A sunny November day brings hundreds of farmer seed producers to Doyogena, a scenic highland village in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNP). The visitors form a bustling line to collect more than $90 each – on average – in profits from representatives of the Zereta Kembata Seed Multiplication and Marketing Union.

“The union receives seed grown by more than 1,100 farmers, several hundred of whom are women, belonging to 8 farmer cooperatives,” said Yosief Balewold, general manager of the union.

With help from Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, Zereta Kembata began in 2016 to collect, clean, pack, and sell seed of wheat, potato, sorghum, and faba bean. “This year we marketed nearly 27 tons of the new, disease resistant wheat seed; that’s enough to sow around 270 hectares of the crop.”

Pitted against a yearly onslaught of fast-evolving fungal diseases that can infect as much as $200 million worth of the crops they are growing, more than 75,000 small-scale wheat farmers in Ethiopia’s 4 major wheat-growing regions will have gained access by late 2017 to a vital asset—over 400 tons of new, disease resistant wheat varieties of wheat seed, much of it produced by other farmers.

Marketed in tandem with science-based recommendations for growing wheat, the annual seed supply has steadily increased since 2014 through the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We’re energizing and diversifying Ethiopia’s wheat seed sector, partly by involving and benefitting both formal and farmer seed producers, including women and men,” said Bekele Abeyo, a CIMMYT scientist who leads the project.

With money from union shares purchased by farmer cooperatives and a regulatory 30 percent reinvestment of earnings, the union is building a large warehouse to store seed. In a smaller shack nearby sits a 0.75 ton steel seed cleaner donated by the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative, which has been working with Zereta Kembata and other seed producers identified as outstanding by SNNP policymakers.

“Ethiopia has seen a rapid rise in recent years of new and deadly strains of stem rust and yellow rust, wheat adversaries since biblical times that have lately mutated to overcome resistance genes bred into many modern wheat varieties,” said Ayele Badebo, a CIMMYT wheat pathologist based in Ethiopia. “Farmers must swiftly begin to sow a range of varieties bearing new resistance genes, but limited access to the seed has been a bottleneck.”

In addition to assisting government-managed seed producers and 4 seed companies, through the initiative CIMMYT supports 10 farmer unions that purchase, pack, and sell the seed grown by numerous farmer cooperatives, as well as 12 farmer seed production associations, including 5 women’s groups, who profit from growing and selling quality seed of the new varieties.

“The Seed Scaling Initiative gives wheat farmers 25-50 kilograms of wheat seed, based on land availability, to kick-start their seed production operation,” explained Terefe Fitta, manager of the Seed Scaling Initiative. “The farmers pay back the ‘loan’ at harvest with the same amount of seed, which is given to other prospective farmer seed producers, and so on.”

A critical innovation of the initiative has been to link farmer seed producers directly with sources of “early-generation” seed, principally state and federal researchers. “The project has also brought on board laboratories that monitor seed production and test harvested seed, certifying it for marketing,” said Badebo, citing those accomplishments as lasting legacies of the Initiative.

Women seize chance to advance

Recognizing the critical role of women in Ethiopian agriculture and rural communities, the Seed Scaling Initiative is supporting several women’s seed producer groups. An example is the Tembo Awtena Women’s Seed Producers Association, in Angacha District, SNNP.

Established in 2014, Tembo Awtena is the first women’s cooperative in the district. The group first tried to bake and sell bread but reformed in 2015 to produce seed, having heard that it was profitable from other farmer cooperatives.

Through the Seed Scaling Initiative, CIMMYT gave the association around two tons of seed to start and Ethiopia’s Southern Seed Enterprise purchased the entire first year of seed production at a 20 percent premium over market price because the quality was so good, according to Amarech Desta, Tembo Awtena chairwoman.

“In 2016, with support from CIMMYT, we sold more than $7,400 worth of seed,” said Desta, adding that word of the association’s success had attracted 30 additional women farmers in 2017, bringing the total membership to 133.

