During 26-28 March 2012, CIMMYT scientists, partners, and collaborators met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the Inception Planning Workshop of the NuME project. NuME (Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia) is a new five-year USD 13 million project that aims to significantly reduce malnutrition, especially among young children, and increase food security and household income of resource-poor smallholder farmers in Ethiopia through the widespread adoption, production, and utilization of quality protein maize (QPM). QPM contains more than twice as much lysine and tryptophan as conventional maize, giving its protein a nutritive value that is roughly 90% that of milk.

The project, led by CIMMYT and supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), is being implemented in collaboration with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), the Ministry of Health, the Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute (EHNRI), Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA), Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG2000), other NGOs, universities, and public and private seed companies. The purpose of the meeting was to present the approved project to partners; review, organize, and agree on the project’s management structure; review and agree on partner roles and responsibilities; and develop detailed work plans and budgets.

Project coordinator S. Twumasi-Afriyie gave an overview of the status of QPM in Ethiopia and pointed out that NuME was building on the achievements of the previous and largely successful CIDA-funded QPMD project that was implemented in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda during 2003-2010.

Underscoring NuME’s importance, Twumasi said that diets in eastern and central Africa are largely based on maize, for it provides up to 80% of the calories consumed and is a primary weaning food for children. However, it is poor in two essential amino acids, lysine and tryptophan, putting infants who consume maize without protein supplements at risk for malnutrition and stunted growth and development. The problem is more acute in Ethiopia, where 47% of children are stunted, 38% are underweight, and 11% suffer from wasting.

Consequently, the project has targeted areas with high maize production and consumption, areas where farmers grow BH660 or other conventional maize varieties that now have QPM versions, and most importantly, areas with high malnutrition, according to Hugo De Groote, CIMMYT socio-economist.

Andreas Oswald, SAA director of crop productivity enhancement, outlined the strategies planned for demonstrating new QPM technologies, improved crop management practices, and post-harvest handling and processing to farmers, and for improving their knowledge and skills. Increasing the participation of women in NuME activities and identifying ways to ensure that they benefit substantively from QPM technologies are key goals of the project.

The project will also partner with Farm Radio International (FRI), which will work with Ethiopian radio stations to develop a gender sensitive campaign to help women and men farmers gain a better understanding of nutrition and protein, and to raise awareness of QPM and other strategies for improving the nutrition and health of families, especially children.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – Food shortages will escalate due to climate change-related production shocks and the international community must prepare to respond to price increases and social unrest, particularly in less developed countries, cautioned a joint British-U.S. taskforce in a new report.

Instead of occurring once every hundred years, severe food production shocks are likely to occur once every 30 years by 2040, a problem compounded by global warming and increasing population, said the Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience.

By 2050, the current global population of 7.3 billion is projected to grow 33 percent to 9.7 billion, according to the United Nations. Demand for food, driven by population, demographic changes and increasing global wealth will rise more than 60 percent, the report said.

“We agree with the premise of the report and the interventions recommended to improve the resilience of the global food system to the impact of climate shocks,” said Matthew Reynolds, a distinguished scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“However, the report fails to address the urgent need for political will to make it happen,” Reynolds said. “It presents a paradox, given the relatively modest economic investments required to bolster long-term food security, compared to the costs not only of crisis management resulting from food shortages, but the incalculable cost of predicted food price-hikes to billions of people who already spend most of their income on food.”

For almost 50 years, CIMMYT and its sister CGIAR centers, which conduct research into agriculture and food security, have been building a vital infrastructure to reduce the risk of famine at a global level.

CIMMYT’s work on wheat was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, helping to avert widespread famine in Asia and other regions. The Mexico-based research center continues its mission to deliver international public goods in the form of improved maize and wheat varieties and cropping systems, focusing on resource poor consumers, particularly in climate vulnerable regions.

“We are slightly baffled,” Reynolds said. “The global food security system has been in a constant funding crisis since the end of the Cold War in 1991. Scientists are often overwhelmed by time-consuming, unrealistic demands to acquire funding, which limits time spent in the field conducting research. We’re hoping the report signals a renewed zeal for allocating funds destined specifically for agricultural research.”

FOOD SECURITY CONTRIBUTIONS

Scientific efforts at CGIAR have included producing heat and drought adapted cultivars of rice, wheat and maize, and disease and pest resistant crop cultivars for farmers who cannot afford protective, but costly, chemical applications.

Under the umbrella of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, scientists are working on a major project to avoid a global epidemic of swift-moving Ug99 stem rust wheat disease which, if left uncontrolled, could devastate productivity worldwide.

Under the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, CIMMYT provided the groundwork for the recently launched $50 millionInternational Wheat Improvement Partnership (IWYP) initiative, which taps into the expertise of leading applied plant scientists worldwide to take wheat productivity to its maximum biological capacity within 25 years.

