HARYANA, India (CIMMYT) — In the intensively cropped region of northwest India, poor management practices – especially residue burning after the rice season – often results in environmental degradation, severely affecting soil and human health. Residue burning is a major issue not only for agriculture, but for society as a whole. It cannot be dealt with in isolation and technology alone is not sufficient to address this challenge.

Arpana Services, a leading NGO in Haryana involved in promoting micro-enterprise programs by motivating women’s self-help groups, is working together with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to generate awareness among women about climate-smart practices. In view of the forthcoming wheat sowing season, two field days aimed at discouraging residue burning were held by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) on 18 and 25 September 2016 in the Taprana and Sangoi villages of Haryana, India. The events brought together around 2,000 women from villages across the state.

Aiming to foster climate-smart agriculture, the events promoted zero-tillage wheat and highlighted the adverse effects that residue burning has on soil physiochemical and biological properties. Demonstrations showed how the Happy Seeder and other zero-tillage machines reduce production costs, save water and increase yields. The field days also focused on reducing soil degradation and human health hazards by improving soil nutrient content and decreasing hazardous gas emissions. Citing the success of 27 climate-smart villages across Haryana, H.S. Jat, CIMMYT scientist, stressed the need to conserve natural resources and develop climate-resilient cropping systems.

Another part of the collaboration involves ensuring women farmers are financially independent. For example, Aruna Dayal, director of Arpana Services, stated that working together with CIMMYT will provide innovative solutions to women farmers who need to repay loans, while diversifying income and promoting savings. At the end of the field days, the highly motivated women took an oath not to burn crop residues on their fields and to educate other fellow farmers about the harm burning can do.

DES MOINES, Iowa (CIMMYT) – Public-private collaborations can deliver improved seeds to smallholder farmers faster, speeding up global efforts to meet food security targets, said delegates attending a forum at the World Food Prize gathering this week in Des Moines, Iowa.

Already more than 800 million people go hungry worldwide and by 2050, global population will increase by more than 2 billion people to at least 9 billion. Among the many challenges scientists face in boosting food crop yields to meet demand is the distribution of high-yielding, nutritionally enhanced, often drought-tolerant, crop varieties to smallholder farmers in developing countries.

“We’re hamstrung when it comes to getting improved seeds into the hands of farmers due to a lack of affordable production capabilities,” said Arturo Silva, who leads the International Maize Improvement Consortium in Latin America (IMIC-LA), which is based at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) near Mexico City. “That’s where private sector seed companies come in – we need collaborations to ensure the seed gets to farmers.”

In Mexico, Silva and other CIMMYT scientists collaborate with the government through the MasAgro project – which promotes the sustainable intensification of maize and wheat production – and with private seed companies through IMIC-LA to distribute seeds that flourish in sub-tropical, tropical and highland environments.

“We still have 2.5 million hectares to convert from old products to new hybrids, but we are convinced we can make Mexico self-sufficient in maize,” Silva said. “We must democratize seed through public-private partnerships to help farmers who still lack access to technology.”

Currently, Mexican farmers produce 22 million tons of maize a year, but consumer demand outweighs production, leading to imports of up to 12 million tons of yellow maize from the United States a year at a cost of $2.5 billion.

“The challenge is to produce high-yielding seeds, while preserving genetic diversity and protecting the old indigenous landraces from potential risks and threats,” Silva said.

One way CIMMYT helps boost demand for native Mexican maize landraces is by connecting small-scale Mexican farmers with intermediaries who sell Mexican maize as a niche gourmet food. In response to recent consumer demand, top chefs in North American cities have been buying niche varieties of maize to create specialty tortillas, tlacoyos, tetelas and tamales.

“We have hundreds of thousands of seed varieties,” said Ruben Echeverria, director general of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which is based in Cali, Colombia.

“The challenge is beyond technical change, it’s institutional change,” he added. “What CIMMYT is doing with seed companies is the way to go.”