Desalech Ashamo, an association member who is a single head of household, received nearly $300 for the seed she grew in 2017 and used the earnings to paint her house. “A big advantage is that all our seed is sold in one lot, rather than piecemeal, so we receive a lump sum that can be used for a significant household project.”

Desta explained that, despite Angacha being a very traditional community, men support women’s seed production activities. “My husband knows the benefits are for all and the men even help us with field activities.”

Tembo Awtena members are especially pleased at being one of the three women’s seed production groups in the Oromia and SNNP regions to receive seed threshers recently through the Seed Scaling Initiative. Association members had been threshing the wheat seed manually, a long and laborious process, according to Desta. “With the new machine we will be able thresh in one hour what would take us three days by hand,” she said.

The chairwoman also has plans for an office, a storage area, a milling machine, opening a shop to sell farm supplies, and gaining recognition and publicity to share their story with others who may benefit.

Power from valued partnerships

The success of the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative depends on the commitment and contributions of diverse national and global partners, among them the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) and state and district level officials in the Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Tigray regions, which are home to 90 percent of Ethiopia’s nearly 5 million wheat farmers.  Most of the varieties come from breeding lines of CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA); a number were developed through the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (formerly Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat) project, led by Cornell University and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) under their UKAid project.

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) works to develop improved maize varieties with traits that smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia need. These include tolerance to abiotic stresses such as drought and heat, and biotic stresses such as diseases and insect-pests. This infographic explains exactly how CIMMYT ensures that its improved maize seed (both hybrids and open-pollinated varieties) gets to the smallholder farmers through the public and private sector partners. This process goes from product development, product advancement, announcement of new products to the partners, product licensing to improved varietal release, seed scale-up, and deployment to the farming communities in target geographies. Feedback loops from the farmers (through on-farm trials) and from the public and private sector partners enrich our breeding teams to continuously refine the product pipelines.

For more information on our work with maize please click here. 

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — In conjunction with recent state regulations outlawing the use of fire to destroy field crop waste in northwest India, some farmers are benefitting from technological innovations that can help prevent damaging smog levels in the capital Delhi and other areas, according to scientists.

Currently, the majority of farmers in northwest India burn leftover vegetation residue to prepare fields for planting in cyclical rice-wheat crop rotations, leading to negative consequences for soil quality, the environment, animal and human health. Rice-wheat crop rotations make up 84 percent of burned crops, a key source of atmospheric pollution.

“Farmers need access to appropriate machinery and training to implement change to discourage burning,” said M.L. Jat, a systems agronomist who works in New Delhi with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “Using crop residue in a sustainable and eco-friendly manner could benefit all stakeholders.”

Many farmers keep costs low by burning residue on the farm, rather than paying for its removal for other uses, which could include animal feed, biofuel,  incorporating it into the soil or retaining it in the field as mulch, according to a research paper titled “Burning issues of paddy residue management in northwest fields of India.” Fire is also used to eliminate weeds, pests, disease and remaining field stubble after harvest.

Ash left on the fields after residue burning increases the availability of some nutrients, while depleting others and negatively affecting soil health in the long term. During burning, soil temperature increases, bacteria and fungi are killed off, regenerating in a matter of days. Residue burning can damage plants and trees on field edges with negative implications for the overall ecosystem.

Residues can be used as a renewable energy source to improve air, soil quality, climate change and reduce global warming, provided these are economically viable options for farmers. Incentives could also help encourage farmers to leave residues on their fields for use as fertilizer.

If residue is mulched into the soil, nutrient levels improve and carbon sequestration capacity increases, lowering the release of greenhouse gases into the environment. Additionally, residue retention reduces evaporation and increases soil moisture by as much as 10 percent during the wheat-growing season.

Farmers can benefit from the Happy Seeder, a machine that can plant wheat seed directly into the soil by boring through crop residue. The Straw Management System (SMS) machine spreads straw residue thinly on the soil surface allowing seeding.