Similarly, more than 100 scientists representing 40 crop research institutes gathered at a recent meeting in Frankfurt, Germany, to develop a platform to translate decades of research in plant stress physiology and biotechnology into a new generation of wheat cultivars that will be productive under levels of heat and drought stress predicted by climate scientists.

The initiative, called the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC), involves applied plant scientists from all continents.

“HeDWIC scientists are eager to get started, they just need a ‘green light’ from funding agencies,” Reynolds said.

“Ultimately, food shortages could cause wide-spread disillusionment with current political and economic models and have other unpredictable consequences.”

The report, which was sponsored by Britain’s Global Food Security program and was jointly commissioned by the UK Science and Innovation Network and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, notes that agriculture faces a triple challenge.

“Increases in productivity, sustainability and resilience to climate change are required,” the report states, acknowledging that the effort “will require significant investment from the public and private sectors, as well as new cross-sector collaborations between scientists, agriculture, water and environmental specialists, technology providers, policymakers and civil engineers among others.”

Three agriculturalists from the Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Cropping Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA)–Mozambique made a training visit to Brazil on 3-13 June 2015.

The objective of the visit was for the three researchers to acquire conservation agriculture (CA) skills, with a special focus on soil health and climate change. The training sessions were also expected to give participants the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience with their Brazilian counterparts at Brazilian Corporation of Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA) sites.

“By visiting and interacting with farmers, observing trials and having discussions with CA advisors, researchers, policy makers and agriculture industry representatives, we gained new knowledge of CA technologies,” said team leader Domingos Dias, SIMLESA-Mozambique National Coordinator.

During the 11-day visit, participants were presented with real-life CA challenges so they could solve them interactively. Having learned the required theory and facts through demonstrations, question-and-answer sessions and multimedia presentations, they are now expected to apply these technologies in their respective countries.

Smallholder farmers in Mozambique are affected by the poor farming methods they practice, such as late weeding and inefficient residue application, and the lack of farm mechanization. The participants learned to use and maintain agro-machinery, such as direct seeders and rippers, as well as when to plant forage crops such as Brachiaria, which produces much biomass and whose deep root system plays a critical role in improving soil properties.

“We learned very useful practices and will test some of them under our conditions. The training in Brazil presented alternative uses of residues and rotations based on soil properties suitable for Southern African countries,” said SIMLESA-Mozambique participant Custodio Jorge.

Both farmers and extension staff who participated in the first phase of SIMLESA (2010-2014) lacked basic skills and knowledge of CA farming systems. The second phase of the project (2014-2018) is focused on filling this gap through training.

It is not often that conservation agriculture, the subject of numerous scholarly articles and dissertations, gets wide coverage from the mainstream media in Ethiopia.

It is thus remarkable that the media gave particular attention to a training event held last June at the ILRI-Ethiopia campus and organized by CIMMYT through the USAID-funded “Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation” project (Africa RISING project, www.africa-rising.net). A focus of CIMMYT’s work in Ethiopia and other countries of East and Southern Africa is to improve smallholder farming practices by exploiting the synergies between small-scale mechanization and conservation agriculture.

Reporters representing two major daily English language newspapers in Addis Ababa attended and wrote extensively about the five-day training event that the project organized for service providers from different states in Ethiopia with the objective of promoting farm mechanization and sustainable productivity.

The Ethiopian Herald gave the most coverage through a lengthy article titled “Advancing farming systems improve food, nutrition and income security.” The article describes the advantages of increasing smallholder production through the adoption of modern agricultural practices and proven new technologies such as the two-wheel tractor, which can help increase the efficiency of seed and fertilizer use, reduce labor, time and post-harvest losses, and improve grain quality and farm income. The article also recommends that “all stakeholders should identify the challenges of promoting mechanization and deliver appropriate technologies to farmers.”

The Monitor gave the story a prominent place under the headline “Two-wheel tractors to improve agriculture in Ethiopian highlands.” The story in particular mentions the role of the project in light of a draft national strategy developed in 2014 by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency with the aim of increasing farm power available to Ethiopian farmers by as much as 10-fold by 2025.

The article also reports the testimonies of participating service providers on the suitability and ease of using two-wheel tractor technologies, vis-à-vis traditional tools. One farmer noted, “Compared with using traditional tools like oxen power… this machine will help increase my income while also saving my time.”

At the end, the article quotes FACASI project coordinator Frédéric Baudron, who noted that the trainees are expected to share their knowledge of two-wheel tractor technologies with their local communities to achieve more impact and productivity in the future.

It is worth noting that CIMMYT employs a range of methodologies to accelerate delivery of two-wheel tractor-based technologies to smallholders in selected sites in SSA countries, including: on-station and on-farm participatory evaluation of two-wheel tractor technologies; business model development; market and policy analysis; and establishment of a permanent knowledge platform as well as a common monitoring and evaluation system that includes gender-disaggregated data.

