for sale, still grow small patches of the local maize landrace for home consumption,” noted CIMMYT Landrace Improvement Coordinator Martha Willcox. “However, as people migrate away from farms, and the number of hectares of landraces decrease, the biodiversity of maize suffers.”

Women representing four generations from a maize farming family in Chiapas, Mexico. CIMMYT/ Peter Lowe
Women representing four generations from a maize farming family in Chiapas, Mexico. CIMMYT/ Peter Lowe

Diversity at the heart of Mexican maize

The high level of maize diversity in Mexico is due to its varied geography and culture. As farmers selected the best maize for their specific environments and uses, maize diverged into distinct races, according to Costich. At present there are 59 unique Mexican landraces recorded.

Ancient maize farmers noticed not all plants were the same. Some grew larger than others, some kernels tasted better or were easier to grind. By saving and sowing seeds from plants with desirable characteristics, they influenced maize evolution. Landraces are also adapted to different environmental conditions such as different soils, temperature, altitude and water conditions.

“Selection for better taste and texture, ease of preparation, specific colors, and ceremonial uses all played a role in the evolution of different landraces,” said Costich. “Maize’s genetic diversity is unique and must be protected in order to ensure the survival of the species and allow for breeding better varieties to face changing environments across the world.”

“Organisms cannot evolve if there is no genetic, heritable variation for natural selection to work with. Likewise, breeders cannot make any progress in selecting the best crop varieties, if there is no diversity for them to work with,” she said.

Willcox agrees maize diversity needs to be protected. “This goes beyond food; reduced diversity takes away a part of civilization’s identity and traditions. Traditional landraces are the backbone of rural farming in Mexico, and a source of tradition in cooking and ceremonies as well as being an economic driver through tourism. They need to be preserved,” she said.

A CIMMYT staff member at work in the maize active collection in the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center. (Photo: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT) CIMMYT/Xochiquetzal Fonseca
A CIMMYT staff member at work in the maize active collection in the Wellhausen-Anderson Plant Genetic Resources Center. (Photo: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT) CIMMYT/Xochiquetzal Fonseca

Mexican collection preserves maize diversity

CIMMYT’s precursor, the Office of Special Studies funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, aided in the preservation of Mexican landraces in the 1940s, when it began a maize germplasm collection in a project with the Mexican government. By 1947, the collection contained 2,000 accessions. In a bid to organize them, scientists led by Mario Gutiérrez and Efraim Hernández Xolocotzi drew a chalk outline of Mexico and began to lay down ears of maize based on their collection sites. What emerged was a range of patterns between the races of maize. This breakthrough allowed the team of scientists to codify races of maize for the first time.

Today, CIMMYT’s Maize Germplasm Bank contains over 28,000 unique collections of maize seed and related species from 88 countries.

“These collections represent and safeguard the genetic diversity of unique native varieties and wild relatives and are held in long-term storage,” said Costich. “The collections are studied by CIMMYT and used as a source of diversity to breed for traits such as heat and drought tolerance and resistance to diseases and pests, and to improve grain yield and grain quality.”

CIMMYT’s germplasm is freely shared with scientists and research and development institutions to support maize evolution and ensure food security worldwide.

Willcox said  on-farm breeding by Mexican farmers also continues and preserves maize diversity and the culinary and cultural traditions surrounding maize are the reason there is such a wealth of landraces in existence today.

“The diversity preserved in farmers’ fields is complementary to the CIMMYT germplasm bank collection because these populations represent larger population sizes and diversity than can be contained in a germplasm bank and are subjected to continuous selection under changing climatic conditions,” she added.

Examples of some of the 59 native Mexican maize landraces. Photo courtesy of CIMMYT Maize Germplasm Bank
Examples of some of the 59 native Mexican maize landraces. Photo courtesy of CIMMYT Maize Germplasm Bank

 

Helping Nepalese farmers adapt to climate change

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This story appeared originally on the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative website to mark Earth Day on April 22, 2016. Linda McCandless is associate director for communications, International Programs, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Cornell University. She also oversees communications for the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project.

SINDHULPALCHOWK, Nepal (BGRI) — Farming the terraced hillsides above the Indrawati River Valley of Nepal, Nabaraj Sapkota and his wife Muthu Dei experience the impacts of climate change on an almost daily basis. Erratic rains make planting difficult. Warm, misty conditions and prolonged winter temperatures increase the incidence of wheat rusts that reduce yield. Unpredictable hailstorms flatten wheat and rice before they can be harvested.

“When we need rain, there is no rain.  And when we don’t need rain, there is plenty of rain,” says Nabaraj. “We used to only have rain from May through July, now we have rain and mist from November.”

Khim lal Bastola grows wheat, maize and rice in rotation and sustains four generations in his 12-person household near Pokhara. “The change is obvious: man produces something with his hard labor but strong winds and hailstorms destroy it,” he said.

“The climate change scenario for Nepal — where temperature are likely to increase and precipitation is likely to be more erratic — will disproportionally affect smallholder farmers,” said Dhruba Thapa, a senior scientist with the Nepal Agricultural Research Council. “For Nepal, the cost of not adapting to climate change will be high.”

Like many farmers in Nepal, Bastola and the Sapkotas need technical assistance to help them adapt to climate change. They eagerly soak up the education offered by people like Thapa, Sarala Sharma, and Sunita Adhibari, NARC scientists who distribute disease resistant varieties of wheat and help farmers learn to identify diseases.

Scientists and farmers also soak up training from the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI), and specialists like Dave Hodson, a wheat surveillance specialist with CIMMYT, who shows them how to scout for wheat rust and upload data into the global RustTracker monitoring system.

FARMING PERVASIVE BUT DIFFICULT IN NEPAL

Farming in Nepal is hard, backbreaking labor predominantly done by hand in fields rarely more than one-quarter of an acre in size. Men plow the small plots on the terraced hillsides with oxen. Women break up the clods with heavy adzes. Although rarely above subsistence level, small farms are of vital importance in sustaining the multi-generational communities scattered throughout the Himalayas in the high hills to the north, the temperate mid-hills, and the subtropical terai to the south.

The livelihoods of more than 75 percent of the people in Nepal are based on agriculture and forestry, and almost 65 percent of the agriculture is rainfed, Nepal is among the 25 nations in the world with the lowest GDP per person and also ranks among the 25 with the greatest decrease in forested land. Rural populations are heavily clustered in river basins whose annual monsoon-fed flood cycles are likely to be exacerbated by warming. Deforestation adds to the problem, intensifying flooding and contributing to the likelihood of landslides.

HELPING FARMERS ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Using disease resistant and improved seeds, and adopting different planting and harvesting calendars helps farmers adapt to climate change.

In Chhampi, north of Kathmandu, Krishna Bahadur Ghimire and the local farmers’ cooperative of which he is president, are now producing improved rice, wheat and maize on 140 ropanis of land. Ghimere supplies beans, rice, eggplant, soybeans, wheat and vegetable seeds to his neighbors. He started farming on one ropani of land (~ 500 sq.m) in 1997 but switched to the seed business when he found himself having to drive two hours to Kathmandu to get the improved varieties he needed.