“Residues are also of great economic value as livestock feed, fuel and industrial raw materials, but of the total rice residues produced in northwestern India, only around 15 percent can potentially be used for these purposes and the rest must be managed with in-situ (on site) management technologies,” said Jat, who conducted the research in collaboration with the CGIAR research programs on maize (CRP Maize), wheat (CRP Wheat) and climate change, agriculture and food security (CCAFS).

“Although farmers are aware of the adverse affects of crop burning, they rely on it due to the lack of economically viable and acceptable machinery and alternatives to dispose of residue.”

However, deploying advanced technology, including the concurrent use of straw management systems, fitted combine harvesters and Happy Seeders for direct drilling is a viable solution to eliminate burning, he added.

With these advancements and aggressive campaigns, within a period of a couple of months in Punjab state alone, over 1,000 combine owners have launched a “Super SMS.”

Additionally, nearly 2,000 happy seeders are being manufactured, which will lead to large-scale adoption of conservation agriculture techniques in the upcoming wheat season, Jat said.

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Researchers are changing rural development in Ethiopia by putting local communities in control of initiatives.

A project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development is working to increase gender equality in wheat-based cropping systems in Ethiopia, Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest wheat producer.

Kristie Drucza, a gender and social development research manager at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and project lead, recently co-authored a report detailing how researchers can boost gender equality and reach program goals even faster by applying people-centered research methods in their work.

Traditionally, communities are not involved enough in development processes for researchers to offer permanent solutions. The seven methodologies laid out in the report use participatory methods, such as mapping exercises, to put people in control of the agenda.

“Program managers seem to be looking for ways to improve gender within their programs, these methodologies work and should be used more. Currently, non-government organizations implement these methodologies to change behaviors and gender norms, but the data is not collected. These methodologies generate a rich source of data that reveals how gender norms change and at what pace, this data could advance our understanding of how and why gender norms change.”

Drucza tells us more about these methodologies and where they’ve been successful in the following interview:

Q: What are ‘participatory methodologies’?

Participatory methodologies are a collection of research tools or activities that are designed to get participants to think, learn, analyze and plan for action. They often use visioning exercises and diagram tools to enable participants to see the world in a new way, build empathy for those who are less fortunate and plan to change what they do not like.

One example from the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) methodology is a gender balance tree.

Each participant draws all the members of their household at the trunk, and the tasks family members do at the roots. The branches represent expenses and symbols are placed on the tree to show who owns what property and who makes which decisions.

The participants discuss any imbalances and draw an action plan to make the tree more balanced.

This exercise helps put a focus on gaps that are directly identified and agreed upon by families and helps illiterate people envision a future that they can control.

Q: How do these methodologies boost gender equality?

We collected data from four wheat-growing communities, and in one there was a really big difference in gender relations: in how people understood it, explained it and how equal their relations were.

We found out that this community was doing community conversations (CCs), a methodology that we identified as being very effective. This community was part of a health program that was using CCs, but it also had a positive and unintended impact on the agricultural sector by enabling women and men to work as one economic unit.

Usually, men make decisions without consulting their wives on things like household expenditure and which crops to grow. This can leave a wife having to secretly take from the harvest, or sell assets so that she can make ends meet. In the community where CCs were held, households worked better together to make more informed and transparent decisions that benefited the whole family.

Q: How does your project help boost gender equality?

The most important thing we need to realize is that gender equality doesn’t just mean focusing on women, and doing so can actually create more inequality. We need to empower women but not at the expense of male sense of self and happiness.

Moreover, the social norms that underpin gender inequality need to be addressed for lasting change to ensue. Because these methodologies put communities in the driving seat, they deliver empowerment with community cohesion.

Learn more about the Understanding gender in wheat-based livelihoods for enhanced WHEAT R4D impact in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia Project and read the full report “Gender transformative methodologies in Ethiopia’s agricultural sector: a review” here.

India needs to tackle greenhouse gas emissions from its rice and livestock sectors according to a study by CIMMYT and partners. Researchers say this can and must be done in ways that improve yields, and sustain food and nutrition security.

