Natalia Palacios, Maize Quality Specialist at CIMMYT, spoke about the center’s work in Colombia and the future of maize production in the program ‘Tierra de Sueños’ (Land of Dreams).
Listen to the episode here: https://www.rcnradio.com/colombia/el-centro-internacional-de-mejoramiento-maiz-y-trigo-trabaja-en-colombia-por-la-calidad
On December 11, 2020, the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) announced the release of six new wheat varieties for multiplication and distribution to the country’s wheat farmers, offering increased production for Nepal’s nearly one million wheat farmers and boosted nutrition for its 28 million wheat consumers.
The varieties, which are derived from materials developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), include five bred for elevated levels of the crucial micronutrient zinc, and Borlaug 100, a variety well known for being high yielding, drought- and heat-resilient, and resistant to wheat blast, as well as high in zinc.
“Releasing six varieties in one attempt is historic news for Nepal,” said CIMMYT Asia Regional Representative and Principal Scientist Arun Joshi.
“It is an especially impressive achievement by the NARC breeders and technicians during a time of COVID-related challenges and restrictions,” said NARC Executive Director Deepak Bhandari.
“This was a joint effort by many scientists in our team who played a critical role in generating proper data, and making a strong case for these varieties to the release committee, ” said Roshan Basnet, head of the National Wheat Research Program based in Bhairahawa, Nepal, who was instrumental in releasing three of the varieties, including Borlaug 2020.
“We are very glad that our hard work has paid off for our country’s farmers,” said Dhruba Thapa, chief and wheat breeder at NARC’s National Plant Breeding and Genetics Research Centre.
Nepal produces 1.96 million tons of wheat on more than 750,000 hectares, but its wheat farmers are mainly smallholders with less than 1-hectare holdings and limited access to inputs or mechanization. In addition, most of the popular wheat varieties grown in the country have become susceptible to new strains of wheat rust diseases.
The new varieties — Zinc Gahun 1, Zinc Gahun 2, Bheri-Ganga, Himganga, Khumal-Shakti and Borlaug 2020 — were bred and tested using a “fast-track” approach, with CIMMYT and NARC scientists moving material from trials in CIMMYT’s research station in Mexico to multiple locations in Nepal and other Target Population of Environments (TPEs) for testing.
“Thanks to a big effort from Arun Joshi and our NARC partners we were able to collect important data in first year, reducing the time it takes to release new varieties,” said CIMMYT Head of Wheat Improvement Ravi Singh.
The varieties are tailored for conditions in a range of wheat growing regions in the country — from the hotter lowland, or Terai, regions to the irrigated as well as dryer mid- and high-elevation areas — and for stresses including wheat rust diseases and wheat blast. The five high-zinc, biofortified varieties were developed through conventional crop breeding by crossing modern high yielding wheats with high zinc progenitors such as landraces, spelt wheat and emmer wheat.
“Zinc deficiency is a serious problem in Nepal, with 21% of children found to be zinc deficient in 2016,” explained said CIMMYT Senior Scientist and wheat breeder Velu Govindan, who specializes in breeding biofortified varieties. “Biofortification of staple crops such as wheat is a proven method to help reverse and prevent this deficiency, especially for those without access to a more diverse diet.”
Borlaug 2020 is equivalent to Borlaug 100, a highly prized variety released in 2014 in adbMexico to commemorate the centennial year of Nobel Peace laureate Norman E. Borlaug. Coincidently, its release in Nepal coincides with the 50th anniversary of Borlaug’s Nobel Peace Prize.
NARC staff have already begun the process of seed multiplication and conducting participatory varietal selection trials with farmers, so very soon farmers throughout the country will benefit from these seeds.
“The number of new varieties and record release time is amazing,” said Joshi. “We now have varieties that will help Nepal’s farmers well into the future.”
CIMMYT breeding of biofortified varieties was funded by HarvestPlus. Variety release and seed multiplication activities in Nepal were supported by NARC and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) through collaboration with ADB Natural Resources Principal & Agriculture Specialist Michiko Katagami. This NARC-ADB-CIMMYT collaboration was prompted by World Food Prize winner and former HarvestPlus CEO Howarth Bouis, and provided crucial support that enabled the release in a record time.
RELATED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS:
INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES:
Arun Joshi, Asia Regional Representative and Principal Scientist, CIMMYT
FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO ARRANGE INTERVIEWS, CONTACT:
Marcia MacNeil, Communications Officer, CIMMYT m.macneil@cgiar.org.
