DHAKA, Bangladesh (CIMMYT) – A new joint effort will strengthen or establish drought monitoring and early warning systems in Bangladesh, as well as provide information on local cropping systems in South Asia to boost farmer resilience to climate change.

Regionally specific winter season drought and dry spells during the monsoon are a reoccurring concern in Bangladesh. Drought leads to reduced farming productivity, and climate change predictions suggest further decreases in precipitation in coming years. Additionally, there are uncertainties about where monsoons will flood in the rainy season, limiting groundwater recharge. If farmers are unable to adapt to these changes, bottlenecks in crop productivity and increased food insecurity are likely to result.

The effort will be led by Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) and SERVIR-Hindu Kush Himalaya – a project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – using Earth observation data.

A workshop jointly hosted by a number of organizations was recently held at the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council (BARC) campus in Dhaka, Bangladesh to discuss the development of these agricultural monitoring services. The workshop brought together key partners to discuss anticipated methods, work plans and the user engagement process for effective development and long-term sustainability of the agricultural drought monitoring service.

Under this partnership, BARC is working to strengthen capacity of national research and agricultural extension institutes to use geographic information systems and remote sensing approaches for drought risk management.

Shams Uddin Ahmed, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, noted that groundwater accessibility is a growing concern due to continued drought. The government has posed restrictions on deep well extraction, except for drinking water, to conserve crucial groundwater resources. He added that access to good quality drought monitoring and early warning information could help develop climate services to help farmers adapt to these challenges.

Muhammad Jalal Uddin, executive chairman of BARC, emphasized the need to adopt new technologies including remote sensing applications to improve predictability of climate hazards like floods and droughts. He added that with the adoption of improved agricultural practices, Bangladesh has become self-sufficient in rice, but that further work is needed to attain overall nutrition sufficiency.

Promoting and enabling climate services that increase farmer resilience to the impacts of climate variability can positively change behaviors and affect policy in developing countries. To do this, collaborators are working together to establish information communication technology platforms to provide user-oriented, easily accessible, timely and decision-relevant scientific information in the form of climate services.

Birendra Bajracharya, regional program manager of the Mountain Environment Regional Information System program at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), highlighted opportunities of using Earth observation data products for addressing societal challenges. He emphasized the user-centric “services” used by ICIMOD increase the sustainable use of Earth observation information and geospatial technologies for environmental management and improve resilience to climate change in the region.

Read the full workshop summary from ICIMOD here.

CSRD is a a public-private partnership supported by USAID, Department for International Development (DFID), the Met Office, Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, ESRI, Google, the American Red Cross and the Skoll Global Threats Fund.

“Innovation” may be just another development buzzword, but adopting the principles behind it is crucial if organizations hope to attract funding and achieve lasting impact.

Finding and applying new approaches to solve a problem or unmet need was, like many development concepts, first applied by the private-sector. Innovation is critical for companies to foster an environment where creative ideas are turned into new and successful products, in order to gain a competitive edge.

However, this process is inherently risky – new ideas take time and money to bring to fruition, and experimenting is not a viable option for development organizations with limited funding serving people with limited resources.

That’s why innovation labs – specific areas or events dedicated to brainstorming ideas and working on new products, technological or otherwise – can serve as “safe” spaces for organizations to explore unconventional, even radical ideas to inspire change or uncover new opportunities that could enhance their goals.

“Innovation allows us to explore radical ideas that can potentially create disruptive solutions to some of the big challenges we work with,” said Daniela Vega, a projects coordinator and liaison officer to the Americas at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Vega was one of 1,000 young people from 129 countries who recently participated in UNLEASH, a 10-day innovation lab in Denmark, to develop transformative solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a 17-goal development agenda launched by the United Nations to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030.

“Creative ideas and innovative solutions to sustainable livelihoods should be a core component of what we do,” said David Guerena, a soil scientist and systems agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Guerena was part of one of 200 teams that were split across 10 “folk high schools” where they worked through an innovation process with facilitators and experts, then refined their ideas before reconvening in Aarhus, Denmark, to pitch the solutions they had developed for the SDGs.

Farmazon — an online platform that links smallholder farmers to buyers, agricultural advisers, input suppliers and transport providers — was the finished product of Guerena’s team that targeted SDG1 and SDG2 (eliminating poverty and hunger) by reducing inefficiencies in agricultural value chains. Their pitch, which included a skit that involved each member speaking different languages to convey the ways a poor farmer, a restaurant owner and others may struggle to communicate their needs, earned them “Most Collaborative Team.”