“Our local varieties were not climate smart. We went to Kathmandu to get improved seeds from the Nepalese Agricultural Research Center because their seeds are more disease resistant, higher yielding, and higher quality,” said Ghimire, who has worked with Thapa for 11 years.  “New varieties are less lodging and scattering during storms and high winds than the local ones.”

“Farmers need climate smart crops that have been improved for yield and disease resistance, but they also need seeds adapted for variable weather conditions whether we have drought or excess rainfall,” said Thapa. “NARC screens many lines and then provides seeds of promising lines to farmers for participatory variety selection trials, like with Ghimire’s group.”

Naparaj, the Sindhulpalchowk farmer, initially received 300 grams of seven varieties of improved wheat from Thapa. “I was thinking how I could uplift them (my neighbors),” said Naparaj. “I thought to myself, the lives of these people must be uplifted through improved seeds which would give them good production. We used to get one muri (~3.5 liters or 70 kg) of wheat per one ropani (~ 500 sq.m.). Now we are threshing three or four times more. It is a huge profit.”

Ghimere’s 25-year-old nephew Saroj Kumar Bista, speaks of another problem affecting farmers that requires gender-sensitive initiatves. “Many young men are going to the Middle East to work and not moving into the farming sector,” he said.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Godhavari, where Manju Khavas, Radha Basnet and Janaki Silwal’s sons have gone to the Middle East or Japan to work. Their husbands work off the farm, leaving them in charge. “At first we were overwhelmed,” said the 52-year-old Khavas. “We could not find someone to dig the fields. Now it is easier because of the handheld tractor.”

Thapa introduced improved eight or nine varieties of wheat to their community as well as agronomic practices like planting in rows, incorporating manure for fertilizer, and using handheld tractors (similar to heavy duty rototillers).

How does Khavas count improvement? “When we were 7 or 8 members in the family, the produce of this land was not enough. Now the produce is enough for 13 to 14 people,” she said. Wheat yields are so improved that she and her friends want a wheat threshing machine so they don’t have to thresh the greater quantities by hand.

Although the women said they have yet to “evaluate” climate change, they noted the “environment has been spoilt.”

“During the harvesting season of the wheat, we suffer from the fear of rain,” said Khavas. “Hailstorms also scare us. The moment the wheat becomes yellow, we begin to feel afraid whether we will be able to harvest it or not. And then when the wheat is harvested amid the fear of rain, in the paddy rice planting time, there is no rain.”

MORE TRAINING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION

Dave Hodson, a surveillance expert with CIMMYT and the BGRI, travels to countries like Nepal to train scientists on using handheld tablets to scout for disease and input data into global disease tracking and monitoring systems that can help to predict disease outbreaks.

Since 2008, the BGRI has held five 2-week training sessions on the “Art and Science of Rust Pathology and Wheat Breeding” in Asia for scientists in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), including scientists from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The course is slated to be on-line this summer.

Nepalese farmers lack understanding of meteorological data and how to reduce risks in agriculture and farming. Sushila Pyakurel, who works with ICDO Lalitpur, has helped initiate Climate Field Schools in Nepal where farmers learn the effects of climate change, identifying crops most suitable to grow, seed selection, scheduling farm operations/farm management practices, and adaptation strategies/methodologies.

One of the new areas of expansion for the BGRI is the new Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project, a $24M effort funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to make wheat for smallholder farmers around the world more heat tolerant and disease resistant in the face of climate change. It builds on the successes of the 2008-2015 Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, which initiated and funded the SAARC training courses.

DEDICATION: April 25, 2016: For smallholder farmers in Nepal, the challenges of climate change are disastrous enough. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated Nepal on 25 April 2015, less than one month after the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative team visited. More than 9,000 people died and almost 900,000 homes were destroyed. Some of the hardest hit areas were Sindhulpalchowk and Chhampi. This Earth Day blog is dedicated to the resilient farmers of Nepal. It is the BGRI’s sincerest hope that their families are well on their way to recovery.

A woman for wheat: Maricelis Acevedo takes on new role

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This story appeared originally on the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative website. Linda McCandless is associate director for communications, International Programs, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Cornell University. She also oversees communications for the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat project.

“A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for” is Maricelis Acevedo’s favorite mantra. The newly appointed associate director for science for Cornell University’s Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW) project left her island home of Puerto Rico in 2003 to pursue a career as a pathologist and has been traveling the world ever since.

This past month, Acevedo visited wheat screening nurseries in Kenya and Ethiopia and wheat research centers in India with Ronnie Coffman, director of the DGGW. She feels grateful for the opportunity to lead the scientific component of a project whose goals are to help mitigate the threat of food insecurity in vulnerable regions of the world, especially Ethiopia.

“The job comes with new opportunities and great responsibilities to achieve food security for a growing population,” said Acevedo. “Given the challenges of a changing climate, scarce agricultural resources, and the misinformation about what technology can provide to agriculture in the developing and developed world, I feel privileged to be a voice for farmers, researchers and sponsors in the fight against wheat pathogens.”

Acevedo believes the world can do better in bringing science to smallholder farmers’ fields. Her new journey on behalf of the DGGW began on March 16 when she helped launch the DGGW project in the wheat fields of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Ciudad Obregón in Mexico’s state of Sonora. Over the next year she will be visiting farmers and partner agricultural research facilities, including CIMMYT, around the globe.

“For the past eight years, Maricelis has collaborated with the Cornell team on various aspects of the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project,” said Coffman, vice-chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI). “Maricelis is an accomplished rust pathologist who also comes from an agricultural background. That is enormously helpful in a project whose success is so closely linked to farmer adoption of new varieties. We welcome her with great enthusiasm.”

The new DGGW grant will use modern tools of comparative genomics and big data to develop and deploy varieties of wheat that incorporate climate resilience and heat tolerance as well as improved disease resistance for smallholder farmers.

SMALL FARM ROOTS

Growing up on a small farm in Puerto Rico, in a family that grew plantains, bananas, edible beans, taro, sweet potato, maize and pigeon peas, Acevedo received an early introduction to the agricultural science behind farming. It was her father, now a retired agronomist from the University of Puerto Rico, who first introduced her to the concept of “pathogens.” She remembers watching him spray their fields to protect their crops from disease dressed in a protective suit and face mask. Mimicking his actions as a 4-year-old, she took a small plastic cup and sucked it tight onto her face breaking the capillaries all around her mouth and nose while “spraying” her Mom’s flowers with a watering can — “my first job as a pathologist,” she laughs.

More seriously, she also remembers her father testing farming practices that were going to be introduced to farmers’ fields in following seasons — “participatory breeding and research at its best.” And his first lessons on phenotypic selection of plantains and beans and his eagerness to try the new varieties coming out of the University of Puerto Rico Agricultural Experiment Research Station breeding and crop improvement programs.