ABOUT CIMMYT:
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is the global leader in publicly-funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. Headquartered near Mexico City, CIMMYT works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, thus improving global food security and reducing poverty. CIMMYT is a member of the CGIAR System and leads the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and Wheat and the Excellence in Breeding Platform. The Center receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies. For more information, visit staging.cimmyt.org.
ABOUT NARC:
Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) was established in 1991 as an autonomous organization under Nepal Agricultural Research Council Act – 1991 to conduct agricultural research in the country to uplift the economic level of Nepalese people.
ABOUT ADB:
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty. It assists its members and partners by providing loans, technical assistance, grants, and equity investments to promote social and economic development.
With almost all CGIAR centers represented in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is considered to be a hub for CGIAR research, and the organization has been a long-term partner to the Ethiopian government when it comes to agriculture. The partnership between CGIAR and the national partners is said to be an exemplary one, with CGIAR serving as the source of new technologies and innovations and national partners contextualizing these products within their own country context. This is believed to have brought impacts that serve the people on the ground.
A new report by CGIAR’s Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) indicates that CGIAR innovations have reached between 4.1 and 11 million Ethiopian households. The report — which assesses 52 agricultural innovations and 26 claims of policy influence — documents the reach of CGIAR-related agricultural innovations across the core domains of CGIAR research activity: animal agriculture; crop germplasm improvement; natural resource management; and policy research.
The study compiles comprehensive information on the past two decades of CGIAR research activities in Ethiopia. Using information from interviews with CGIAR research leaders, scientists, government officials, published studies and project documents, this ‘stocktaking’ exercise was used to identify the innovations which are potentially disseminated at scale. The study also employs novel data collection protocols and methods like visual aid protocols for identification of natural resource management innovations or DNA fingerprinting for crop variety identification for barley, maize and sorghum.
The study results show that although many innovations are being adopted by some farmers, only a few are reaching large numbers of households. The three innovations with the largest reach are soil and water conservation practices, improved maize varieties and crossbred poultry. The study also found out that there are synergies between innovations where households adopt two or more. For instance, a household which adopts CGIAR maize varieties is likely to also adopt recommended natural resource management practices.
This, according to the study, is the result of different categories of CGIAR research efforts — natural resource management and policy, crop breeding and livestock research, respectively. The scaling of these innovations can also be linked to supportive government policies, which in turn have been influenced by policy research, as indicated in the report.
CIMMYT’s footprint
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has maintained a presence in Ethiopia for over 30 years and is committed to supporting long-term agricultural development in the country. As part of this effort, CIMMYT has contributed to an increase in maize and wheat production in Ethiopia, working with national partners to test and release improved varieties.
The maize breeding program started in 1988 through CIMMYT and EIAR collaboration and in 1993 BH-660 was released — the first hybrid maize variety derived from CIMMYT germplasm. According to the report, specific maize traits were researched through the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) and Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa Seed Scaling (DTMASS) projects, and since 2012 the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project has aimed to develop varieties with higher protein content. Overall, 54 maize varieties have been released in Ethiopia since 1990, and 34 of these are thought to contain CIMMYT-related germplasm. It is also noted that, in the past 20 years ten drought-tolerant varieties and eight quality protein maize (QPM) varieties have been released.
In terms of geographical spread, the study highlights that improved maize varieties derived from CGIAR germplasm were highly adopted in the regions of Harar and Dire Dawa, which account for 81% of adopters overall. Adoption rates were also high in Tigray (79.3% of households), Amhara and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (63% of households), and Oromia (58.4% of households).
The other important crop in Ethiopia is wheat, which is grown by up to 4.8 million farmers in the country, according to the 2019 Central Statistics Authority (CSA) report. The SPIA document indicates that CGIAR innovations have played great role in the release and uptake of improved wheat varieties. The work of the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), for instance, has resulted in the release of eight rust-resistant varieties derived from CIMMYT germplasm that are still under production. Of the 133 varieties released since 1974, CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) played a role in developing at least 80.
The report concludes that agricultural research carried out by CGIAR scientists and their national partners generates many new ideas for innovations that might help address pressing policy concerns. CGIAR’s contribution to Ethiopia’s agricultural development is complex and wide-ranging, and while some aspects cannot be accurately captured by survey data, this new source of adoption and diffusion data helps identify the scale and scope of CGIAR’s reach in Ethiopia.