“The private sector eventually has to take over,” said Jim Gaffney, global biotech affairs and regulatory lead at DuPont Pioneer, which hosted the Seed Security for Food Security forum. “Wherever the seed industry is healthy and vibrant, the private sector has been involved.”

DuPont Pioneer tops the Global Index of Field Crop Seed Companies and developed its own food security targets in 2012 that it aims to meet by 2020. Since the goals were established, DuPont Pioneer says it has invested $1.2 billion in research and development, introduced 600 new products and engaged with more than 314,000 smallholder farmers.

DuPont Pioneer also sponsored the development of a Global Food Security Index, which measures food affordability, availability, quality and safety in 113 countries and which the company is using to develop economic forecasts and country reports.

“Seed security equals food security,” said John Duesing, the company’s senior research director, adding that achieving food security is the world’s greatest challenge.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CIMMYT) — “I believe that crop management technologies can only be transferred to farmers with the active involvement of public, private sector and farmers,” said Nadeem Amjad, Chairman of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) at the inaugural session of the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) Agronomy’s annual meeting held in Islamabad, Pakistan, on 2-3 August 2016. He acknowledged the efforts of CIMMYT and its national partners in developing and disseminating crop management techniques to the country’s farming community.

The meeting was jointly organized by CIMMYT and PARC under USAID’s AIP for Pakistan. Agriculture professionals belonging to 23 national partner institutions shared progress on AIP’s agronomy activities, and discussed implementation-related issues and future activities. The inaugural session was attended by 60 agriculture professionals from various provincial and federal research institutes, agriculture extension services, universities, private companies and international research centers, who are involved in agronomy research and in disseminating conservation agriculture (CA) technologies among the farming community under AIP.

On this occasion, PARC Member Ahmed Bakhsh Mahar welcomed meeting participants and said the meeting was a forum where all stakeholders could review AIP’s progress, discuss issues and future plans, and share their experiences.

CIMMYT Country Representative and AIP Project Leader Imtiaz Muhammad informed participants that 23 national public and private sector partners are collaborating on disseminating crop management practices in 42 districts of the country under USAID-funded AIP for Pakistan. CIMMYT is also collaborating with agricultural machinery manufacturers to locally produce new planters that have already been tested in the country.

Imtiaz Hussain, Cropping System Agronomist, apprised the participants that conservation agriculture techniques such as zero-tillage wheat, ridge planting of wheat; new seeders like the zero-till Happy Seeders, push row planters, multicrop zero-till planters and nutrient management techniques have been disseminated to more than 7500 Pakistani farmers through 1000 on-farm demonstrations, 22 training courses and 78 farmer days. AIP Agronomy also facilitated training of 131 staff members of partner institutions and helped train more than 800 farmers and support staff in the project area.

After successfully evaluating them, CIMMYT initiated local production of the zero-tillage Happy Seeder for wheat planting on combine harvested rice fields in Punjab, a multicrop planter for direct seeding rice and a push row planter for planting maize. As part of the collaboration with local machine manufacturers, Greenland Engineers and Petal Seeds provided 32 multicrop zero-till planters and 30 push row planters, respectively, to farmers in the project area. CIMMYT, in collaboration with national partners, has also focused on evaluating site-specific nutrient management techniques, such as a leaf color chart in rice and the handheld Green Seeker sensor for nitrogen management in wheat.

National partners agreed that AIP would focus on building the capacity of farmers and service providers in improved technologies, providing the Green Seeker to national partners, and manufacturing and disseminating new seeders like the lightweight Happy Seeder and push row planter.

When closing the AIP Agronomy annual meeting, NARC DG Muhammad Azeem Khan said that crop productivity in Pakistan can be improved significantly by focusing on crop management. He also stressed that efforts should focus more on training service providers and on providing implements for CA sustainability. He proposed developing a database on the adoption of CA techniques in the country and establishing CA working group.