Having experienced the devastation of seasonal crops due to drought, hurricanes, diseases and insects, Acevedo said she also knows the heartaches associated with farming. “I will never forget the emotional stress on my dad’s face in those moments.”

UNDERSTANDING HOST-PATHOGEN INTERACTION

During her undergraduate years at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Acevedo studied biology, genetics, botany and biotechnology, courses that helped her decide to pursue a master’s degree in agronomy where she focused on crop improvement and the genetics of edible beans.

Working on host resistance helped her decide to understand the pathogen side of the disease equation so she joined James R. Steadman’s laboratory in the department of plant pathology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to pursue her Ph.D. in 2003. Acevedo’s research project, partially funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, focused on virulence diversity of edible bean rust pathogens in Honduras and the identification of resistance in wild beans and bean landraces. “That is how my passion for international agriculture and rust research began,” said Acevedo.

Following her graduation in 2007, Acevedo pursued a postdoc at the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service National Small Grain Collection and Potato Research Unit in Aberdeen, Idaho, and then became assistant professor at North Dakota State University (NDSU) from 2010-2016. She said she will miss her friends and colleagues at NDSU, but credits them — along with her family — in helping her achieve her newest position at Cornell University.

Acevedo was in the first class of BGRI Women in Triticum (WIT) Early Career Award Winners in 2010. “The WIT award help me identify and meet an amazing pool of female scientists who have mentored and encouraged me. We have developed collaborations that go beyond our professional lives.”

Acevedo takes seriously her role as mentor to other younger WIT winners who look to her as a role model for their research and academic careers.

SOLUTION ORIENTED

Acevedo believes her role with the DGGW is the perfect opportunity for her to facilitate how great work done by wheat scientists makes it to the field.

“I look forward to being part of the solutions necessary to deliver higher genetic gain wheat and promote better variety adoptions in key regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia,” said Acevedo. “I also look forward to seeing how we can utilize new technologies such as high through-put phenotyping, genomic selection and early warning systems for pathogen epidemics and implementing them in research and farmers’ fields.

“With the BGRI’s help in capacity building, research and education, we are training the next generation of wheat scientists for their countries and for their regions, increasing wheat production, and helping achieve food security,” Acevedo said. “I am very excited about helping developing countries with high potential for wheat improve their production and yield.”

More on Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat

YouTube interview with Maricelis Acevedo

(Photo: J. Cumes/CIMMYT)

Global wheat breeding returns billions in benefits but stable financing remains elusive

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

Martin Kropff is CIMMYT director general and Juergen Voegele is senior director World Bank’s Agriculture Global Practice.

(Photo: J. Cumes/CIMMYT)
(Photo: J. Cumes/CIMMYT)

What do a chapati, a matza, or couscous have in common? The answer is wheat, which is a source for one-fifth of the calories and protein consumed globally.

Yet, stable, assured funding for public research for this important food grain remains elusive.

For 45 years, world-class scientists from two research centers of CGIAR – the world’s only global research system that focuses on the crops of most importance to poor farmers in developing countries – have battled the odds to provide wheat and nourish the world’s growing population. Their innovations have helped to boost wheat yields, fight debilitating pests and ward off diseases, improving the lives of nearly 80 million poor farmers.

Wheat plays a big role in feeding the human family. Over 1.2 billion resource-poor consumers depend on wheat as a staple food.

Small Investment, big gains: Research for free public goods shows the way

A new report by the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat shows that for an annual investment of roughly $30 million, the benefits gained from wheat research are in the range of $2.2 billion to $3.1 billion each year, from 1994 to 2014. Put another way, for every $1 invested in wheat breeding, $73 to $103 were returned in direct benefits, helping producers and consumers alike. Surely these healthy numbers — which are conservative because they do not include benefits from traits other than yield — would whet the appetite of any hard-nosed economist or bean counter looking for a convincing return on investment.

Science products like improved wheat lines from CIMMYT, the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, and ICARDA, the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas – both members of CGIAR – are freely available to all and keep the global wheat research enterprise humming. Each year CIMMYT alone distributes half a million packets of corn and wheat seed from its research to 346 partners in public and private breeding programs spread across 79 countries where these crops are mainstays of people’s diets.

Today, the rapid spread of wheat varieties adapted to diverse ecologies is one of agricultural science’s unsung success stories. Almost half the world’s wheat land is sown to varieties that come from research by CGIAR scientists and their global network of partners. Even as wheat-free diets are on the rise in industrialized countries – whether due to personal preference, or medical necessity such as celiac disease – it is increasingly clear that wheat will remain an important grain in the diets of millions of people living in emerging economies.

(Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)
(Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)

Food in a changing climate: The future is here

So what could possibly be wrong with the scenario painted above? After all, CIMMYT has been around for five decades, and public funding has kept the wheels of discovery science turning and delivering improved varieties of the food crops that farmers demand and consumers need.

The big outlier, our known unknown, is climate change. For every one degree Celsius increase in growing season temperatures, wheat production decreases by a whopping 6 percent.

To beat the heat, CIMMYT scientists are working to reshape the wheat plant for temperature extremes and other environmental factors. New goals include dramatically enhancing wheat’s use of sunlight and better understanding the internal signals whereby plants coordinate their activities and responses to dry conditions and high temperatures.

Food demand is projected to rise by 20 percent globally over the next 15 years with the largest increases in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and East Asia where the map of hunger, poverty and malnutrition has an overlay of environmental stress and extreme resource degradation.

Climate change is already playing havoc with the global food system.

In 2009, one-fifth of Mexico’s corn production was lost due to drought. In 2011, extreme weather events such as cyclones destroyed one-third of Sri Lanka’s rice crop, and badly damaged rice paddies in Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest countries. Two successive seasons of poor rainfall from El Niño have decimated Africa’s corn harvest and left millions facing hunger this year.

Looking to the future, rising food demand – driven inexorably by population, rapid urbanization and increasing global wealth – shows no sign of abating. To meet food needs by increasing productivity, cereal yields – not wheat alone – would need to increase at 3 percent a year, a number that is 40 percent higher than the 2.1 percent gains achieved from 2000 to 2013. Alas, plant breeders do not have the luxury of complacency. New varieties take more than a decade to develop, test, and deploy through national certification and seed marketing or distribution systems.

CGIAR crop scientists are rushing to meet the challenges. In a taste of the future, a team of topnotch scientists at CGIAR’s Lima-based International Potato Center and NASA will test growing potatoes under Martian conditions to demonstrate that hardy spuds can thrive in the harshest environments.

As the world’s policy makers begin to grapple with the interconnected nature of food, energy, water and peace, every dollar invested in improving global food and nutrition security is an investment in the future of humanity.

To develop crops, livestock, fish and trees that are more productive and resilient and have a lower environmental signature, CGIAR is calling for an increase in its war chest to reach $1.35 billion by 2020. Is anybody listening?

Severe drought-affected area in Lamego, Mozambique. (Photo: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYT)

Will El Niño be a wake-up call to invest in food security solutions?

