FOCUS ON WOMEN CAN INADVERTENTLY END UP ALIENATING MEN

Gender research and outreach should engage men more effectively, according to Paula Kantor, CIMMYT gender and development specialist who is leading an ambitious new project to empower and improve the livelihoods of women, men and youth in wheat-growing areas of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan.

“Farming takes place in socially complex environments, involving individual women and men who are embedded in households, local culture and communities, and value chains — all of which are colored by expectations of women’s and men’s appropriate behaviors,” said Kantor.

“We tend to focus on women in our work and can inadvertently end up alienating men, when they could be supporters if we explained what we’re doing and that, in the end, the aim is for everyone to progress and benefit.”

Funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the new project will include 14 village case studies across the three countries. It is part of a global initiative involving 13 CGIAR research programs (CRPs), including the CIMMYT-led WHEAT and MAIZE.

Participants in the global project will carry out 140 case studies in 29 countries; WHEAT and MAIZE together will conduct 70 studies in 13 countries.

Kantor and Lone Badstue, strategic leader for gender research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, are members of the executive committee coordinating the global initiative, along with Gordon Prain of CIP-led Roots, Tubers and Bananas Program, and Amare Tegbaru of the IITA-led Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics.

“The cross-CRP gender research initiative is of unprecedented scope,” said Kantor. “For WHEAT, CIMMYT, and partners, understanding more clearly how gendered expectations affect agricultural innovation outcomes and opportunities can give all of our research more ‘ooomph’, helping social and biophysical scientists to work together better to design and conduct socially and technically robust agricultural R4D, and in the end achieve greater adoption and impact.”

To that end, outcomes will include joint interpretation of results with CRP colleagues and national stakeholders, scientific papers, policy engagement and guidelines for integrating gender in wheat research-for-development, according to Kantor.

Another, longer-term goal is to question and unlock gender constraints to agricultural innovation, in partnership with communities. Kantor said that male migration and urbanization are driving fundamental, global changes in gender dynamics, but institutional structures and policies must keep pace.

“The increase in de facto female-headed households in South Asia, for example, would imply that there are more opportunities for women in agriculture,” she explained, “but there is resistance, and particularly from institutions like extension services and banks which have not evolved in ways that support and foster the empowerment of those women.”

Kantor has more than 15 years of experience in research on gender relations and empowerment in economic development, microcredit, rural and urban livelihoods, and informal labor markets, often in challenging settings. She served four years as Director and Manager of the gender and livelihoods research portfolios at the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) in Kabul.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

El BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — A nutritionist who is outspoken about the negative consequences of gluten-free diets said in an interview that she wants to dispel myths generated by claims that the protein found in wheat is unhealthy.

“Wheat has recently been under attack by people who’ve made claims about it that simply can’t be verified by science,” said Julie Miller Jones, professor emeritus of nutrition at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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

Retail sales of gluten-free foods in the United States were estimated at $12.2 billion in 2014, and by 2020 the market is projected to be valued at $23.9 billion, Statistica reports.

The popularity of gluten- and wheat-free diets has grown in part due to claims published in such books as “Wheat Belly” by William Davis and “Brain Grain” by David Perlmutter. These publications say that wheat products are the cause of most health problems, views rebutted by Miller Jones.

Such claims counter current medical and nutritional advice in international dietary guidelines established in conjunction with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Apart from the approximately 1 percent of people who suffer from celiac disease, the fewer than 1 percent of people who suffer from wheat allergies and the few who suffer from non-celiac gluten sensitivity, prominent celiac experts and health professionals discount the many supposed benefits of going gluten-free, urging those who do not have these conditions not to adopt such a diet,” Miller Jones said.

As a food staple, wheat plays a vital role in global food security, providing 20 percent of the overall total amount of calories and protein consumed worldwide.

Miller Jones, who delivered a talk at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, shared her views on the controversy surrounding fad diets that urge the elimination of wheat and its protein complex, gluten, in the following interview.

Q: What worries you about negative attacks on wheat consumption?

I’m very concerned about it. One of the attacks is based on the fact that wheat has been bred by people – that this breeding somehow has done something very evil to the grain. I really want to dispel the myth that wheat is somehow bad for you and that modern wheat is somehow different from the wheat that existed years ago. It’s different because we can grow more of it, it’s higher yielding, but it’s not different in terms of the nutrition that it delivers. In fact, we get more nutrition per acre, which I think is a good thing rather than a bad thing.

Q: Critics have suggested that scientists are creating new proteins in wheat. Is this true?