India faces serious challenges when it comes to feeding its growing population. Hunger is prevalent, with over 190 million undernourished people – almost a quarter of the global hunger burden, affecting 4 out of 10 children. Although the productivity of major crops is increasing after the green revolution, yield increases have slowed down recently, and many of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people have been left behind. Feeding an ever-growing population is a mammoth task, further complicated as climate change unleashes its effects, bringing droughts, pests, extreme heat and floods.

Paradoxically, India is also the world’s second largest food producer, and agriculture is a vital part of the country’s economy. Indian agriculture also accounts for about 18% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, making agriculture a key sector for climate action. In fact, India’s government has already indicated willingness to reduce emissions from agriculture as part the Paris Climate Agreement, in an effort to keep global warming below the 2-degree target. To take action, the country’s leaders need to know where to focus their efforts, and find ways to reduce emissions without compromising food and nutrition security.

Indian agriculture’s climate ‘hotspots’

A new study uncovers some answers to this question, and offers insights into how dietary shifts might influence future emissions. The study, Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural food production to supply Indian diets: Implications for climate change mitigation, was done by researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partners at the University of Aberdeen and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Using the empirical model Cool Farm Tool, researchers analyzed the farm-level greenhouse gas emissions of 20 major food commodities in India, and two types of food products emerged as the worst culprits: rice and animal products such as meat, milk and eggs.

When looking at the level of emission per unit of area and unit of product, rice was the top source of emissions in agriculture. Continuously flooded paddies release huge amounts of methane, especially compared to intermittently flooded or irrigated rice land. The scientists found that the total global warming potential of rice on a per hectare basis was even higher than what was being reported in existing literature and at the national level.

Meat, eggs and milk were also found to have high emissions per unit of production. The authors warn that animal products will contribute an increasing share to overall emissions as India’s middle class grows, traditions evolve, and diets shift towards consumption of more animal products. That said, it will probably not match the rapid trajectory towards meat consumption of other large countries like China, due to India’s cultural preference for a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet.

No tradeoff between mitigation and food security

The revelation of India’s agricultural emission ‘hotspots’ are a crucial step towards action. “These findings can help farmers, researchers and policy makers to understand and manage these emissions, and identify mitigation responses that are consistent with India’s food security and economic development priorities,” according to CIMMYT scientist Tek Sapkota, who co-authored the paper. “Agriculture is an important sector of the economy,” he said. “If India is to reduce its total emissions then agriculture has to play its part,” he explained, mentioning that emissions from agriculture must decline worldwide in order to meet the 2°C warming target.

In the UN climate discussions on agriculture, there has been ongoing resistance among some countries about promoting mitigation in agriculture, due to fears that this could compromise food security and nutrition. This is a “misconception” according to Dr. Sapkota. “Many agricultural practices advocated to increase production and increase the capacity of a system to cope with climate change also happen to reduce emissions,” he explained. The paper’s authors emphasize that mitigation must be a co-benefit of improved and more efficient agronomic practices, and interventions will need to consider the nutritional and health implications. Negotiators at the upcoming UN climate talks in Bonn should take note as they mull a decision on agriculture.

Sustainable solutions

There are many approaches and technologies in agriculture that can contribute to food and nutrition security and at the same time deliver climate change adaptation and mitigation services. Dr. Sapkota is part of a team undertaking a detailed analysis of mitigation options, their national level mitigation potential and associated cost of their adoption to come up with total technical mitigation potential sector of Indian agriculture. This study is coming out very soon, and will help build a more complete picture of the solutions available.

As an example, Dr. Sapkota points to conservation agriculture, which is based on the principles of minimum soil disturbance, continuous soil cover and diversified crop rotation. Conservation agriculture techniques can increase production in a sustainable way, by improving water use efficiency, reducing fertilizer consumption and reducing machinery use and fuel consumption. Through this approach, “you can reduce production costs, without compromising yield. In some instances you can increase yields. It’s a win-win from every perspective,” he says. Farmers are already getting more precise at managing nutrients, using several tools like the GreenSeeker and the , and techniques such as drilling fertilizer into the soil instead of broadcasting it. They are also using decision support systems like Nutrient expert and the Crop Manager, to help them determine how much fertilizer to apply, at the right time and in the right place. These approaches have been shown to reduce the amount of fertilizer needed while maintaining and even increasing yields.