Read the full report: Shining a brighter light: Comprehensive evidence on adoption and diffusion of CGIAR-related innovations in Ethiopia
About the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment
The Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) is an external, impartial panel of experts in impact assessment appointed by the System Council and accountable to it. SPIA is responsible for providing rigorous, evidence-based, and independent strategic advice to the broader CGIAR System on efficient and effective impact assessment methods and practices, including those measuring impacts beyond contributions to science and economic performance, and on innovative ways to improve knowledge and capacity on how research contributes to development outcomes
50 years ago, the late Norman Borlaug received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for averting famine by increasing wheat yield potential and delivering improved varieties to farmers in South Asia. He was the first Nobel laureate in food production and is widely known as “the man who saved one billion lives.”
In the following decades, Borlaug continued his work from the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a non-profit research-for-development organization funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the governments of Mexico and the United States.
CIMMYT became a model for a future network of publicly-funded organizations with 14 research centers: CGIAR. Today, CGIAR is led by Marco Ferrroni, who describes it as a global research partnership that “continues to be about feeding the world sustainably with explicit emphasis on nutrition, the environment, resource conservation and regeneration, and equity and inclusion.”
Norman Borlaug’s fight against hunger has risen again to the global spotlight in the wake of the most severe health and food security crises of the 21st Century. “The Nobel Peace Prizes to Norman Borlaug and the World Food Programme are very much interlinked,” said Kjersti Flogstad, Executive Director of the Oslo-based Nobel Peace Center. “They are part of a long tradition of awarding [the prize] to humanitarian work, also in accordance with the purpose [Alfred] Nobel expressed in his last will: to promote fraternity among nations.”
During welcome remarks at the virtual 50-year commemoration of Norman Borlaug’s Nobel Peace Prize on December 8, 2020, Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development Víctor Villalobos Arámbula, warned that “for the first time in many years since Borlaug defeated hunger in Southeast Asia, millions of people are at risk of starvation in several regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America.”
According to CIMMYT’s Director General Martin Kropff, celebrating Norman Borlaug’s legacy should also lead to renewed investments in the CGIAR system. “A report on the payoff of investing in CGIAR research published in October 2020 shows that CIMMYT’s return on investment (ROI) exceeds a benefit-cost ratio of 10 to 1, with median ROI rates for wheat research estimated at 19 and for maize research at 12.”
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Department echoed the call to invest in Agriculture for Peace. “The Government of Mexico, together with the Nobel Peace Center and CIMMYT, issues a joint call to action to overcome the main challenges to human development in an international system under pressure from conflict, organized crime, forced migration and climate change,” said Martha Delgado, Mexico’s Under Secretary of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights.
The event called for action against the looming food crises through the transformation of food systems, this time with an emphasis on nutrition, environment and equality. Speakers included experts from CGIAR, CIMMYT, Conservation International, Mexico’s Agriculture and Livestock Council, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Food Programme (WFP), among others. Participants discussed the five action tracks of the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit: (1) ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all; (2) shift to sustainable consumption patterns; (3) boost nature-positive production; (4) advance equitable livelihoods; and, (5) build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses.
“This event underlines the need for international solidarity and multilateral cooperation in the situation the world is facing today,” said Norway’s Ambassador to Mexico, Rut Krüger, who applauded CIMMYT’s contribution of 170,000 maize and wheat seeds to the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. “This number reflects the global leadership position of CIMMYT in the development of maize and wheat strains.”
Norman Borlaug’s famous words — “take it to the farmer” — advocated for swift agricultural innovation transfers to the field; Julie Borlaug, president of the Borlaug Foundation, said the Agriculture for Peace event should inspire us to also “take it to the public.”
“Agriculture cannot save the world alone,” she said. “We also need sound government policies, economic programs and infrastructure.”
CIMMYT’s Deputy Director General for Research and Partnerships, and Integrated Development Program Director Bram Govaerts, called on leaders, donors, relief and research partners to form a global coalition to transform food systems. “We must do a lot more to avert a hunger pandemic, and even more to put the world back on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.”
CIMMYT’s host country has already taken steps in this direction with the Crops for Mexico project, which aims to improve the productivity of several crops essential to Mexico’s food security, including maize and wheat. “This model is a unique partnership between the private, public and social sectors that focuses on six crops,” said Mexico’s Private Sector Liaison Officer Alfonso Romo. “We are very proud of its purpose, which is to benefit over one million smallholder households.”