“Even though we work in research for development, we need to remember that our discoveries must be commercially viable and deliver value to have a positive impact on society,” said Aziz Karimov, a CIMMYT development economist whose team won second place in UNLEASH’s “Sustainable Consumption & Production” category which targeted SDG 12. A key component of UNLEASH was teaching those participating how to pitch their ideas to investors, like preparing due diligence documents for investors and taking different approaches to fundraising, depending on whether the investor is focused on profit or impact.

Karimov and his team created Sustainable Matching, an online platform that allows buyers and suppliers to find each other and make connections in order to reach sustainable goals with the aim of reducing negative environmental impact. It will be the world’s first and only online supply fair for the textile and fashion industry focused on sustainable materials (including agricultural and forest products).

“I believe actual deals will result from some of the ideas I saw in waste, health and climate,” said Michael Blakeley, managing director of enterprise and industry development at Nathan Associates Inc. “That is powerful for just one week’s time and probably a fraction of the cost of traditional development programs.”

Both Guerena and Karimov emphasized development organizations should create spaces for researchers to participate in collaborative exercises like they did in order to challenge traditional approaches and discover out-of-the-box solutions to the challenges they face daily. Funding and capacity building is a core component of development, but fostering an environment open to new solutions can potentially create high-impact, low-cost solutions.

UNLEASH plans to hold annual innovation labs through 2030 dedicated to the SDGs, where young innovators can add value directly and access a unique ecosystem of corporations, think-tanks, foundations, non-profits, angel investors and more. Participants from this year will create a virtual integrated community to stay in touch, receive mentorship, guidance and expertise as well as funding to help them develop their business solutions.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — A new study shows that dietary diversity is highest in areas close to forests, even when people don’t collect forest food and don’t generate income from forest products.

Dietary diversity reflects the variety of foods you eat and is strongly associated with adequate nutrition you receive. Increasing dietary diversity is a key element in combatting malnutrition. In areas near forests, people typically have high-producing home gardens, fed by manure from the livestock they let graze in the woods.

Throughout the world, and particularly in the tropics, remaining forests are cut down to make way for farmland in order to feed a growing global population. However, even in areas of high food availability, children may struggle to get enough vitamins and minerals if they only eat calorically dense, nutrient sparse cereal crops, a phenomenon called hidden hunger. The authors state that while cereal crops will no doubt remain crucial to meet the caloric needs of the global population, it is important to maintain – and restore in places – high dietary diversity when facing hidden hunger. They recommend taking a holistic approach to agricultural development that maintains landscape diversity, as opposed to the current trend toward mono-cropping – growing a single crop year after year – and landscape simplification.

Read the full study “Indirect contributions of forests to dietary diversity in Southern Ethiopia” and check out the blog published by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

KATHMANDU, Nepal (CIMMYT) — The Government of Nepal recently endorsed a new twenty-year agriculture development strategy that charts a progressive course of action to revitalize agriculture as an engine for economic growth and domestic food security.

At the center of this strategy is the recently launched the Prime Minister Agriculture Modernization Project (PMAMP). The project will be implemented over the next decade and has research and development mandates for productivity enhancement and commercialization of major cereals, fisheries, fruits and vegetables.

PMAMP emphasizes wheat production as a priority, especially in the Terai – a very productive agricultural area – in order to achieve national self-sufficiency in wheat production within the next three years. Meeting this extremely ambitious goal will require an unprecedented increase in average yields of 10 percent per year, and a high level of strategic coordination among organizations contributing to agricultural development in Nepal.

The PMAMP leadership has requested that the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) through its Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) act as a technical advisor and strategic partner to design and implement programs for staple crop production, including mechanization and seed systems.

On July 26-27 in Kathmandu, PMAMP and CSISA organized the first working group forum for wheat to begin to unite and coordinate efforts of 21 core public and private stakeholders working on extension, research and sector development.

Discussion at the forum emphasized the identification of proven best practices for sustainable intensification, consideration of scaling pathways for knowledge and technological innovations, knowledge gaps and areas for future research and joint work plan development for the 2017-2018 wheat season.

A four-member committee representing PMAMP, the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), CSISA and the private sector has been created to guide implementation of the collaborative work plan for wheat intensification across Nepal.