In a similar vein, Alternative Wetting and Drying of rice fields, which otherwise remain continuously flooded, can reduce methane emissions substantially. In Vietnam and the Philippines, farmers have successfully used this method and reduced methane emissions by 48% without reducing yield.

In the livestock sector, there several ways to address emissions, including improved manure management, changing feed rations, growing feed crops in a more sustainable way, and feeding animals crop residues that would otherwise be burned.

Although the study points out food products with a particularly high climate footprint, it’s important not to think about solutions on a commodity-by-commodity or crop-by-crop basis, according to Dr. Sapkota. “Farmers grow crops in a system and we need system-based solutions,” he says. “For example, in the rice-wheat system in Indo-Gangetic Plains, if you want to go for conservation agriculture you cannot just focus on one crop. The way you manage water, energy,nutrients and other resources for one crop will have repercussions on other crops,” he explains.

The results of this study are an important starting point. “India is moving in the right direction,” says Dr. Sapkota. “Now there needs to be more research to show the effectiveness of technical mitigation options which can reduce emissions without compromising yield and profit,” he says. The government must also work closely with people on the ground: “There must be more awareness among extension workers and farming communities that they are part of this movement to tackle climate change,” he adds.

At this year’s UN Climate Talks, CIMMYT is highlighting innovations that can help farmers overcome climate change. Read more stories in this series and follow @CIMMYT for the latest updates.

Download the paper:

Vetter SH, Sapkota TB, Hillier J, Stirling CM, Macdiarmid JI, Aleksandrowicz L, Green R, Joy EJM, Dangour PD, Smith P. 2017. Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural food production to supply Indian diets: Implications for climate change mitigation. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 237: 234–241.

Acknowledgments

The study is part of the Sustainable and Healthy Diets in India (SAHDI) project funded by the Wellcome Trust under the ‘Our Planet, Our Health’ programme (Grant number 103932) and the India Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Study led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agricultural and Food Security (CCAFS).

DES MOINES, Iowa (CIMMYT) – World Food Prize laureates have joined forces with an international alliance battling the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), an aggressive pest indigenous to the Americas with a voracious appetite, now widespread throughout Africa.

The 2002 World Food Prize laureate, Pedro Sanchez, currently a research professor at the University of Florida, addressed delegates at the Borlaug Dialogue conference in Des Moines, Iowa, which is timed each year to coincide with annual World Food Prize celebrations.

Sanchez described the severity of the challenge posed by the pest, which has a host range of more than 80 plant species, including maize, a staple food on which millions of people throughout sub-Saharan Africa depend for their food and income security.

Fall armyworm activities not only put food security, livelihoods and national economies at risk, but also threaten to undo recent hard-earned crop production gains on the continent, Sanchez said.

“Hopefully, it will be controlled; it will never be eradicated,” Sanchez said. “I think the fate of African food security really hinges now on this clear and present danger. It threatens to reverse the gains achieved in the last 10 years. It’s the epitome of an invasive species.”

The pest, which has no known natural predators, can cause total crop losses, and at advanced larval development stages can be difficult to control even with synthetic pesticides. The female fall armyworm can lay up to a thousand eggs at a time and can produce multiple generations very quickly without pause in tropical environments. The moth can fly 100 km (62 miles) a night, and some moth populations have even been reported to fly distances of up to 1,600 kilometers in 30 hours, according to experts.

Sanchez said that Akinwumi Adesina, 2017 World Food Prize laureate and president of the African Development Bank, and Rob Fraley, 2013 World Food Prize laureate and chief technology officer at Monsanto, had united with him to urgently “raise the alarm” about the threat from the pest.

By joining forces as laureates, we aim to really bring attention to this issue to avoid a food crisis, Adesina said. Mobile phones should be effectively used in the fight against the pest, he said.