The call stresses the need for sustainable and inclusive rural development. “It is hard to imagine the distress, frustration and fear that women feel when they have no seeds to plant, no grain to store and no income to buy basic foodstuffs to feed their children,” said Nicole Birrell, Chair of CIMMYT’s Board of Trustees. “We must make every effort to restore food production capacities and to transform agriculture into productive, profitable, sustainable and, above all, equitable food systems worldwide.”
By adopting best practices and established modern tools, national agricultural research systems (NARS) are making data-driven decisions to boost genetic improvement. And they are measuring this progress through tracking and setting goals around “genetic gain.”
Genetic gain means improving seed varieties so that they have a better combination of genes that contribute to desired traits such as higher yields, drought resistance or improved nutrition. Or, more technically, genetic gain measures, “the expected or realized change in average breeding value of a population over at least one cycle of selection for a particular trait of index of traits,” according to the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding (EiB)’s breeding process assessment manual.
CGIAR breeders and their national partners are committed to increasing this rate of improvement to at least 1.5% per year. So, it has become a vital and universal high-level key performance indicator (KPI) for breeding programs.
“We are moving towards a more data-driven culture where decisions are not taken any more based on gut feeling,” EiB’s Eduardo Covarrubias told nearly 200 NARS breeders in a recent webinar on Enhancing and Measuring Genetic Gain. “Decisions that can affect the sustainability and the development of organization need to be based on facts and data.”
Improved metrics. Better decisions. More and better food. But how are NARS positioned to better measure and boost the metric?
EiB researchers have been working with both CGIAR breeding programs and NARS to broaden the understanding of genetic gain and to supply partners with methods and tools to measure it.
The recent webinar, co-sponsored by EiB and the CIMMYT-led Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGG) project, highlighted tools and services that NARS are accessing, such as genotyping, data analysis and mechanization.
Through program assessments, customized expert advice, training and provision of services and resources, EiB researchers are helping national partners arrive at the best processes for driving and measuring genetic gains in their programs.
For example, the EiB team, through Crops to End Hunger (CtEH), is providing guidelines to breeders to help them maximize the accuracy and precision, while reducing the cost of calculating genetic gains. The guidelines make recommendations such as better design of trials and implementing an appropriate check strategy that permits regular and accurate calculation of genetic gain.
A comprehensive example at the project level is EiB’s High-Impact Rice Breeding in East and West Africa (Hi-Rice), which is supporting the modernization of national rice programs in eight key rice-producing countries in Africa. Hi-Rice delivers training and support to modernize programs through tools such as the use of formalized, validated product profiles to better define market needs, genotyping tools for quality control, and digitizing experiment data to better track and improve breeding results. This is helping partners replace old varieties of rice with new ones that have higher yields and protect against elements that attack rice production, such as drought and disease. Over the coming years, EiB researchers expect to see significant improvements in genetic gain from the eight NARS program partners.
And in the domain of wheat and maize, AGG is working in 13 target countries to help breeders adopt best practices and technologies to boost genetic gain. Here, the EiB team is contributing its expertise in helping programs develop their improvement plans — to map out where, when and how programs will invest in making changes.
NARS and CGIAR breeding programs also have access to tools and expertise on adopting a continuous improvement process — one that leads to cultural change and buy-in from leadership so that programs can identify problems and solve them as they come up. Nearly 150 national breeding partners attended another EiB/AGG webinar highlighting continuous improvement key concepts and case studies.
National programs are starting to see the results of these partnerships. The Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)’s highland maize breeding program has undertaken significant changes to its pipelines. KALRO carried out its first-ever full program costing, and based on this are modifying their pipeline to expand early stage testing. They are also switching to a double haploid breeding scheme with support from the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE), in addition to ring fencing their elite germplasm for future crosses.
KALRO has also adopted EiB-supported data management tools, and are working with the team to calculate past rates of genetic gains for their previous 20 years of breeding. These actions — and the resulting data — will help them decide on which tools and methods to adopt in order to improve the rate of genetic gain for highland maize.
“By analyzing historical genetic gain over the last 20 years, it would be interesting to determine if we are still making gains or have reached a plateau,” said KALRO’s Dickson LIgeyo, who presented a Story of Excellence at EiB’s Virtual Meeting 2020. “The assessment will help us select the right breeding methods and tools to improve the program.”