Rajan Dhakal, senior agriculture officer at PMAMP, remarked that the forum was instrumental in identifying technical priorities and clarifying how the efforts of diverse partners can contribute to the food security goals of the Government of Nepal.

Y.P. Giri, chair and director of crops and horticulture at NARC, said he appreciated CSISA’s efforts to facilitate discussion and coordination across a diverse set of stakeholders through a common and action-oriented platform.

Drawing on the success of the wheat forum, PMAMP will convene meetings for maize and rice with support from NARC, CSISA and private sector partners this fall.

CIMMYT launched the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) in 2009 to promote durable change at scale in South Asia’s cereal-based cropping systems. CIMMYT operates rural “innovation hubs” in Bangladesh, India and Nepal to increase the adoption of various resource-conserving and climate-resilient technologies, and to improve farmer access to market information and enterprise development. Learn more about CSISA’s impact here.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CIMMYT) — Smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe’s rural areas have grown maize for years both as a staple and as a resource to boost their economy.

However, Zimbabwean farmers rely predominately on rain-fed maize farming, making each planting season a gamble with nature as poor rainfall, pests and diseases constantly threaten this staple crop and farmer livelihoods.

As most smallholders tried to recover from the El Niño-induced drought in southern Africa, affecting 40 million people during the 2015-2016 farming season, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, nothing could have prepared them for the sudden invasion of the fall armyworm in September 2016 that caused irreversible damage on their maize crop.

“We first noticed it in December 2016,” said Elizabeth Chikono, a smallholder farmer from Mashonaland Central Province, whose maize crop was heavily infested by the fall armyworm. “We tried to control it through spraying with different pesticides, but to no avail. I had hoped to harvest 10 tons per hectare of maize, but only managed to harvest three tons.”

The fall armyworm has since caused significant damage on over 280,000 hectares of maize in Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and can cause up to 70 percent crop loss, or total loss in some cases if unmanaged, says FAO. The level of damage witnessed in the fields is likely to affect maize harvests across the region, which is expected to create more than 200 million food-insecure people who depend on maize for food, said Chimimba Phiri, head of FAO southern Africa sub-regional office.

It has so far been impossible to eradicate the pest, which is known to migrate quickly and breed quite fast, with an entire life cycle between 35 and 61 days.

Zimbabwe established a fall armyworm working group in July this year to bring all stakeholders together and find solutions to manage the impacts of the pest in the country.

Forty-five people representing government ministries, non-governmental organizations, private seed and chemical companies, agricultural research institutions, donors and academic institutions, recently resolved at a meeting to advocate a countrywide response as part of a regional program of integrated management of the fall armyworm. The group recommended strengthening awareness campaigns, building stakeholders’ capacity in the fight against the fall armyworm, raising funds, strengthening research and development as well as screening of germplasm.

These recommendations have culminated in a new strategy to undertake national assessments to determine the impact of the pest on crop yields and how to manage it.

The FAO is also working to equip southern African countries with the tools to asses and improve understanding of the fall armyworm’s threat to the region.

“The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) will pull its germplasm resources as well as modern breeding platforms to produce maize varieties that are tolerant to fall armyworm,” said Cosmos Magorokosho, CIMMYT country representative for Zimbabwe. Similar efforts have been used by CIMMYT in the past to tackle the effects of Maize Lethal Necrosis in eastern Africa.

However, breeding for fall armyworm resistant elite maize hybrids adapted to sub-Saharan Africa is a lengthy process and would require intensive germplasm screening, working with public and private sector institutions.

To reduce the numbers of fall armyworms and their impact on agricultural production in Zimbabwe, a multi-pronged approach is required that ensures fast registration of appropriate chemicals, strategies to avoid chemical resistance, surveillance and early warning, monitoring, cultural management and breeding.

Acting head of plant protection at the government of Zimbabwe’s Department of Research and Specialist Services, Shingirayi Nyamutukwa, said the government had started training field extension staff on proper selection and handling of chemicals as well as raising awareness among the staff and smallholder farmers. Experiments were also underway to determine the best fall armyworm control methods. Nyamutukwa said all of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces had been affected by the caterpillar. He said that no single method or product has been found to completely eradicate the fall armyworm.

Breeding for fall armyworm resistant elite maize hybrids adapted to sub-Saharan Africa was cited as an option but would require intensive germplasm screening, working with public and private sector institutions. Brazil, for example, spends an estimated US$600 million annually to control the fall armyworm.