“There’s just no better way in which farmers can detect, recognize and send information very fast to extension agents or universities that can allow them to identify it and get the information they need to deal with it,” he said, adding that the new African Development Bank initiative Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), will play a key role in fighting the fall armyworm.

Projections by the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, (CABI), indicate that if left unchecked, the fall armyworm could lead to maize yield losses of around $2.5 to $6.2 billion a year in just 12 of the 28 African countries where the pest has been confirmed.

Joint force

In April, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) hosted an international joint stakeholders meeting in Nairobi, committing to an integrated pest management strategy to tackle the pest.

CIMMYT, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and experts from several national and international research organizations, are currently developing a detailed field manual on Fall Armyworm management in Africa, said B.M. Prasanna, director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, who spoke at a Borlaug Dialogue side event with a panel of scientific experts.

“The manual will offer protocols and best management practices related to fall armyworm scouting, monitoring and surveillance; biological control; pesticides and pesticide risk management; host plant resistance; pheromones and sustainable agro-ecological management of fall armyworm, especially in the African context,” Prasanna said, adding that the pest has so far devastated at least 1.5 million hectares of maize in just six countries.

A Southern Africa Regional Training-of-Trainers and Awareness Raising Workshop on Fall Armyworm management was conducted in Harare, Zimbabwe, from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, while a similar workshop for Eastern Africa is scheduled for Nov. 13 to 15 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and for West Africa in early 2018.

The workshops are aimed at supporting pest control and extension actors to effectively scout, determine the need for intervention, and apply specific practices to control the pest in maize and other crops, Prasanna said.

Fall armyworm toolbox

Prasanna announced that the CIMMYT team in Africa is intensively evaluating maize germplasm for resistance to fall armyworm. Initial experiments have indicated some promising breeding materials, which need to be validated further and utilized in product development and deployment pipelines, he said.

“The crisis is quickly escalating due to the loss of quality maize seed in production fields, and the extensive and indiscriminate use of low cost highly toxic pesticides,” Prasanna said.

“We need to quickly bring awareness among the farming communities in Africa about environmentally safer approaches of Fall Armyworm management,”  he said, adding that the international community can learn from the experiences of Brazil and the United States, where the pest has been endemic for  several decades.

“Sustainable agro-ecological management at the field and landscape levels is key,” Prasanna said. “We must make our solutions affordable to smallholder farmers.”

Panelist Mark Edge, director of collaborations for developing countries at agrochemical and biotechnology company Monsanto, said that integrated pest management, collaboration and public-private sector partnerships would be key to fighting the pest.

“First and foremost, it really is about an integrated pest management system – we’re not trying to propose that biotechnology is a silver bullet for this,” he said. “We need to continue to use many different technologies and biotechnology is one very powerful tool that we have in the toolbox.”

Over the past 10 years, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) a Monsanto-CIMMYT partnership project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID has led to the development of almost 100 hybrid varieties effective against drought and a Bt – or biological pesticide – trait effective against the maize stem borers (Chilo partellus and Busseola fusca). The varieties will be available royalty-free to smallholder farmers.

“Insect resistance together with drought is our target; we’ve made tremendous progress over the past 10 years,” Edge said. “In the Americas, we still have challenges with fall armyworm, but we’re certainly able to control it to where farmers are actually able to get very good yields and manage the pests very effectively.”

Smallholder farmers need access to these varieties as soon as possible, so the focus should be on getting regulatory approvals in place by encouraging governments to support the technology, Edge said. The Bt trait varieties will need to be managed carefully so they do not develop resistance to the pest, he added.

“Scientists alone are not going to carry the day on this,” Edge said. “We need to bring together the science on this, but we also need the political will to help make that happen.”

Panelist Segenet Kelemu, director general of the International Institute of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), said that techniques used to fight the stem borer have proven effective against the fall armyworm, although experiments are ongoing to craft an integrated pest management strategy to control various stages of the pest from egg to moth. The continent will face deepening challenges from insects due to climate change, she said.

“If there were capacity on the ground, fall armyworm would have been identified sooner,” Kelemu said. “We need a more comprehensive way and a global partnership to tackle this.”