Other NARS programs are on a similar path to effectively measure and increase genetic gain. In Ghana, the rice breeding program at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have developed product profiles, identified their target market segments, costed out their program, digitized their operations, and have even deployed molecular markers for selection.
With this increased expertise and access to tools and services, national breeding programs are set to make great strides on achieving genetic gain goals.
“NARS in Africa and beyond have been aggressively adopting new ideas and tools,” says EiB’s NARS engagement lead Bish Das. “It will pay a lot of dividends, first through the development of state-of-the-art, and ultimately through improving genetic gains in farmers’ fields. And that’s what it’s all about.”
COVID-19 didn’t slow us down! In 2020, our editors continued to cover exciting news and events related to maize and wheat science around the world. Altogether, we published more than 250 stories.
It is impossible to capture all of the places and topics we reported on, but here are some highlights and our favorite stories of the year.
Thank you for being a loyal reader of CIMMYT’s news and features. We are already working on new stories and campaigns for 2021. Sign up for our newsletter and be the first to know!
The 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission report defines specific actions to achieve a “planetary health diet” enhancing human nutrition and keeping resource use of food systems within planetary boundaries. With major cereals still supplying about one-third of calories required in the proposed diet, the way they are produced, processed, and consumed must be a central focus of global efforts to transform food systems. This article from our annual report argues three main reasons for this imperative.
Farmers are increasingly adopting conservation agriculture practices. This sustainable farming method is based on three principles: crop diversification, minimal soil movement and permanent soil cover.
A team of scientists has completed one of the largest genetic analyses ever done of any agricultural crop to find desirable traits in wheat’s extensive and unexplored diversity.
The new AGG project aims to respond to the climate emergency and gender nexus through gender-intentional product profiles for its improved seed varieties and gender-intentional seed delivery pathways.
Experts share their insights on the link between biodiversity loss and emerging infectious diseases.
At demonstration farms, Kenyan farmers discover the stress-tolerant maize varieties they were looking for.
Maize lethal necrosis (MLN) has taught us that intensive efforts to keep human and plant diseases at bay need to continue beyond the COVID-19 crisis. We interviewed B.M. Prasanna, director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE), to discuss the MLN success story, the global COVID-19 crisis, and the similarities in the challenge to tackle plant and human viral diseases.
We had a similar conversation with Hans Braun, Director of the Global Wheat Program and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, who taled to us about the need for increased investment in crop disease research as the world risks a food security crisis related to COVID-19.
The use of corn husk as veneer has helped a town to preserve maize biodiversity, protect the environment and reduce migration.
Study quantifies the economic losses from Bangladesh’s COVID-19 lockdowns and outlines policy implications for the country.
CIMMYT also published a similar study gauging the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns in Nepal.
Seven ways to make small-scale mechanization work for African farmers.
Cover photo: A member of a women farmers group serves a platter of mung bean dishes in Suklaphanta, Nepal. (Photo: Merit Maharajan/Amuse Communication)
Maize post-harvest losses in smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa have been shown to result in significant costs at household and national level, making it difficult to move towards achievement of SDG2 – Zero Hunger.
Within smallholder farming systems, new grain storage technologies such as metal silos can help reduce these losses during storage. However, technologies are often introduced into systems with complex sets of relationships, which may differentially affect the ability of women and men to secure the expected benefits. This, in turn, can have a knock-on effect on adoption rates and expected outcomes.
A recent study by an international team of researchers investigated whether modern storage structures such as metal silos provide equal benefits to women and men farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, using a mixed methods approach to explore the relationships governing maize production and storage in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, where 1717 metal silos have been introduced through the Effective Grain Storage Project (EGSP).
The authors used random sampling to carry out quantitative surveys on metal silo owners in Kenya (124 respondents) and Malawi (100 respondents). Qualitative surveys using purposive sampling were also conducted in all four countries covering 14 ethnic groups using focus group discussions (360 respondents), key informant interviews (62 respondents), and household case studies (62 respondents). “Our aim was to understand gendered post-harvest management and storage strategies in traditional systems and to map changes when metal silos were introduced,” explain the authors.
“We hypothesized that existing gender norms might differentially influence women’s ability to benefit from the introduction of metal silos and our findings seem to indicate that this is correct. In most instances when metal silos are introduced, ownership of the grain storage facility and any benefits attached to that ownership typically switch from women to men, or men’s existing control over stored maize is deepened.”