ISLAMABAD (CIMMYT) – Agronomy experts from across Pakistan gathered earlier this month to discuss progress in Pakistan since 2014 under the USAID funded Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP). At the meeting, 23 national partners shared their progress and evaluation of new techniques, planters and their dissemination in the wheat based systems of Pakistan.

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) drew 80 participants from both private and public spheres to the conference where they discussed key issues such as Pakistan’s large yield gap, residue management techniques and ways to increase efficiency in fertilizer and water management.

AIP has reached more than 11,000 farmers in Pakistan through demonstration, training and farmer days. AIP promotes dissemination of sustainable farming activities such as zero-tillage wheat planting after rice and legume crops, ridge planting of wheat, improved fertilizer management in wheat and rice, direct seeding with multi-crop planters, wheat panting with Zero-Tillage Happy Seeders in rice residue and maize planting with small planters in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, wheat is grown on more than 9 million hectares annually, yielding roughly 2.8 tons of grain per hectare, yet falls below the global average of 3.2 tons per hectare due to a wide yield gap, improper residue management techniques, inefficient fertilizer and water management.

Ghulam Muhammad Ali, Member and AIP focal person of PARC, said that there is a need to increase per unit area productivity in the crop sector as cultivated land is decreasing because of housing and climate-related degradation. Private sector active involvement in research and dissemination would also help to increase agriculture productivity in the country.

AIP is working with private-public partnerships to move beyond educating stakeholders in new technologies to helping farmers implement them in their fields. Their efforts have resulted in the local manufacturing and provision of planters and seeders to over 300 farmers in the provinces of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan, according to AIP Project Leader Imtiaz Muhammad.

All of the provided machines are operated under the practice of zero tillage, meaning farmers directly sow new seeds into the residue of the previous crop grown. The tools also help farmers maximize their production, since they sow seeds using an inverted T opener that breaks up the soil then distributes seeds evenly. Research has shown these methods increase yield and decrease carbon footprint.

Farmers preferred these machines due to their increased planting speed, reduction in loss of seed and seed breakage and the increased yield they saw using these machines. Local producers of zero-till machinery, such as Greenland Engineering are also benefiting, their sales have almost tripled, from 37 in 2016 to 150 in 2017 as adoption of the technology has expanded.

Azeem Kahan, Director General of the National Agricultural Research Center in Islamabad, emphasized the need for a national database of resource conserving technology such as planters and seeders, and said that the PARC collaboration with CIMMYT will focus on coordination that will help stakeholders share their knowledge about agronomic interventions in Pakistan.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (CIMMYT) – In 2015 Chullu Ram Chaudhary started Dahit Traders, which sells small-scale agricultural machinery in the Bardiya district of mid-western Nepal.

Dahit provides year-round employment to 20 local youths as mechanics and machine operators, and hires an additional 35 mechanics during rice and wheat planting and harvesting seasons. Chaudhary was motivated to found his company in 2014 while attending a machinery training organized by the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA).

Chaudhary began by focusing on two-wheel tractors and has since expanded his business to several nearby towns, now also providing machine repair services to surrounding districts. His core business has broadened to include a variety of attachments for power tillers, including seed drills, reapers and threshers, all of which are relevant and useful for small-scale farmers of Bardiya and surrounding districts.

Each expansion allows him to provide employment for local youth by creating sales, mechanic and support staff jobs, which has the added benefit of slowing migration from Nepal’s key agricultural production areas. About 1,500 Nepalese youth migrate for foreign employment daily due a lack of employment opportunity and capital constraints in their own communities, a phenomena that directly contributes to agricultural yield loss in Nepal, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

This absence of farm labor along with a lack of agricultural knowledge, irrigation and mechanization along with the inability to invest in new technology due to lack of capital also limits Nepal’s yield potential, despite having fertile soil and access to year-round farming. Many plots in Nepal are also very small, due to the traditional inheritance practice of splitting land between sons, further limiting production. Cereal and pulse yields are well below regional averages and present rates of increase won’t meet the long-term requirements.

Success for entrepreneurs like Chaudhary allows farming households to access innovative, scale-appropriate technology, increase employment for youth and boost cropping system productivity, all of which are needed to sufficiently and sustainably increase food production for future generations. In addition to providing training on machinery, CSISA linked Chaudhary with SKT Traders – a national-level importer of small-scale machinery – and provided technical support to Dahit Trader’s mechanics on machinery operation, repair and maintenance.