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Severe drought-affected area in Lamego, Mozambique. (Photo: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYT)
Severe drought-affected area in Lamego, Mozambique. (Photo: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYT)

HARARE (CIMMYT) — In southern Africa close to 50 million people are projected to be affected by droughts caused by the current El Niño, a climate phenomenon that develops in the tropical Pacific Ocean causing extreme weather worldwide — this year, one of the strongest on record. Many of those millions are expected to be on the brink of starvation and dependent on emergency food aid and relief.

However, severe droughts are nothing new to the region. Between 1900 and 2013 droughts have killed close to 1 million people in Africa, with economic damages of about $3 billion affecting over 360 million people. Over the past 50 years, 24 droughts have been caused by El Niño events, according to research by Ilyas Masih. If droughts are so recurrent and known to be a major cause of yield variability and food insecurity in southern Africa, why are we still reacting to this as a one-time emergency instead of a calculated threat?

Unpredictable harvests: Above, yield variability in the world’s top 5 maize producing countries (left) vs. southern Africa (right) Source: FAOSTAT, 2015
Unpredictable harvests: Above, yield variability in the world’s top 5 maize producing countries (left) vs. southern Africa (right) Source: FAOSTAT, 2015

Over the past 50 years, donors have focused on the “poorest of the poor” in agriculture – areas where farming is difficult due to low and erratic rainfalls, poor sandy soils and high risk of crop failure. Investments were made in these areas to change farmers’ livelihoods – and yet the numbers of food insecure people are the same or rising in many southern African countries. Once drought hits, most farmers are left with no crops and are forced to sell their available livestock.  Due to many farmers flooding the market with poor meat at once, prices for both livestock and meat hit rock bottom. Only when the situation becomes unbearable does the development community act, calling for emergency aid, which kicks in with a stuttering start. Abject poverty and food aid dependency is the inevitable consequence.

A farmer in Zimbabwe explains his challenges with drought and low soil fertility. Photo: Michael Listman
A farmer in Zimbabwe explains his challenges with drought and low soil fertility. CIMMYT/Michael Listman

Short-term relief can help millions of farmer families in this current crisis, and emergency solutions will likely be necessary this year. However, emergency relief is not the solution to saving lives and money in a world where extreme weather events are only going to become more frequent.

We know that the next drought will come within the next two to three years.

Proactive, strategic and sustainable response strategies are needed to increase farming system resilience and reduce dependency on food aid during extreme weather events like El Niño. This starts with improving the capacity of local, regional and national governments to make fully informed decisions on how to prepare for these events. Interventions must reach beyond poor performing areas, but also support higher productivity areas and emerging commercial farmers, who have greater potential to produce enough grain on a national scale to support areas hardest hit by droughts and dry-spells.

Groundnuts in rotation with maize under conservation agriculture can provide food and nutrition despite climate variability in Malawi. Photo:  Christian Thierfelder
Groundnuts in rotation with maize under conservation agriculture can provide food and nutrition despite climate variability in Malawi. CIMMYT/Christian Thierfelder

Climate-smart agriculture technologies, drought-tolerant maize, and such techniques as conservation agriculture, agroforestry and improved soil fertility management are approaches to farming that seek to increase food and nutrition security, alleviate poverty, conserve biodiversity and safeguard ecosystem services.

They need to be scaled out to increase resilience to climate variability. This strategy of improved foresight and targeting coupled with adoption of climate-smart agriculture and improved outscaling can lead to increased resilience of smallholder farming systems in southern Africa, reducing year-to-year variability and the need for emergency response.

Learn more about the impacts of El Niño and building resilience in the priority briefing “Combating drought in southern Africa: from relief to resilience” here, and view the special report from FEWS Net illustrating the extent and severity of the 2015-16 drought in southern Africa.  

Combating malnutrition: a new zinc-rich variety of wheat

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VeluBlogpic
A farmer feeds harvested wheat crop into a thresher as a woman collects de-husked wheat in a field at Kunwarpur village, Allahabad in India’s Uttar Pradesh website. Credit: Handout

V.K. Mishra and Ramash Chand are professors at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India. Arun Joshi is a wheat breeder at CIMMYT. Any views expressed are their own.

One of the side-effects of the Green Revolution, which began in the 1960s and led to large increases in crop production, has been a change in the cropping patterns in many parts of India.

Farmers have shifted to crops with higher yields. In the Indo-Gangetic plains, for example, rice and wheat have replaced many other crops. This has reduced crop diversity, affected dietary patterns, and led to malnutrition due to a poor supply of proteins, vitamins, iron and zinc.

Wheat is the staple diet in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Farmers in those states typically have very small landholdings and consume about 70 per cent of the food they produce. One essential mineral missing from their diet is zinc. A zinc deficiency leads to malfunctioning of several proteins and enzymes, and manifests itself in a variety of diseases, including diarrhea, skin and respiratory disorders.

One way of making up for this kind of deficiency is to provide fortification by adding missing nutrients to food, but this is complex for several reasons, including price increases, the problem of quality control, and the possibility of adulteration.

We tested the genetic bio-fortification technology for enhancing the zinc content in wheat crops under the HarvestPlus project of CIMMYT and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bio-fortification is a seed-driven technology that enables crops to extract a higher amount of zinc from the soil and store it in the edible parts.

Through cross-breeding, we produced several thousand wheat genotypes and screened them for high zinc content and high yield. In India, a new variety would be unacceptable if it does not deliver a higher yield than the varieties already under cultivation. We isolated several of these cross-bred varieties that had both high zinc and high yield, and put them through field trials. The existing varieties of wheat crop had 29 parts per million (ppm) of zinc and the varieties we selected had 40 to 45 ppm of zinc.

These field trials were conducted at 70 different locations. Two specific varieties of wheat were then distributed to about 5,000 farmers for cultivation.

The next stage is national trials, which will be conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The first thing that ICAR does is to put the recommended varieties to disease trial. The ICAR tests take about three years. One of the varieties, BHU-35, has recently cleared the disease-testing stage and is ready to be released in Uttar Pradesh for cultivation, after a few more regulatory clearances.

Seven other varieties are currently undergoing disease testing, and in the next few years, many other zinc-rich wheat crops will be ready for cultivation.

This story was originally published in The Indian Express.

Cereal systems in South Asia show diverse benefits of conservation agriculture

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Conservation agriculture (field at right) protects wheat from damage due to water stagnation experienced in a conventional field, visible in the blackening of the wheat (left field). Photo: CIMMYT/ Sapkota
Conservation agriculture (field at right) protects wheat from damage due to water stagnation experienced in a conventional field, visible in the blackening of the wheat (left field). CIMMYT/Tek Sapkota

Julianna White is program manager for low emissions agriculture at the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. Tek Sapkota is a scientist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvment Center and lead author of the study. Any opinions expressed are their own.

Research shows conservation agriculture increases the income of farmers, moderates canopy temperatures, improves irrigation productivity and reduces greenhouse gas emissions in cereal systems in the Indo-Gangetic plains.