Their findings highlight that roles and responsibilities regarding the ownership and management of storage structures are strongly gendered. Though there are differences between ethnic groups and countries, overall men benefit more than women from the introduction of metal silos. Ownership of a grain storage facility and the benefits attached to this ownership can switch from women to men, with women having less scope for bargaining over their rights to use the stores for their own needs and the benefit of all household members.
Many of the women interviewed suggested that this compromised their ability to access sufficient maize because men might insist on taking any grain set aside to meet their personal needs. “We did not measure how much grain is taken and whether food security is indeed negatively affected, but our research registers that women are concerned about this issue.”
The qualitative research explored whether ownership over the granary — and control over the maize stored within — changed when metal silos were purchased. In all four countries, cultural norms tend to result in men typically owning all large household assets such as land, water pumps, ox-ploughs and carts, etc. They generally make key decisions about how these assets are to be used as well. Furthermore, the income differential between women and men in male-headed households means that it is considerably more difficult for women than men to make a large purchase like a metal silo. “As a consequence of these factors, we found men were more likely to own metal silos in each country.”
There is some differentiation between ethnic groups. In Zimbabwe, for example, Zezuru women who had previously owned and managed a dura — a traditional granary — lost control over maize grain reserves when metal silos were introduced. But for Korekore women nothing changed: men had always controlled traditional storage technologies and the maize within, and they continued to do so when metal silos were introduced. These examples highlight the fact that despite the cultural differences between ethnic groups, Zimbabwean women lost out across the board when metal silos were introduced, either through losing control over storage structures, or because male ownership was not challenged.
In light of these findings, the authors argue that understanding social context is key to designing and disseminating post-harvest technologies that meet the needs and preferences of both men and women farmers in various cultural contexts.
Their results make a strong case for ensuring that agricultural policy-makers prioritize the provision of equal access to improved technologies, as this is crucial not only for supporting women to meet their individual production goals, but also for ensuring that household-level food security needs are met.
Read the full study “Do metal grain silos benefit women in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe?” in the Journal of Stored Products Research.
Compared to conventional tillage practices, sowing wheat directly into just-harvested rice fields without burning or removing straw or other residues will not only reduce pollution in New Delhi and other parts of northern India, but will save over $130 per hectare in farmer expenses, lessen irrigation needs by as much as 25%, and allow early planting of wheat to avoid yield-reducing heat stress, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.
The practice requires use of a tractor-mounted implement that opens grooves in the soil, drops in wheat seed and fertilizer, and covers the seeded row, all in one pass. This contrasts with the typical method for planting wheat after rice, which involves first burning rice residues, followed by multiple tractor passes to plow, harrow, plank, and sow, according to Harminder S. Sidhu, principal research engineer at the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and a co-author of the study.
“There are already some 11,000 of these specialized no-till implements, known as the Happy Seeder, in operation across northern India,” said Sidhu, who with other researchers helped develop, test and refine the implement over 15 years. “In addition to sowing, the Happy Seeder shreds and clears rice residues from the seeder path and deposits them back onto the seeded row as a protective mulch.”
Covering some 13.5 million hectares, the Indo-Gangetic Plain stretches across Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan and constitutes South Asia’s breadbasket. In India, the northwestern state of Punjab alone produces nearly a third of the country’s rice and wheat.
Some 2.5 million farmers in northern India practice rice-wheat cropping and most burn their rice straw — an estimated 23 million tons of it — after rice harvest, to clear fields for sowing wheat. Straw removal and burning degrades soil fertility and creates a noxious cloud that affects the livelihoods and health of millions in cities and villages downwind. Air pollution is the second leading contributor to disease in India, and studies attribute some 66,000 deaths yearly to breathing in airborne nano-particles produced by agricultural burning.
The central and state governments in northwestern India, as well as universities and think-tanks, have put forth strategies to curtail burning that include conservation tillage technologies such as use of the Happy Seeder. Subsidies for no-burn farming, as well as state directives and fines for straw burning, are in place and extension agencies are promoting no-burn alternatives.
As an aid for policy makers and development practitioners, the present study applied econometrics to compare conventional and zero-tillage in terms of yield, input levels and implications for rice residue burning. The study also compared use of the Happy Seeder versus a simple zero-tillage drill with no straw shredder. Participants included more than 1,000 farm households in 52 villages, encompassing 561 users of conventional tillage, 226 users of simple zero-tillage seeding implements, and 234 Happy Seeder users.