You can’t create a new protein without creating a mutation, and plant breeding doesn’t normally create new mutations. There are hundreds of varieties of wheat that exist in the world – what Norman Borlaug (the late CIMMYT wheat breeder and Nobel Peace Prize winner, known as the father of the Green Revolution) did was cross these wheats to develop grains that would grow under a variety of conditions. The glutenins and gliadins that were there have been there ever since wheat has been grown as a crop. He claims that new, modern wheat has more gluten than it did before. A lot of research is showing that the level has not changed. In fact, in his book, Dr. Davis suggests that gliadin is a new toxic protein. That is patently false because you can go back into the early chemical literature – that mentions gliadin early in the 1800’s.

Q: Critics have also said that gluten-free fad diets are marketed towards a more western, wealthy culture. If so, what are the implications for the developing world?

Obviously, these doctors are trying to sell books in affluent countries where obesity is a big problem. We would all love to find a solution to obesity. All the simplistic solutions like eliminate a particular food or food group or eat in the ancient way – all of those solutions are really quite simplistic. There are a number of things that we need to do in order to address obesity – It’s aimed at an obese population concerned about chronic disease and diseases that are associated with obesity. The tragedy in that is that if, as we’ve seen with other issues, when developed nations say that they are not going to eat something because of a particular issue with that food then that food has been rejected as food aid in some developing countries. So this has some really amazingly potentially harmful results that no one really initially intended – these unintended consequences are really problematic. It could also mean that people switch their diets to foods that are less sustainable. We’re really facing a problem with feeding the additional two-and-a-half billion people that will exist on this planet in 2050. Clearly, it’s not a viable or sustainable strategy for feeding the world. I’m very concerned about it and these sort of second-order consequences.

Q: How credible are reports that wheat consumption is bad?

Dr. Davis suggests that if we didn’t eat wheat we would cure diabetes. Well, the data simply say completely the opposite. We have studies of large populations from all over the world where people who ate about three servings of whole-grain cereals and bread a day had a 25 percent reduced risk of diabetes. They have a 25 percent reduced risk of coronary heart disease. A study just published out of Harvard University in January of this year showed that the people who ate whole grains had reduced mortality for age. So the idea that taking wheat and grains out of the diet makes you healthier simply flies in the face of the scientific literature.

Q: Is there a simple goal you want to achieve?

I think that what we do know about healthy diets is that healthy diets are ones that are balanced. If we look at those diets, which support brain health, heart health, help prevent diabetes – they’re the ones such as the Mediterranean diet, which has breads and cereals as a base. It includes meat, poultry, fish but relatively small amounts of meat. It asks you to eat some legumes. The dietary approach to stop hypertension called the DASH diet has been studied on a large cohort of men and women who initially had high blood pressure. What they showed was that when people ate this diet, which has lots of fruits and vegetables, servings of whole grain, low-fat dairy – this mix that we need – those people had a lower risk of cancer and coronary disease. We actually have data on brain health, and diets such as the Mediterranean and the DASH diet showed the least loss of cognitive functioning in the elderly.

Q: In general, should people avoid specific food groups?

Instead of eliminating a food group, what we ought to do is eat it in the right amounts. That does not give you the excuse to eat large numbers of servings of what I call doodles, dingdongs and doughnuts. What we need to think about is those kinds of staple foods that have nourished the Aztecs in the past, nourished the pioneers coming across to the New World and that will nourish us today – eat those in the right amount. I’d also like to say exercise would be a good idea, too.

RELEASE OF 26 COMMERCIAL MAIZE VARIETIES DURING CAREER

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Judith Oyoo writes about her Super Woman of Maize, Jane Ininda, an agricultural scientist.

Dr. Jane Ininda is an agricultural scientist who has been making great strides in agricultural research with remarkable results.

She was born in humble surroundings, in Mbeere District, in Kenya. Her parents were farmers whose crop yields were far from satisfactory.

“I remember as I was growing up that there wasn’t enough food; we used traditional methods and you could never be sure there would be enough food in the year,” Ininda recalled.

A graduate of Iowa State University, she began her academic journey in Eastern Province, Kenya at Kaaga Girls High School, University of Nairobi where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees before joining Iowa State University to study for her doctoral degree.

Dr. Ininda has released 26 commercial maize varieties during a career that spans more than 30 years. In collaboration with other partners she has released more than 180 hybrid maize varieties that have been commercialized.

She has contributed to food security, employment and wealth creation to smallholder farmers in Africa.

Dr. Ininda believes in the saying: “Give a hungry person a fishing hook and they will never be hungry again in their lifetime.”

In this case, the “fishing hook” is crop varieties, especially disease-resistant, high-yielding maize with improved taste and the ability to mature early.