Conservation agriculture practices are also climate-smart, meaning they help farmers adapt to climate change while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, found researchers from CIMMYT, the Borlaug Institute for South Asia and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

In an August 2015 article in the Journal of Integrative Agriculture, researchers report that a comprehensive literature review and evidence collected from on-farm trials showed that conservation agriculture – defined as minimal soil disturbance and permanent soil cover combined with appropriate rotations – improved farmers’ income, helped crops sustain or adapt to heat and water stresses, and reduced agriculture’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions in cereal systems in South Asia.

Farmer Ram Shubagh Chaudhary in his wheat fields, in the village of Pokhar Binda, Maharajganj district, Uttar Pradesh, India. He alternates wheat and rice, and has achieved a bumper wheat crop by retaining crop residues and employing zero tillage. He is one of the farmers working in partnership with the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA). CIMMYT is one of the many partners involved in CSISA, a collaborative project designed to decrease hunger and increase food and income security for resource-poor farm families in South Asia through development and deployment of new varieties, sustainable management technologies, and policies, led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the USAID. Chaudhary carries out many different experiments, including comparisons of varieties, sowing dates, herbicides, and other variables, and gives demonstrations of his fields to other farmers. Photo credit: CIMMYT.
Farmer Ram Shubagh Chaudhary in his wheat fields, in the village of Pokhar Binda, Maharajganj district, Uttar Pradesh, India. He alternates wheat and rice, and has achieved a bumper wheat crop by retaining crop residues and employing zero tillage. CIMMYT/Petr Kosina

Farmers reap economic benefits

Conservation agriculture recommends minimal soil disturbance, most commonly tillage. Farmers who practiced zero tillage saved 23 percent in production costs by avoiding preparatory tillage and reducing the number of times fields were irrigated, while reaping the same or slightly higher yields.

Minimizing heat stress

High temperatures during the maturity stage cause wheat to decrease grain size, lowering overall yields, a phenomenon known as “terminal heat effect.” Farmers who practice conservation agriculture avoid this heat stress because residues left on the surface of the field conserve soil moisture, enhancing transpiration and creating a cooling effect – thus avoiding reduced yields caused by terminal heat effect.

Efficient use of water resources

Researchers found multiple examples that the zero tillage component of conservation agriculture led to significant water savings in both rice and wheat systems. Water savings accrued across systems. In rice-wheat systems, retention of wheat residues reduces water use in rice, and retention of rice residues causes reduced water use in wheat. Non-requirement of preparatory tillage advances the planting times thereby increasing rainwater-use efficiency and utilizing residual moisture from the previous crop.

Decrease in greenhouse gas emissions

Minimizing soil disturbance allows for soil carbon to accumulate, causing a net soil carbon gain. Although scientists are still debating the extent of soil carbon sequestered through conservation agriculture, indirect emissions reductions are numerous: less power and fuel consumption due to decreased tillage in conservation agriculture, decreased labor from machines and humans, and slower depreciation of equipment.

Business-as-usual production practices such as conventional tillage and farmers’ nutrient and irrigation management systems are greenhouse gas-intensive, while zero tillage reduces energy consumption in land preparation and crop establishment and efficient use of water resources reduces energy needs from pumping. Leaving residues in the field increases soil health and fertility, thereby reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.

Researchers found that, on average, farmers could save 36 liters of diesel per hectare, equivalent to a reduction in 93 kg CO2 emission per hectare per year by practicing zero tillage for land preparation and crop establishment in the rice-wheat system typical on the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Given that 13.5 million hectares are under rice-wheat system cultivation in the region, this represents a reduction of 12.6 megatons of CO2 equivalent.

New technologies increase uptake of conservation agriculture

Despite excellent productivity, economic gains and environmental benefits, adoption of conservation agriculture in South Asia is still relatively slow, most likely due to various technological and socio-economic factors. It takes years and ample evidence for farmers to change the entrenched habit of tillage with planting. And it is a process.

For example, some farmers have adopted zero-tillage in wheat production, primarily to facilitate early planting, lower production costs and increase yields (and therefore profitabilitiy). However, these same farmers still prefer to practice tillage and puddling (wet-tillage) in their rice crops for weed control and reduction in percolation loss of water/nutrient. Also, farmers tend to burn crop residues to facilitate planting with the zero-tillage drill. To realize the full potential of conservation agriculture, all crops in rotation have to be brought under zero tillage, and crop residues will have to be used as soil surface mulch.

Due to the recent development of the “Turbo Happy Seeder,” which can drill seed and fertilizer directly through loose and anchored crop residues, farmers are gradually moving towards zero tillage across the agriculture system.

Farmers who practice conservation agriculture also must adjust their nutrient management systems in order to maximize crop productivity decrease costs. Conventional fertilizer recommendations have been calibrated based on tillage-based systems are thus not necessarily appropriate for conservation agriculture systems, including nutrient stewardship (applying the right source of fertilizer at the right time in right place using right method).

Crop residue management is essential for continuous coil cover, an important component of conservation agriculture, but farmers are faced with competing uses of crop residue as livestock feed, fuel, mulch and compost. Local adaptive research is needed to address strategic residue and nutrient management, weed control and scale-appropriate machinery development.

Such a paradigm shift in crop management requires a mindset transition among farmers and other value chain actors, including researchers, extension agents, market players and other institutions. Though it is recognized that transition takes time, recent progress and development in weed control and nutrient management systems signal that practice of conservation agriculture is growing across the region, including among different socio-economic groups and farm typologies.

CCAFS and CIMMYT continue research and implementation of low emissions agriculture across the globe. See also the regional focus on conservation and climate-smart agriculture in South Asia.

Moving beyond agriculture’s gender status quo

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Photo: M. DeFreese/CIMMYT.
Photo: M. DeFreese/CIMMYT.

This opinion piece links to a seminar on  “Cooperation of CGIARs and academia in sustainable gender + intensification in IAR4D” given at CIMMYT by Margreet van der Burg, Senior University Lecturer/Researcher at Wageningen University, on International Women’s Day, 8 March. Any opinions expressed are her own.

Agricultural change is part of historical change and cannot be separated from social change processes. Therefore, we have to commit to also include women and others who were largely overlooked in agriculture in the past. We cannot live without agricultural produce; we would all die without food. Changes in agriculture will affect us all in various ways and on different scales. It is all our very interest. For research on agricultural innovation this implies in my view that we need to be determined in addressing and carefully integrating human social change processes into it from step one till the very end.

Taking part in processes of change is taking part in development. My take on development is that we commit ourselves to consciously work together towards inclusive development, meaning optimizing opportunities for all while valuing diversity and acknowledging we are all part of these change processes, albeit not from the same social positions. Therefore, to me, development definitely includes the support to increasing opportunities and chances for groups of people who historically have been becoming largely invisible and not heard nor adequately represented.