They found that only the Happy Seeder was able to sow wheat directly into large amounts of rice residues, with significant savings for farmers and equal or slightly better wheat yields, over conventional tillage. The Happy Seeder also saves time and water.
“Given the benefits of sowing wheat using the Happy Seeder against the tremendous health and environmental costs of residue burning, the reduction or elimination of straw burning should be pushed forward immediately,” said P.P. Krishnapriya, research scientist at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, and a co-author of the article. “Investments in social marketing and policies that foster the use of the Happy Seeders, including significant subsidies to purchase these machines, must be accompanied by stricter enforcement of the existing ban on residue burning.”
The study also found that the information sources most widely-available to farmers are currently geared towards conventional agricultural practices, but farmers who use the internet for agricultural information are more likely to be aware of the Happy Seeder.
“Awareness raising campaigns should use both conventional and novel channels,” said Priya Shyamsundar, lead economist at the Nature Conservancy (TNC) and co-author of the article. “As with any innovation that differs significantly from current practices, social and behavioral levers such as frontline demonstrations, good champions, and peer-to-peer networking and training are critical.”
In addition, rather than having most individual farmers own a Happy Seeder — a highly-specialized implement whose cost of $1,900 may be prohibitive for many — researchers are instead promoting the idea of farmers hiring direct-sowing services from larger farmers or other people able to purchase a Happy Seeder and make a business of operating it, explained Alwin Keil, a senior agricultural economist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and lead author of the new study.
“We are extremely grateful to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the Nature Conservancy, and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat Agri-Food Systems (WHEAT), who supported our research,” said Keil.
“We want to feed the people, we don’t want them to go hungry. We have to do something to make sure there is food on the table. That is where my motivation is… Let there be food to eat.”
— Ruth Wanyera, 2019
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has long attributed its widespread impact and reach to strong collaborations with national agricultural research systems (NARS) around the world. Today, CIMMYT — and especially the Global Wheat Program and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat — wish to honor one long-term collaborator whose work and dedication to wheat research has had abiding positive effects beyond her home region of sub-Saharan Africa.
Ruth Wanyera, national wheat research program coordinator at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), has spent her more than 30-year career dedicated to plant protection research, fueled by her motivation to “feed the people.” She was one of the first scientists to recognize stem rust in east Africa and has been one of CIMMYT’s strongest allies in fighting the devastating wheat disease, stem rust Ug99.
Wanyera recently won both the Norman Borlaug Lifetime Achievement Award from the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and the Kenya Agricultural Research (KARA) Award at the High Panel Conference on Agricultural Research in Kenya. Wanyera’s team at KALRO has also been recognized with the prestigious Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) Gene Stewardship Award.
A long-term relationship with CIMMYT
Sridhar Bhavani, senior scientist and head of Rust Pathology and Molecular Genetics at CIMMYT has worked closely with Wanyera and her team since the mid-2000s.
“Ruth is a passionate researcher who has tirelessly dedicated her entire career to cereal pathology, and as a team, we coordinated the stem rust phenotyping platform for over a decade and had great successes on multiple international projects,” he said.
CIMMYT’s relationship with Wanyera’s team strengthened when Nobel Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug visited the Kenyan research facility to observe the emerging threat of stem rust. Upon witnessing how serious the outbreak had become, Borlaug organized an emergency summit in Nairobi in 2005, famously “sounding the alarm” for swift and concerted action on stem rust, and ultimately leading to the establishment of the BGRI.
“Ruth and her team of dedicated scientists from KALRO have not only made Kenya proud but have also made a remarkable contribution to the global wheat community in mitigating the threat of stem rust Ug99,” says Bhavani. “Ruth has mentored master’s and PhD students who are now leading researchers at KALRO. She has elevated the research capacity of KALRO to international repute.”
Two recent wheat breeding projects helped extend the CIMMYT-KALRO partnership beyond Kenya. The Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) and Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (DGGW) projects brought in a partnership with the Ethiopia Institute for Agricultural Research (EIAR) to establish and operate stem rust phenotyping platforms that addressed the global threat of Ug99 and other serious stem rust races, and helped provide solutions for the region. Thanks to KALRO’s screening efforts at the CIMMYT-KALRO Stem Rust Screening Platform in Njoro, Kenya, CIMMYT-derived rust-resistant varieties now cover more than 90% of the wheat farming area in Kenya and Ethiopia.