In addition to her professional excellence, she has mentored many upcoming young scientists without considering gender.

She is hardworking, determined, focused, intelligent, humble and soft spoken, although she is a giant in the world of research.

She believed in me when I was naïve, having recently graduated from Kenya’s Egerton University. She involved me in her project, taught me how to carry out experiments, data collection and team work.

I gained invaluable research experience under her mentorship, although informal. One way to sum her up: “Priceless gem to Africa.”

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

NEW FARMING TECHNIQUES IN MEXICO LOWER COSTS AND INCREASE PRODUCTION

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Julio Cesar Gonzalez Marquez writes about his Super Woman of Maize, Dolores Robles González, a farmer in Mexico.

Nestled in the Morones mountain range, at about 230 kilometers southwest of the city of Zacatecas, within the community known as La Lobera and the municipality called Teul de Gonzalez Ortega, lies the 8-hectare property known as El Ranchito.

El Ranchito is the home of Mrs Dolores Robles Gonzalez, who uses the property to produce native maize in temporal conditions.

Gonzalez, who has spent her entire lifetime farming, and who recently adopted conservation agriculture techniques, said:

“With the implementation of this technology we risk becoming lazier, now that we don’t need to till the soil. Although we start to work later than we would in conventional agriculture, we finish more quickly.

“We’re adopting this conservation tillage technology out of necessity. This change is an example for people who think that if we sow directly, the seed will not germinate. We have already seen that this is not true. Additionally, by implementing these practices we save money because we don’t have to pay to turn the soil. However, assimilation and accommodation are difficult.

“In our case, even watching the practices in the field, we don’t dare to use new technologies as soon as we get them. Generally, these practices require less labor, which translates into more income for us as producers. Thanks to conservation agriculture, we have succeeded in lowering our costs and increasing our production.

“Previously, we had very poor systems with which to work the land, but thanks to the good technical assistance that we have received, we have been able to improve our soil, which is our primary resource.

“The challenge now is to keep increasing our returns at a low cost, and reduce the degradation of our ecosystem as much as possible.”

Dolores Robles Gonzales is an enthusiastic woman who receives support from the Programa Estratégico de Seguridad Alimentaria (PESA), SECAMPO-Zacatecas, SAGARPA and CIMMYT-MasAgro.

At first, the men decided to just be spectators, but thanks to her drive to “push more people to benefit,” and thanks to the good results of her plot, there are about thirty farmers from La Lobera and the rest of the Morones mountain range who participate in training courses.

Everyone wants to establish more innovation models, which gives Doña Lola, as she is known in the village, much satisfaction.

“You see, they said that they were not interested, and now they don’t want to leave.”

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

SUPPORTING THE CONNECTIVITY OF RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND OPPORTUNITIES

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or wheat. In the following story, Amy Braun writes about her Super Woman of maize and wheat, Kellogg Company’s Diane Holdorf.

Diane Holdorf is a super woman and an inspiration to all of us at Kellogg Company. As Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President of Environmental Stewardship, Health and Safety at Kellogg, Diane has been the inspiration and force behind the expansion of the company’s global sustainability commitments to include specific goals supporting smallholders around the world as part of new public commitments for 2020.

She has also been an ambassador for responsible sourcing and sustainable agriculture within the company, and has done a tremendous job raising awareness with Kellogg employees and leaders on the important role that smallholders, and women in particular, play in food security within their communities.

Under her leadership, Kellogg also commissioned a study in 2014 to assess how the company’s supply chain could improve the productivity and livelihoods of some smallholders around the globe. Soon afterwards, she traveled with Kellogg’s CEO, to attend the U.N. Secretary General’s Climate Summit in New York City to make a public statement committing to support 15,000 smallholders adopt climate-smart agriculture practices by 2020.

Climate-smart agriculture can help improve livelihoods and boost climate resiliency.

Kellogg currently supports 65,000 smallholder farmer livelihoods across their 10 priority ingredients through the market. Statistics show that women represent an average of 41 percent of workers on smallholder farms and 11 percent of farm managers or owners, according to a 2015 report.

Diane is a passionate leader for sustainability. With her muddy boots, she spreads her passion to inspire an entire company. Her drive, communication skills and leadership has caused Kellogg not only to meet overall objectives, but she has also infected leaders and employees with a clear understanding that sustainability matters.

Diane has gone beyond the call of duty, demonstrating that a sound sustainability strategy is a tool that adds value to the company and consumers. Specifically, Diane has broadened Kellogg Company’s engagement on agricultural supply chains, with exceptional leadership related to wheat, maize and rice smallholders.