NAIROBI, Kenya (CIMMYT) – The prevalence of “hidden hunger” due to micronutrient deficiency is a big issue in sub-Saharan Africa, which has been identified as one of the most affected regions with 30 percent of the population undernourished.

Biofortification of crops by increasing levels of vitamin A and protein in maize kernels is one effective way of improving diets of the rural poor and smallholder farmers.

CIMMYT and partners continuously develop improved maize varieties with enrichment traits. In particular, pro-vitamin A varieties – a biofortified orange maize developed in partnership with Harvest Plus for the southern Africa region and Quality Protein Maize. In addition to the nutritious component, these varieties are also tolerant to drought and common diseases while at the same time meeting yield potential goals amid efforts to achieve food security.

Bred using conventional methods, pro-vitamin A maize varieties are also stress tolerant compared to commercially available white, yellow and currently available orange varieties in the market.

“To date we have released 11 varieties, six in Zambia, four in Malawi and one in Zimbabwe. We anticipate additional releases of three hybrids in Zimbabwe by end of October 2016,” said Thokozile Ndhlela, a maize breeder at CIMMYT in Zimbabwe.

Since many African consumers prefer white maize, it has increasingly become critical to overcome biases toward nutritious non-white maize varieties to encourage adoption and increase uptake.

The basis of the bias is related to the fact that yellow maize is generally grown for livestock feed in some regions and less popular for human consumption. It is also associated with poverty because volumes of non-white maize was imported into major maize growing countries in sub-Saharan Africa following a famine that hit the region in the late 1980s and lasted into the 1990s. This relief maize was disliked because it was poorly stored, turned rancid and acquired a bad taste.

The impact of memories of poor flavor and biases against non-white relief maize was initially underestimated by the agriculture for development sector, until it became apparent that it did influence smallholders’ decisionmaking regarding whether or not to adopt improved varieties.

“Taste forms a very important trait in maize adoption,” said Rodney Lunduka, a socio-economist at CIMMYT. “In the case of the orange maize in Zimbabwe, the main reason for non-adoption is, in fact, taste. Farmers indicated that the old variety called Kenya that was distributed during the famine of the 1980s and 1990s had a very bad taste.”

In an effort to counteract the negative legacy of non-white maize, CIMMYT organized a taste evaluation exercise with farmers in the five districts of Marondera, Mrehwa, Zaka, Bikita and Mutoko in Zimbabwe. The farmers were blindfolded and participated in a taste test of a maize cornmeal food staple known in Zimbabwe as Sadza prepared from the orange pro-vitamin A maize flour and white maize flour. They were asked to rate the meal on taste and smell. Almost 240 farmers (119 female and 119 male) participated in the evaluation exercise.

“The farmers were adequately briefed about the exercise and not allowed to see the Sadza before testing,” said Lunduka. “This helped to remove any biases based on sight, so that they are not influenced by color but taste.”

The evaluation it found that 80 percent of female farmers and 84 percent of male farmers preferred the orange Sadza saying it had better taste and flavor.

“These results show that there is an opportunity to reach out to farmers with this nutritious maize, hence there is need to continue breeding for more robust varieties that will not only be nutritious but also competitive in terms of productivity,” Ndhlela added.

After the evaluation, most involved in the taste test, flocked to the Sadza made with orange maize.

In turn, greater availability of pro-vitamin orange maize can boost micronutrient levels and substantially lower the risk of hidden hunger.

KATHMANDU, Nepal – The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)-led Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA)’s Earthquake Recovery Support Program has helped more than 40,000 farmers in earthquake-hit areas of Nepal for over a year.

Since the program’s beginning in June 2015 a suite of agricultural assets including mini-tillers and other farm machines, seed and grain storage facilities, agricultural hand tools, technical training and agronomy support have been implemented through its completion this September.  Beneficiaries came from across eight of the most risk-prone affected districts in Nepal.