In most societies, women’s opportunities and chances are more limited than men’s, even where equal rights laws are in place. Deeply rooted mindsets and bodily ingrained routines we have all been learning as young children, make us feel most comfortable when we can operate without having to question them. We often see this around us, especially when confronted with life-changing circumstances, such as sudden poverty, war, migration and climate change. We are poorly prepared to try alternative options, may get worn out and even lose our sense of purpose. It takes a conscious and concerted effort to question and modify those immediate responses.

But we can all learn much more from unfamiliar “others” than we often do now. Praising being outstanding through exclusivity or privilege in opposition to “others” does not support change processes; but sharing and facilitating do. If we all are prepared to see, listen and together investigate how and why “differences” based on gender and other social dimensions work out, we can combine insights and move forward in ways most can profit from. “Deviants,” for instance, can help to point out sharply where societies fail, and can lead to better diagnostics. “Others” who mostly have no vested interest in the status quo, can become important agents of change in processes where a lot of bridging is needed to negotiate change.

In many societies, women are predominantly defined as “others,” as opposed to men. If we support women in voicing their perspectives, this will shed new light on change processes from various angles and scales. Within the large group of women, there are also differences. Some women might be in a better position to act as change agents within the social dynamics at stake. In many societies, young women get exposure to “others” — for instance, through education — and can become change agen

ts if the elder community members and they themselves work on bridging differences in a respectful way. Men can stand up as allies and help bridging differences to their fellows. Integrating these gender — social dynamics of change into international agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) will be a challenging task in the coming years for not only women’s, but everyone’s benefit. I am very pleased to have and take my share!

Grandmother harvests drought-tolerant maize in Lobu village, Koromo, Hawassa Zuria district, Ethiopia. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)

Amidst intense drought, investment in scientific research is key

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Grandmother harvests drought-tolerant maize in Lobu village, Koromo, Hawassa Zuria district, Ethiopia. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)
Grandmother harvests drought-tolerant maize in Lobu village, Koromo, Hawassa Zuria district, Ethiopia. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – El Niño drought-related stress is triggering hunger and food insecurity that will endanger food security for 40 million people in southern Africa, according to the World Food Programme. While not as tangible as humanitarian aid, long-term scientific research is key to addressing the major drought threatening parts of Central America, Africa and Asia. Government fiscal tightening makes it hard to defend investments in research against projects where the results may be immediate and obvious – but long-term investment equals long-term impact.

Reduced harvests due to drought
South Africa, which is normally a regional exporter, will need to import 5 to 6 million tons of maize to mitigate the widespread crop failure. As the continent’s largest maize producer this is having a knock on effect on the region. Zimbabwe, which depends on food imports from South Africa, declared a state of disaster last month, due to drought. Malawi and Mozambique have also experienced soaring food prices. Millions in the region will need food assistance, which means massive imports. In much of southern Africa, 30 – 50 day delays in the onset of rains has caused curtailed planting, setting the scene for widespread crop failure.

Ethiopia is experiencing the worst drought in decades, with more people requiring food assistance in 2016 than at any point since 2005, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. In the central and eastern part of the countries crop production is down by 25 to 70% after the lowest rains in more than 50 years.

The El Niño related drought is not limited to Africa. India is set to harvest its smallest wheat crop in six years, with production down by five percent, following two successive poor monsoon seasons. But the biggest concern is that the region could experience major drought episodes like the Horn of Africa drought 1981- 1984 and the South Africa drought 1992, causing massive social disruption and human suffering.

Drought tolerant crops are an insurance against hunger and crop failure.
Given the severity of drought, scientific researchers are faced with the challenge to devise seed and farming practices that offer farmers greater resilience under this stress. Ongoing work to develop drought tolerant varieties has proved successful but needs renewed support and expansion.
Various maize landraces and wild relatives of wheat have withstood harsh conditions for thousands of years. Exploiting the drought-tolerances they possess and involving the use of molecular markers to better understand the genetic basis of drought tolerance has helped breeders select for better drought tolerance.  This is not a quick fix. It can cost up to $600,000 and take seven years to produce a single maize hybrid.  Hybrids tend to be more drought tolerant because they are more robust, implying deeper roots that allows the plant to capture more water.

Crop conditions at a glance as of January 28. (Source: Geoglam Global Agricultural Monitoring)
Crop conditions at a glance as of January 28. (Source: Geoglam Global Agricultural Monitoring)

CIMMYT is working with national partners in Ethiopia to rapidly get drought tolerant maize and wheat seed to farmers as part of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Emergency Seed Response in Ethiopia project. The USAID and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project has brought 184 distinct varieties to farmers, mostly hybrids that yield on average 49% more grain than open-pollinated varieties, and yield higher than or equal to currently available varieties on the market.

A single seed can make the difference between hunger and prosperity, but seed alone is not enough. Imagine a Ferrari that is designed to travel at high speed on a freshly paved highway, driving along a dirt road. It will either break down or drive badly. The same thing happens with seed that is planted without smart farming practices designed to increase efficiency. There are many factors that need to be considered, including: right planting date, water conserving tillage methods, and fertilizer. If you can establish the plant well, it is more likely to perform well when drought stress really hits.

Plant a seed today
Massive investments are required today in order for farmers to benefit from effective technologies in the future given that benefits from agricultural research tend to come to fruition after a considerable time lag. Today, parts of Central America, Africa and Asia desperately need food assistance – but the need for investment in agricultural research for development will only intensify as more countries face drought and other climate-related stress. As the proverb asks: “When is the best time to plant a tree?” Twenty years ago. “The second-best time?” Today.

A farmer in his barren field in Sewena, Ethiopia. (Photo: Kyle Degraw/Save the Children)

Is the next food crisis coming? Are we ready to respond?

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A farmer in his barren field in Sewena, Ethiopia. (Photo: Kyle Degraw/Save the Children)
A farmer in his barren field in Sewena, Ethiopia. (Photo: Kyle Degraw/Save the Children)

One of the strongest El Niños on record is underway, threatening millions of agricultural livelihoods – and lives.

At least ten million people in the developing world are facing hunger due to droughts and erratic rainfall as global temperatures reach new records coupled with the onset of a powerful El Niño – the climate phenomenon that develops in the tropical Pacific and brings extreme weather across the world. Warmer than usual waters in the Pacific have made this year’s El Niño a contender for the strongest on record, currently held by the 1997 El Niño, which caused over $35 billion in global economic losses and claimed an estimated 23,000 lives. These extreme El Niños are twice as likely to occur due to climate change, according to a letter published in Nature magazine by researchers at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Who is most at risk?

Watch this video to learn more about El Niño's impact on weather globally. (Source: World Meteorological Organization)
Watch this video to learn more about El Niño’s impact on weather globally. (Source: World Meteorological Organization)

Nearly 40 million people will be in need of emergency food assistance this year – a 30 percent increase over previous estimates – due in large part to added stress from El Niño, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

This El Niño has resulted in severe drought throughout Central America, the Caribbean and Ethiopia, and is predicted to lead to flooding in the Horn of Africa and drought in southern Africa in the coming months. It has also disrupted the Indian monsoon and led to drier conditions in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, which has resulted in devastating wildfires across the country.