She has brought cross-functional teams to Thailand, Ghana, India and Mexico to learn about how these growers work – and to inspire us to find ways to work with research teams like the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and others to share our knowledge and technologies.

In fact, she led the team that brought quinoa growers from Bolivia to the United States to represent the only indigenous voice at the International Year of Quinoa Research Symposium.

As a member of the University of Michigan Graham Sustainability Institute‘s advisory board, she supports the connectivity of sustainability research, education and real-world opportunities.

Through various partnerships with CIMMYT, IRRI, Field to Market and industry associations, as well as with the United Nations, she fosters the collaboration needed to bring agriculture to the forefront of science and policy.

Well-respected by her peers in industry and non-governmental organizations, she is and will continue to be a super woman due to her dedication to sustainability and food.

Without her leadership, we would not be able to do the work we do with the thousands and thousands of smallholders around the world.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — In high school, Jessica Rutkoski was similar to many girls who suffer from the tedium and complexity of high school arithmetic – she avoided it.

However, after graduation she went to college and took a stab at it again, picking up a course in calculus and surprising herself by scoring top marks.

“I discovered I wasn’t bad at math, I was scared of it, had low confidence or maybe just a bad attitude,” laughed Rutkoski, whose first love has always been science.

“Don’t assume that what you think you’re good or bad at is set in stone because when you get to college you may just find out you are better at something than you thought.”

Rutkoski’s mathematical successes at university helped her become an even bigger whiz at science than she was in high school.

Her interest in genetics got her started helping out in a sweet maize breeding program while she was an undergraduate science student at the University of Wisconsin. Subsequently, she decided to study for a doctoral degree, and was attracted to the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project at Cornell University in New York.

At Cornell, she spent long hours in the greenhouse and field, learning about disease and disease resistance in wheat, focusing on stem- and leaf-rust pathology. Additionally, she learned how to program and analyze data using statistical and qualitative genetics.

A year after earning her Ph.D., Rutkoski’s focus is on improving all traits of wheat – she is widening her net to include crop-yield increases in her portfolio.

“I eventually want to use the available technology to predict all traits,” she said. “Data allows us to create prediction models based on genomic fingerprints, rather than using genes – we don’t necessarily have to know anything about genes or the underlying mechanisms of traits.”

Rutkoski is now an assistant professor at Cornell. She spends about three months a year teaching a course called “Selection Theory and Methods,” in which students learn how to maximize gain from selection in breeding programs. The rest of the year she spends working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

“Women are doing this kind of work, but I haven’t really followed in anyone’s footsteps,” she said. “I was inspired to pursue post-graduate studies by colleagues who were frustrated that they found themselves in underpaid, dead-end jobs.”

Some women take another path, choosing to prioritize finding a spouse and having a family, Rutkoski said, adding: “If you’re really passionate about something, then don’t worry about that, it’ll happen on its own. If you’re really passionate about something then just follow it and the rest will fall into place.”

CHAMPIONING THE NUTRITIONAL VALUE AND ANCESTRAL ORIGINS OF MAIZE

International Women’s Day on March 8, offers an opportunity to recognize the achievements of women worldwide. This year, CIMMYT asked readers to submit stories about women they admire for their selfless dedication to either maize or or wheat. In the following story, Michele Monroy-Valle writes about her Maize Super Woman, Julieta Salazar, head of the comprehensive research unit of studies on indigenous foods of the region at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala.

Maize is the most consumed staple food in Guatemala.

As a researcher and professor of food science, Professor Julieta Salazar encourages students to learn how to exploit the nutritional benefits of this wonderful grain.

She teaches them how to prepare it through alkaline cooking, a process known as nixtamalization, so that it becomes an important source of protein, calcium and niacin, while improving balance and bioavailability of its amino acids.

Her efforts have been focused on preserving the traditional recipe of Guatemalan tortillas, and how this preparation has advantages over the consumption of white bread, due to its lower caloric density and glycemic index.

For Guatemala, Salazar’s efforts to educate future nutritionists and the general population on the value of combining corn and beans to improve protein consumption, based on the concept of “vegetable mix,” has a big impact. The nutritious dish is almost the only source of quality protein in poor households with low consumption of animal protein.

Salazar is a pioneer as a public speaker, championing the nutritional value of maize and the ancestral origins of its preparation into tortillas, tamales, atole and other traditional uses in food consumption.

Her area of study has also focused on how maize preparations are integrated into fast food “franchise” restaurants as side dishes or meals.

She has achieved all these accomplishments because she has been devoted for almost 20 years to the study of the chemical composition of maize in its many different forms, including tamales, atole and tortilla chips, among others.

Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.