Last year’s earthquake seriously undermined Nepal’s food security with losses estimated at more than $280 million in the agriculture sector alone. Nearly two-thirds of the country’s population relies on agriculture for their livelihood, which has made it even tougher for farmers affected by the earthquake. The quakes destroyed grain and seed stockpiles, killed and injured livestock, wrecked tools and implements and collapsed regional irrigation and agricultural markets’ infrastructure.

While the program’s monitoring and evaluation activities are still underway, initial estimated impacts show the storage bags and cocoons distributed are expected to save about 2,700 tons of grain and seed. In addition, agricultural hand tools have helped sustainable agriculture take hold, and agronomy guides have provided information on new production technologies and management practices. Distributed mini-tillers can also cover 700 hectares of land, reducing drudgery for women in particular due to their light weight. Mechanics trained by the program also ensure mini-tillers will be repaired and available locally, which encourages continued demand for the machines.

Subarna Bhandari, one of the recipients from Sindhupalchowk district, operated his mini-tiller for a total of 120 hours, earning approximately $540 within 3 months. The combined 8 machines that were distributed in his area would therefore help the recipients earn over $4,000. Another beneficiary previously needed three pairs of bullocks for two rounds of plowing at a cost of roughly $60. Thanks to the mini-tiller, the same activity now only costs $14.

“Keeping cattle for farm labor is costly and tedious because they need feed and fodder throughout the year, even when they are not in use,” says Mitra Shrestha, a farmer from Nuwakot district.  “However, the mini-tiller needs fuel only when it is being used. In one hour the machine can cultivate an area that would require a pair of cattle to work an entire day,” she adds.

Shrestha uses the surplus time she can now spare for vegetable farming and other household chores. “In fact, I now also use the mini-tiller for land preparation of potatoes, since it can till deeper and make ridges.”

Beyond the earthquake program, CSISA is moving some of its activities into these districts so that it can build upon the momentum created around scale-appropriate mechanization over the last year. The Nepal Seed and Fertilizer project, led by CIMMYT, also works in the earthquake zone.

The Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) is a CIMMYT-led regional initiative funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Earthquake Recovery Support Program is Supported by USAID and implemented in cooperation with Nepal’s Ministry of Agricultural Development.

MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) — From the field to the laboratory, new technology plays a major part in the international effort to develop seeds and cropping systems that will help achieve food security, but scientific innovations should be advanced in tandem with nutritional goals, training and public opinion, said delegates attending a 50^th anniversary conference in Mexico City hosted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

The challenges are enormous. Already at least 900 million people do not get enough food to eat, global population is expected to increase by 2 billion by 2050 and scientists are battling the threat of climate change, which causes erratic weather patterns and global warming, projecting that for each 1 degree Celsius increase in global mean temperature, wheat yields may decline by 6 percent.

Even brief periods of high temperature stress could negatively affect healthy seed development and ultimately cereal yields, said CIMMYT wheat physiologist Matthew Reynolds, speaking on the sidelines of the conference.

“Some models estimate that by the end of the 21st Century, a current 1-in-20 year hottest day will become a 1-in-10 year event, or even occur annually or biannually in many regions,” said Reynolds whose work involves exploring wheat genetic resources for new sources of heat and drought tolerance. “Cereal production is increasing worldwide but current rates of yield growth are not sufficient to satisfy future demand, even without climate change factored in, so we have to expect the worst to avoid the risk of widespread famine.”

Reynolds is working with wheat physiologist Gemma Molero to develop high yield potential, heat and drought resistant plant ideotypes. Molero has designed a tool to assess wheat spike photosynthesis and its impact on grain filling, until now an overlooked aspect of how yields can be increased. She is working with Bayer Crop Science to identify new possibilities for wheat breeding.