The El Niño phenomenon is often followed by a transition to La Niña, another driver of global weather patterns. If this were to happen again, it would mean more severe drought in the eastern Horn of Africa, and hurt crops like sugar, palm oil, and rice in Asia.

Responding to and mitigating El Niño’s effects

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

Ensuring farmers are equipped with climate resilient varieties that can withstand extreme stresses such as drought or waterlogging is an essential measure to counteract the side effects of El Niño. For example, after planting a drought tolerant maize variety developed by CIMMYT, farmers in Tanzania produced nearly 50 percent more grain than they normally would under the same conditions using other commercial varieties. In South Asia, CIMMYT has developed maize varieties that are tolerant to waterlogging and provide a safety net in years with heavy rains or flooding.

Equipping farmers with good agronomic practices and tools to reap the benefits of these crops is equally important. Ensuring farmers adjust planting times is critical for crops to adapt to changing weather patterns, while smart water management practices such as no-till farming can help raise wheat yields while reducing water and fuel costs. Precision land levelers – machines that level fields so water flows evenly into soil, rather than running off or collecting in uneven land – have enabled farmers in South Asia to save up to 30 percent more water, use less fertilizer and produce more grain yield.

Crop-index insurance is another tool that can serve as both a preventive and responsive measure to support smallholders during natural disasters. It allows farmers to purchase coverage based on an index that is correlated with those losses, such as average yield losses over a larger area or a well-defined climate risk – like drought – that significantly influences crop yields. If implemented correctly, index insurance can build resilience for smallholder farmers not only by ensuring a payout in the event of climate shocks like those caused by El Niño, but also by giving farmers the incentive to invest in new technology and inputs, such as seed.

So – are we prepared for this storm? Since 2003, nearly one-quarter of all damage and losses from climate-related disasters have occurred in the agricultural sector in developing countries. While global food security will likely not suffer another shock like that of 2007-08, primarily because global stocks of maize, wheat and rice are so large, natural disasters resulting from El Niño combined with climate change are playing out into unchartered territory, posing a real threat to people’s lives and livelihoods.

This isn’t the time to be complacent. We need to take preventive measures, and long-term investments in agricultural research will help us be prepared for future shocks and ensure crops and livelihoods can withstand more frequent natural disasters.

Balancing economy and ecology: agriculture vs. nature

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Natural enemies of stem borer – a major maize pest in southern Ethiopia – are more abundant in landscapes with more trees and forest patches. In this picture, Yodit Kebede, Ph.D. researcher co-supervised by Wageningen University and CIMMYT, checks insects in a yellow-pan trap. Photo: Frédéric Baudron

“The prosperous still have a strong carbon footprint. And, the world’s billions at the bottom of the development ladder are seeking space to grow,” said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his opening speech at the COP21 climate talks in Paris, where world leaders recently gathered to come to an agreement that will slow and eventually stop global emissions of greenhouse gases that threaten the survivability of our planet.

Modi and other leaders have called for climate solutions that reconcile the right of developing countries to grow and environmental protection. If implemented correctly, a solution exists in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), essentially “blueprints” for what post-2020 climate actions each country intends to take based on past contributions, future development needs, and opportunities to exploit alternative energies to fossil fuels. This allows the developing world to balance the need to grow while moving to clean energy by soliciting support through climate finance and other measures from developed countries.

Reconciliation of the right to develop and environmental protection must move beyond global dialogue, and be put into practice in every community struggling with the effects of environmental degradation and poverty.

Seventy percent of the “billions at the bottom” Modi refers to live in rural areas. A majority of these people suffer from land degradation – the long-term loss of an ecosystem’s services – due to climate change in combination with unsustainable crop and livestock management practices.

“Agriculture undermines the very resources it depends on,” says Frédéric Baudron, CIMMYT Systems Agronomist. “A new paradigm is needed to sustainably achieve global food security.” Baudron is a lead author of the chapter “Response Options Across the Landscape” in the recently released global assessment report “Forests, Trees and Landscapes for Food Security and Nutrition.”

Like the INDCs, landscape approaches may offer a compromise to achieve food production, natural resource conservation, and livelihood security goals, according to the report’s chapter. “Landscape configurations exist not only to minimize tradeoffs between conservation and food security and nutrition, but also to create synergies between these two goals,” argue Baudron and his fellow authors.

“Cultivated fields are not green deserts but may be part of the habitat of several species of importance for conservation,” says Baudron. “In many human-dominated ecosystems, some species can be dependent on agricultural practices such as extensive grazing in Europe or shifting cultivation in tropical forests. Conversely, biodiversity may contribute to crop and livestock productivity through the ecosystem services it provides, such as pollination or pest control.”

According to recent research conducted by CIMMYT and its partners in southern Ethiopia, diets of rural families living in diverse landscapes where trees are retained tend to be more diverse than diets of rural families living in simplified landscapes dominated by annual crops. Photo: Frédéric Baudron

“Ongoing research conducted by CIMMYT and its partners in southern Ethiopia’s maize- and wheat-based farming systems suggests that maintaining trees and forest patches in production landscapes is not only good for the environment and biodiversity, but contributes to the maintenance of farming system productivity and resilience,” according to Baudron. “Farms embedded in diverse landscape mosaics also produce much more diverse and nutritious food.”

Landscape approaches are also closely associated with the concept of food sovereignty, which promotes the right of people to define their own food production and consumption at the local, national, and global level. Community level engagement with local food and agricultural systems also creates an ideal setting to engage communities for more sustainable management of food and agricultural systems.

“Ultimately, this is about acknowledging diversity as a fundamental property in the design of more sustainable farming systems,” says Baudron. “The question is: what configurations are optimal in different contexts? Answering this question will require a much higher level of partnership between conservation organizations and agricultural agencies.”

Precision levelers are climate-smart machines equipped with laser-guided drag buckets to level fields so water flows evenly into soil, rather than running off or collecting in uneven land. This allows much more efficient water use and saves energy through reduced irrigation pumping, compared to traditional land leveling which uses animal-powered scrapers and boards or tractors. It also facilitates uniformity in seed placement and reduces the loss of fertilizer from runoff, raising yields. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Agriculture can help the world meet climate change emission targets

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Precision levelers are climate-smart machines equipped with laser-guided drag buckets to level fields so water flows evenly into soil, rather than running off or collecting in uneven land. This allows much more efficient water use and saves energy through reduced irrigation pumping, compared to traditional land leveling which uses animal-powered scrapers and boards or tractors. It also facilitates uniformity in seed placement and reduces the loss of fertilizer from runoff, raising yields. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Precision levelers are climate-smart machines equipped with laser-guided drag buckets to level fields so water flows evenly into soil, rather than running off or collecting in uneven land. This allows much more efficient water use and saves energy through reduced irrigation pumping, compared to traditional land leveling which uses animal-powered scrapers and boards or tractors. It also facilitates uniformity in seed placement and reduces the loss of fertilizer from runoff, raising yields. (Photo: CIMMYT)

As world leaders meet in Paris this week to agree on greenhouse gas emission targets, we in the field of agricultural research have a powerful contribution to make, by producing both robust estimates of the possible effects of climate change on food security, and realistic assessments of the options available or that could be developed to reduce agriculture’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Agriculture is estimated to be responsible for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, and this share is increasing most rapidly in many developing countries; it may even increase as fossil fuels become scarcer and phased out in other sectors.