To increase awareness of scale-appropriate machinery, CSISA and Dahit Traders conducted joint demonstrations of equipment in farmers’ fields in order to help farmers see the potential for these machines to reduce drudgery, increase efficiency and enable them to establish micro enterprises based on custom-hired services.

The Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia project is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center with partners the International Rice Research Institute and the International Food Policy Research Institute and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

ISLAMABAD (CIMMYT) – A recently held traveling seminar brought together private and public seed partners in Pakistan to enhance maize production and productivity in order to meet current demand and plan for future needs.

The seminar, hosted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in collaboration with Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), facilitated discussion around the demand for maize in Pakistan, which has experienced rapid growth in the last thirty years largely due to its demand for feed and food as a result of rapid population growth.

Pakistan is one of the top producers of maize in South Asia and it is the country’s third most important cereal, with production increasing 75 percent since 1990 due to the expansion of hybrid maize varieties in the spring season. However, the lack of a strong national seed system has caused the country to import 85 percent of its maize for roughly $50 million annually, making the retail price of seed very expensive for farmers.

Since 2013, CIMMYT’s Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) has built public-private partnerships to catalyze equitable growth in agricultural production, productivity and value in Pakistan. AIP encourages leaders in the local private sector through product allocation and capacity building to produce quality maize seeds and enhance Pakistan’s seed sector.

During the traveling seminar – which was held for seven days in two phases – participants evaluated the performance of different CIMMYT maize products at the project’s partner research center, located in the Punjab province which is the hub of Pakistan’s yellow maize production and the major source of poultry feed, a robust industry growing 8-10 percent annually.

Participants also visited Khyber Pakhtun Khwa province where white maize is the dominant dietary staple. During the visit stakeholders were able to be better understand the dynamics of major maize producing areas and future production trends, various crop management technologies, adoption and utilization patterns, production constraints and dissemination of maize-based technologies.

Concluding the seminar, Yusuf Zafar, Chairman of the Pakistan Research Council commended CIMMYT for creating multi-stakeholder collaborations and actions towards increasing the production and productivity of maize in Pakistan. He pressed the private sector to take the lead in the production and dissemination of the new maize products shared under the AIP program.

CIMMYT’s Country Representative Muhammad Imtiaz, also called upon the private sector to continue to strive to meet the project’s goals of a self-sufficient maize seed sector after the project ends early next year.

The main focus of the course was to train maize breeders in developing high-yielding, more nutritious varieties that are resistant to various biotic and abiotic stresses in a resource and time efficient manner using novel technologies. The course involved presentations by scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and experts from the University of Hohenheim, AgReliant Genetics, Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) and the University of Nairobi. The participants included 29 researchers from national agricultural research organizations, universities and private companies based in Africa and Asia.

Maize is the most widely produced crop in the world, providing about one-third of the calorie intake in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. However, the expansion of new diseases and pests like maize lethal necrosis (MLN), fall armyworm and climate change effects like drought and heat stress are expected to reduce yields in maize growing areas. Developing climate-resilient maize resistant to multiple stresses is crucial to feed maize-dependent populations.

Despite these challenges, research has shown that new technologies like doubled haploids and marker assisted selection – DNA screening methods and high throughput phenotyping that speeds up the breeding process – can increase efficiency in breeding.

The course covered various aspects of maize breeding such as improving nutritional quality by breeding for increased levels of provitamin-A and quality protein, boosting climate resilience by improving tolerance to stresses like drought, heat and poor soils and improving tolerance to insect pests and diseases.

The course also included four intensive workshops. The first workshop covered various aspects of doubled haploid technology and its use in maize breeding programs to increase efficiency. The second workshop included various topics on using molecular marker technologies to increase the selection intensity and increasing genetic gains. The third workshop trained participants on field data analysis and how to use a field book. The fourth workshop elaborated on various concepts under the demand-driven variety development module, and was conducted by colleagues from BECA and University of Nairobi.

The course also included two field days. During the visit to the CIMMYT-Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) experimental station at Kiboko, participants experienced all the processes involved in maize doubled haploid line production and the development of high-yielding maize varieties with tolerance to drought and low nitrogen. A field tour to the MLN facility in Naivasha showcased advanced inbred lines and commercial hybrids that are tolerant to MLN versus susceptible commercial checks.

Participants stated these new technologies and methods will help them improve their own breeding programs, and put improved varieties into farmers’ fields faster than ever.