Global demand for cereals is expected to reach 3 billion tons by 2050, an increase of 940 million tons from yields produced between 2005 and 2007, with the greatest demand coming from developing countries. The demand shift will lead to significant price increases of more than 50 percent for maize and 25 to 50 percent for other crops even without climate change. If climate change is factored into the equation prices could increase 60 to 97 percent by 2050.

Although controversial, genetically modified (GM) crops constitute one option for increasing yields and have not been proven to be dangerous to eat, said Matin Qaim, professor of international food economics and rural development at the University of Gottingen in Germany, during a presentation. In the developing world, they help farmers to gain yields 20 percent higher than conventionally bred crops and earn almost 70 percent more income, according to Qaim.

“Farmers in developing countries benefit more from genetically modified crops than farmers elsewhere because they suffer more from pests and diseases,” Qaim said. “They also benefit more because most GM technologies are not patented, which means the seeds are cheaper than in developed countries.”

Neal Gutterson, vice president of research and development at DuPont Pioneer and a member of CIMMYT’s board of trustees, described the aims of a new collaboration the company has agreed with CIMMYT to develop crops capable of fighting devastating Maize Lethal Necrosis disease in Africa using CRISPR-Cas, an approach that allows precise “editing” of genes.

“CRISPR-Cas advanced plant breeding technology is a more efficient and targeted plant-breeding technology,” Gutterson said. “It enables the development of customized agriculture solutions to the real challenges farmers around the world face in growing healthy plants.”

Jose Falck-Zepeda, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said that while innovative technology is vital, success will be attained by tackling development initiatives from a broad “whole systems” approach. Currently, science in the food system is built around narrow principles and objectives, he said. Focusing on gender and other equity issues are the starting point for technological change.

CIMMYT’s Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project serves as an example of the whole systems approach, said Denis Kyetere, executive director of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation. Through WEMA, maize varieties are being developed using conventional breeding and biotechnology by CIMMYT, Monsanto and national research programs in Africa.

Seed from the program will ultimately be marketed royalty-free to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa through African seed companies, making the benefits of the technology available to everyone, Kyetere said, adding that public-private partnerships are key. A new, knowledge-based global food system focused on ensuring equity is a must, he said.

“The use of the public-private-partnership model in technology development and deployment along the entire product value chain is a game-changer in enhancing food security and for poverty reduction in Africa,” Kyetere said, adding that partners must share both responsibilities and risks to achieve a common goal.

Julie Miller Jones, professor emeritus of nutrition at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, criticized authors and media personalities advocating wheat-free diets for the majority of population who do not suffer from celiac disease or wheat allergies. She also emphasized the essential role of grains in a healthy diet, and the health benefits of whole grain in particular.

“We have to stop picking on diets, the problem is us. We are eating too many calories,” she urged delegates.

Going “gluten-free” has become a big money maker for the food industry. Sales have soared 63 percent since 2012, with almost 4,600 “gluten-free” products introduced in 2014, according to the January 2015 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

Catherine Bertini, 2003 World Food Prize laureate and former head of the U.N. World Food Programme, strongly advocated that nutrition should be given a leading role in the breeding process. “Let food be medicine,” said Bertini, who is currently a professor at Syracuse University.

Farmer Andrés H. Vinicio Montiel Ibarra, leader of a farmers association who works Mexico’s Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) project, received the Cargill-CIMMYT Food Security and Sustainability Award on behalf of the association.

“Agricultural producers have to be change-makers,” Montiel Ibarra said. “We need to break with resistance to change.”

Achieving change requires effective communication, including coverage of complex scientific concepts, but fact-based arguments are seldom enough, said Tamar Haspel, a food columnist for the Washington Post newspaper.

“We seek sources of information that share our values and confirm our views,” Haspel said. “We find innovative ways to reject ‘facts’ we disagree with — if facts are not persuasive, how do we communicate about science?”

Reporting by Bianca Beks, Jennifer Johnson, Mike Listman, Katie Lutz, Matthew O’Leary, Katelyn Roett and Sam Storr.