Panelist Gregg Nuessly, a pest management researcher and the director of the Everglades Research and Education Center at the University of Florida, said that the fall armyworm could be effectively controlled through an integrated pest management approach.

“Success in control is not only possible, it’s quite common in the Western Hemisphere,” Nuessly said.

Related stories:

Borlaug Dialogue delegates to discuss strategy for tackling fall armyworm in Africa

Multi-pronged approach key for effectively defeating fall armyworm in Africa

Zimbabwe enacts new strategy in fall armyworm fight

Global experts meet to develop fall armyworm emergency plan for Africa

Fall armyworm in Africa: quick and coordinated regional response required

Scientists tackle deadly fall armyworm infestation devastating Africa

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — New research shows improved wheat raises the quality of life for men and women across rural communities in Afghanistan.

A recent report from Gennovate, a major study about gender and innovation processes in developing country agriculture, found that improved wheat varieties emerged overwhelmingly among the agricultural technologies most favored by both men and women.

In one striking example from Afghanistan, introducing better wheat varieties alone reduced women’s work burden, showing how the uptake of technology – whether seeds or machinery – can improve the quality of life.

“Local varieties are tall and prone to falling, difficult to thresh, and more susceptible to diseases, including smuts and bunts, which requires special cleaning measures, a task normally done by women,” said Rajiv Sharma, a senior wheat scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and country liaison officer for CIMMYT in Afghanistan. “Such varieties may comprise mixes of several seed types, including seed of weeds. They also give small harvests for which threshing is typically manual, with wooden rollers and animals, picking up sticks, stones, and even animal excrement that greatly complicates cleaning the grain.”

Both women and men spoke favorably about how improved wheat varieties have eased women’s wheat cleaning work.  “Improved seeds can provide clean wheat,” said an 18-year old woman from one of the study’s youth focus groups in Panali, Afghanistan. “Before, we were washing wheat grains and we exposed it to the sun until it dried. Machineries have [also] eased women’s tasks.”

Finally, Sharma noted that bountiful harvests from improved varieties often lead farmers to use mechanical threshing, which further reduces work and ensures cleaner grain for household foods.

Gennovate: A large-scale, qualitative, comparative snapshot

Conceived as a “bottom-up” idea by a small gender research team of CGIAR in 2013, Gennovate involves 11 past and current CGIAR Research Programs. The project collected data from focus groups and interviews involving more than 7,500 rural men and women in 26 countries during 2014-16.

Some 2,500 women and men from 43 rural villages in 8 wheat-producing countries of Africa and Asia participated in community case studies, as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.

“Across wheat farm settings, both men and women reported a sense of gradual progress,” said Lone Badstue, gender specialist at CIMMYT and Gennovate project leader. “But women still face huge challenges to access information and resources or have a voice in decision making, even about their own lives.”

According to estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), if women farmers, who comprise 43 per cent of the farm labor force in developing countries, had the same access to resources as men, agricultural output in 34 developing countries would rise by an estimated average of as high as 4 percent.

“Gender-related restrictions such as limitations on physical mobility or social interactions, as well as reproductive work burden, also constitute key constraints on rural women’s capacity to innovate in agriculture,” Badstue explained.

Gender equity drives innovation

The Gennovate-wheat report identified six “positive outlier communities” where norms are shifting towards more equitable gender relations and helping to foster inclusiveness and agricultural innovation. In those communities, men and women from all economic scales reported significantly higher empowerment and poverty reductions than in the 37 other locations. Greater acceptance of women’s freedom of action, economic activity, and civic and educational participation appears to be a key element.

“In contexts where gender norms are more fluid, new agricultural technologies and practices can become game-changing, increasing economic agency for women and men and rapidly lowering local poverty,” Badstue said.

The contributions and presence of CIMMYT in Afghanistan, which include support for breeding research and training for local scientists, date back several decades. In the last five years, the Agricultural Research Institute of Afghanistan (ARIA) of the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation & Livestock (MAIL) has used CIMMYT breeding lines to develop and make available to farmers seed of 15 high-yielding, disease resistant wheat varieties.