The solution being put forward today is climate-smart agriculture (CSA), which involves three components: adaptation, mitigation, and increased productivity. Adaptation is essential to cope with the impacts that cannot be avoided and to maintain and increase the global food supply in the face of resource constraints; mitigation can lessen but not prevent future climate changes.

Though CSA has been held up as an answer to the challenges presented by climate change, some would argue that it is no more than a set of agricultural best practices. Indeed, this is what lies at the heart of the approach.

In addition to making agriculture more efficient and resilient, the overall purpose remains to sustainably increase farm productivity and profitability for farmers. This is why over the last few years we have begun talking about the ‘triple win’ of CSA: enhanced food security, adaptation, and mitigation. But those who dismiss CSA as mere best practice ignore the value of seeing through the climate change lens, and guiding research to respond to expected future challenges.

To begin with, crop performance simulation and modeling, in combination with experimentation, has an important role to play in developing CSA strategies for future climates.

In a publication titled “Adapting maize production to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa,” several CIMMYT scientists concluded that temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa will likely rise by 2.1°C by 2050 based on 19 climate change projections. This is anticipated to have an extreme impact for farmers in many environments. Because it takes a long time to develop and then deploy adaptation strategies on a large scale, they warned, there can be no delay in our work.

This explains why CIMMYT is taking the initiative in this area, seeking support to develop advanced international breeding platforms to address the difficulty of developing drought-tolerant wheat, or bringing massive quantities of drought- and heat-tolerant maize to farmers through private sector partners in Africa and Asia.

Our insights into the causes and impacts of climate change lead us to important research questions. For example, how can farmers adopt practices that reduce the greenhouse gas footprint of agriculture while improving yield and resilience?

Colleagues at CIMMYT have challenged the idea that the practice of no-till agriculture (which does not disturb the soil and allows organic matter to accumulate) contributes significantly to carbon sequestration. I think it is important that we, as scientists, explore the truth and be realistic about where opportunities for mitigation in agriculture lie, despite our desire to present major solutions. It is also important to take action where we can have the greatest impact, for example by improving the efficiency of nitrogen fertilizer use.

Nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture have a climate change potential almost 300 times greater than carbon dioxide, and account for about 7% of the total greenhouse gas emissions of China. Improved nutrient management could reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 325 Mt of carbon dioxide in 2030. Overall, supply-side efficiency measures could reduce total agricultural emissions by 30%.

Some practices, such as laser land leveling, fall into both the adaptation and mitigation categories. Preparing the land in this way increases yields while reducing irrigation costs, the amount of water used, nutrients leached into the environment, and emissions from diesel-powered irrigation pumps.

Findings such as this offer real hope of reducing the severity of climate change in the future, and help us build a case for more investment in critical areas of agricultural research.

For climate-smart agriculture, the challenge of feeding more people and reducing emissions and environmental impact is not a contradiction but a synergy. We are improving our ability to predict the challenges of climate change, and proving that it is possible to greatly reduce agricultural emissions and contribute to global emission goals.

To face challenges such as climate change, we need high quality multi-disciplinary science combined with approaches to address problems at the complex systems level. Since my involvement in early large-scale studies, such as Modeling the Impact of Climate Change on Rice Production in Asia (CABI/IRRI, 1993), I am pleased to see that so much progress has been made in this regard and encouraged that our research is contributing to greater awareness of this vital issue and solutions to address it.

CIMMYT contributions are present in more than 26% of all major wheat varieties in China after 2000, according to a 2014 study by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) of the Chinese Academy of Science. (Photo: CIMMYT)

New paths ahead for agricultural research

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CIMMYT contributions are present in more than 26% of all major wheat varieties in China after 2000, according to a 2014 study by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) of the Chinese Academy of Science. (Photo: CIMMYT)
CIMMYT contributions are present in more than 26% of all major wheat varieties in China after 2000, according to a 2014 study by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) of the Chinese Academy of Science. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Since joining CIMMYT in June 2015, I’ve had the opportunity to learn first-hand the impact of its work around the world, and the appreciation for our work among our peers, partners, and friends.

For example, in China, three decades of partnership with CIMMYT have added $ 3.4 billion to wheat output, and Australia, a donor country, has benefited to the tune of A$ 30 million per year on an in-vestment in CIMMYT of just A$ 1 million. A recent study found that around $33 million invested in CGIAR wheat breeding yields $2-5 billion worldwide. When the devastating maize lethal necrosis disease broke out in eastern Africa in 2011, CIMMYT led a response to get resistant varieties in farmers’ fields within just four years.

Even from such few examples, it is clear that wherever CIMMYT is involved, we have a valuable and unique contribution to make.

There are many challenges to be addressed in the world, from insecurity and population movements to our changing climate. Fundamental to most is the issue of how we practice agriculture to sustainably feed the world, and maize and wheat rank among the most important crops for food security, responsible for 25% of global protein and calorie consumption. What is needed is sustained and increased investment in agricultural research, and organizations such as CIMMYT and its partners to carry it out.

The recently-adopted sustainable development goals respond to this need. Among them are the objectives of ending malnutrition by 2030, doubling the productivity and incomes of small-scale producers, especially women, introducing sustainable and resilient agricultural practices, and ensuring access to the world’s treasure of genetic diversity.

There is a clear consensus between CIMMYT’s work and global priorities identified at the highest level; the question is how we can use our partnerships to effectively mobilize resources in pursuit of these goals.

Traditional donors are rightly concerned about aid dependency, leading a call to move from aid to trade. In practice, this means working more closely with the agrifood sector to ensure that consumers always enjoy access to affordable, appropriate, safe, and nutritious food.
Another answer is that many of the poor no longer live in poor countries. Emerging economies are increasingly important partners in their own development, and in the development of other nations in similar circumstances.

Finally, there is always value in greater coordination and collaboration with new partners. Many development NGOs make extensive use of agricultural research, but too few are closely involved in it.

Agricultural research must be responsive to the needs of society, and can only be scaled out and sus-tained by governments, the private sector, and NGOs. Nonetheless, core funding for agricultural research is essential to the impacts it generates. Funding organizations themselves enable the employment of the brightest minds, development of effective institutional capacities, and the flexibility to engage in overlooked but essential research priorities.

In 2016, CIMMYT will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Fifty years of impact felt in farmers’ fields around the world, of continually expanding our research portfolio and collaboration with partners so that, to-day, CIMMYT is more prepared than ever before to respond to global needs. But it is not enough. New business models, strategies, and partnerships are needed for agricultural research to fulfill its promise to the world. The upcoming CIMMYT strategy for 2016-2030 will set out a framework for our future.