A modern quarantine facility to safely import maize breeding materials to southern Africa, and to enable local institutions to proactively breed for resistance against Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) disease, will be established this year at Mazowe, just outside Harare in Zimbabwe.

The announcement was made on 3 August 2015 at the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) between CIMMYT and the Government of Zimbabwe. Ringson Chitsiko, the Permanent Secretary of Agriculture, Mechanization and Irrigation Development, signed on behalf of the Government of Zimbabwe while BM Prasanna, Director of MAIZE CRP and CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program, represented CIMMYT.

“MLN is a reality that cannot be ignored. We have to work together to control its spread. We need to focus on finding practical solutions to tackle this complex challenge, including strengthening MLN disease diagnostic and surveillance capacity, while we continue with intensive inter-institutional efforts to develop and deploy improved maize varieties that incorporate MLN resistance. The commercial seed sector must also play a key role by producing and delivering MLN-free healthy seed to farmers,” said Prasanna during the MoA signing ceremony.

The MLN Quarantine Facility, the first of its kind in southern Africa, will be set up by CIMMYT before the end of this year at the Plant Quarantine Institute in Mazowe, Mashonaland Central Province, one of Zimbabwe’s important research facilities run by the Department of Research and Specialist Services (DR&SS).

MLN was first detected in Kenya’s Rift Valley region in September 2011, and has since been reported in Tanzania, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Ethiopia. It is caused by a double infection of maize plants by two viruses: maize chlorotic mottle virus and sugarcane mosaic virus. There is an urgent need to prevent the deadly disease from moving further south.

Prior to signing of the MoA, Joseph Made, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Agriculture, discussed with Prasanna and CIMMYT-Southern Africa Regional Office (CIMMYT-SARO) senior staff how to strengthen maize research and development in Zimbabwe. “The Government of Zimbabwe is honored to be selected to host the new facility, which is important for stopping the spread and impact of MLN,” said Made.

To strengthen the phytosanitary work at the MLN Quarantine Facility, CIMMYT will also offer capacity building to DR&SS researchers through trainings, technical assistance, and advisory services, according to Prasanna. “This MLN Quarantine Facility, and the collaborative efforts between institutions of the Government of Zimbabwe, especially DR&SS and CIMMYT-SARO, are key in our efforts to prevent the possible spread of MLN in Africa,” said Prasanna.

Mulugetta Mekuria, CIMMYT-SARO Regional Representative said that the new collaboration to set up the MLN Quarantine facility in Zimbabwe would further enrich the long-standing and successful partnership between CIMMYT-SARO and DR&SS.

After the signing ceremony, officials from CIMMYT and DR&SS visited the site at the Plant Quarantine Institute at Mazowe where the MLN Quarantine Facility will be established, and discussed implementation arrangements, including steps for strengthening the national phytosanitary capacity.

The state of Haryana, India’s breadbasket, faces a major challenge due to the excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer (N: P: K = 27.2: 9.8: 1) in agriculture. The overuse of nitrogen fertilizer in the rice-wheat systems of Haryana has led to high production costs, low efficiency, environmental pollution and nitrate contamination of groundwater, which causes blue baby syndrome in young children.

Another challenge to agriculture in Haryana is that traditional ways of farming are no longer attractive to educated youth, which means that fewer young people are opting to become farmers. However, new innovations and technological advancements are making agriculture much more attractive to young people, especially women, and creating awareness and building capacity about these advancements is critical to make women see the potential in agriculture.

CIMMYT, under the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, organized a day-long field training session for young female farmers in the climate-smart village of Bastada, Haryana, on the GreenSeeker, a hand-held sensor that measures nitrogen, assesses crop vigor and calculates a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index representing crop health. Nearly 20 young women from farm families in Bastada participated.

Farmers often lack training to interpret raw data from devices like the GreenSeeker. To address this problem, CIMMYT, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the Government of Punjab launched a mobile calculator application in January 2015 that allows farmers to precisely calculate the nitrogen in their fields right on their mobile phone, ensuring accurate nitrogen fertilizer application, which in turn raises crop yields and profits.

Mamta, a young woman of 23 who participated in the training session, mentioned that farmers faced a serious problem due to a shortage of urea during the winter 2014-15 wheat season. This problem is easier to avoid now that her cell phone has a GreenSeeker application that allows her to calculate the precise amount of nitrogen in her rice and wheat fields. “The application is very helpful in saving nitrogen to the tune of one bag of urea per hectare,” said Mamta.

CIMMYT plans to hold similar training sessions for young women and men throughout the states of Haryana, Punjab and Bihar, which will no doubt make them more likely to opt to become farmers and will go a long way towards ensuring adequate fertilizer application by farmers.