Read the full report “Gender and Innovation Processes in Wheat-Based Systems” here.

GENNOVATE has been supported by generous funding from the World Bank; the CGIAR Gender & Agricultural Research Network; the government of Mexico through MasAgro; Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ); numerous CGIAR Research Programs; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In agrarian countries like Bangladesh, agriculture can serve as a powerful driving force to not only raise family income, but also the nation’s entire economy.

Consistent policy and investments in technology, rural infrastructure and human capital boosted food security by tripling the Bangladesh’s food grain production from 1972 to 2014. Between 2005 and 2010, agriculture accounted for 90 percent of poverty reduction in the country.

Bangladesh is now threatened by increasing droughts, flooding and extreme weather events due to climate change. In response, rural communities are adapting through innovative, localized solutions that combine sustainable practices and technologies.

“Mechanization is a very important part of the future of agriculture in Bangladesh,” said Janina Jaruzelski, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) mission director in Bangladesh, during a visit to areas where the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is helping commercialize three agricultural machinery technologies – axial flow pumps, reapers and seed drills – to help farmers thrive under increasingly difficult growing conditions.

Below we detail how these three technologies are transforming farming across Bangladesh.

Axial flow pumps

The axial flow pump is an inexpensive surface water irrigation technology that can reduce costs up to 50 percent at low lifts – areas where the water source is close to the field surface, and therefore is easy to pump up to irrigate fields. Surface water irrigation involves deploying water through low-lift irrigation pumps like the axial flow pump and canal distribution networks managed by water sellers who direct water to farmers’ fields.

For example, 24-year old Mosammat Lima Begum, who lives in a village in Barisal District in Bangladesh, gained access to an axial flow pump and training on its use through CIMMYT’s Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA). After the training, Begum started a business providing irrigation services to her neighbors, boosting her household income by nearly $400 in one year.

Groundwater extraction – a common approach to irrigation in much of South Asia – can result in high energy costs and present health risks due to natural arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh. Surface water offers a low-energy and low-carbon emissions alternative.

For more information on how axial flow pumps and surface water irrigation help farmers, click here.

Reapers

Reapers allow farmers to mechanically harvest and plant the next season’s crops, and can save farmers 30 percent their usual harvesting costs. The two-wheeled mechanical reaper is particularly popular in Bangladesh, especially among women since it’s easy to maneuver. It also helps farmers cope with increasing labor scarcity — a trend that has continued to rise as the country develops economically and more people leave rural areas for off-farm employment.

Like the axial flow pump, local service providers with reapers – entrepreneurs who purchase agricultural machinery and rent out their services – are now offering their harvesting services to smallholder farmers at an affordable fee.

Learn more about how reapers can reduce the cost of harvesting and risk of crop damage, making them a key tool to boost farmer efficiency in Bangladesh here.

Seed fertilizer drills

Seed fertilizer drills till, plant and fertilize crops in lines simultaneously and with greater precision. These drills are frequently used as attachments on two-wheeled tractors.

Around 66 service providers in Barisal, Bangladesh have cultivated more than 640 hectares of land using seed drills for over 1,300 farmers since 2013. These drills cut 30 percent of their fuel costs compared to traditional power tillers, saving them about $58 and 60 hours of labor per hectare. In south-western Bangladesh where USAID’s Feed the Future initiative operates, 818 service providers have cultivated more than 25,500 hectares of land using seed drills for 62,000 small holder farmers till to date.

These drills can also allow farmers to plant using conservation agriculture practices like strip tilling, a system that tills only small strips of land into which seed and fertilizer are placed, which reduces production costs, conserves soil moisture and help boost yields.

Since 2013, CIMMYT has facilitated the sale of over 2,000 agricultural machines to more than 1,800 service providers, reaching 90,000 farmers. Through the CSISA Mechanization and Irrigation project, CIMMYT will continue to transform agriculture in southern Bangladesh by unlocking the potential productivity of the region’s farmers during the dry season through surface water irrigation, efficient agricultural machinery and local service provision.