The partnership continues to grow
Continued collaboration with Ruth’s team at KALRO will be essential in the new Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) project. AGG — which aims to accelerate the development and delivery of more productive, climate-resilient, gender-responsive, market-demanded, and nutritious wheat varieties in in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia — has a particular focus on enhanced collaboration with national partners such as KALRO.
Its success is also closely tied to the Njoro Stem Rust Screening Platform — which, since its establishment in 2008, has conducted crucial screening for over 600,000 wheat lines, varieties, varietal candidates, germplasm bank accessions and mapping populations. Wanyera’s leadership in the Platform, alongside that of CIMMYT wheat scientist Mandeep Randhawa, plays a major role in screening, monitoring, and clearing seed in time for sowing.
As Hans Braun, former director of the CIMMYT Global Wheat Program said, “Without our national agriculture research system partnerships, CIMMYT would become obsolete.”
Indeed, the unparalleled wealth of knowledge, skills, and research facilities of the CGIAR as a whole would not be so uniquely impactful if it weren’t for the 3000+ partnerships with national governments, academic institutions, enthusiastic farmers, private companies and NGOs that help carry out this work.
CIMMYT’s historic and continued impact depends on close international partnerships with scientists and leaders like Ruth Wanyera, and we congratulate her on her numerous awards, thank her for her collaboration, and wish her a pleasant retirement.
In 1970, Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his important scientific work that saved millions of people from famine. Today, humanity faces an equally complex challenge which requires the commitment of all nations, leaders, investors and strategic partners: avoiding the next food crisis.
The Government of Mexico, the Nobel Peace Center and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Borlaug’s Nobel Prize with a call to action to develop a transformational response of agriculture for peace, with an emphasis on nutrition, environment and equity.
Join us on December 8, 2020, from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. (CST, GMT-6).
This special event is part of the run-up to the United Nations Summit of Agrifood Systems of 2021. It will feature international experts in each of the five action tracks of the summit: ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all; shift to sustainable consumption patterns; boost nature-positive production; advance equitable livelihoods; and build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stress.
Guest speakers will include:
Nitrogen is the most essential nutrient in crop production but also one of the most challenging to work with. The compound is central to global crop production — particularly for major cereals — but while many parts of the world do not have enough to achieve food and nutrition security, in others excess nitrogen from fertilizer leaks into the environment with damaging consequences.
What is nitrogen?
Around 78% of the Earth’s atmosphere is made up of nitrogen gas or N2 — a molecule made of two nitrogen atoms glued together by a stable, triple bond.
Though it makes up a large portion of the air we breathe, most living organisms can’t access it in this form. Atmospheric nitrogen must go through a natural process called nitrogen fixation to transform before it can be used for plant nutrition.
Why do plants need nitrogen?
In both plants and humans, nitrogen is used to make amino acids — which make the proteins that construct cells — and is one of the building blocks for DNA. It is also essential for plant growth because it is a major component of chlorophyll, the compound by which plants use sunlight energy to produce sugars from water and carbon dioxide (photosynthesis).
The nitrogen cycle
The nitrogen cycle is the process through which nitrogen moves from the atmosphere to earth, through soils and is released back into the atmosphere — converting in and out of its organic and inorganic forms.
It begins with biological nitrogen fixation, which occurs when nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in the root nodules of legumes convert organic matter into ammonium and then nitrate. Plants are able to absorb nitrate from the soil and break it down into the nitrogen they need, while denitrifying bacteria convert excess nitrate back into inorganic nitrogen which is released back into the atmosphere.
The process can also begin with lightning, the heat from which ruptures the triple bonds of atmospheric nitrogen, freeing its atoms to combine with oxygen and create nitrous oxide gas, which dissolves in rain as nitric acid and is absorbed by the soil.
Excess nitrate or that lost through leaching — in which key nutrients are dissolved due to rain or irrigation — can seep into and pollute groundwater streams.
What about nitrogen fertilizer?
For thousands of years, humans didn’t need to worry about nitrogen, but by the turn of the Twentieth Century it was evident that intensive farming was depleting nitrate in the soil, which raised concerns about the world’s rising population and a possible food crisis.
In 1908, a German chemist named Fritz Haber devised a process for combining atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen under extreme heat and pressure to create liquid ammonia — a synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. He later worked with chemist and engineer Carl Bosch to industrialize this process and make it commercially available for farmers.
Once production was industrialized, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer — used in combination with new, high-yielding seed varieties — helped drive the Green Revolution and significantly boost global agricultural production from the late 1960s onwards. During this time Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production, as did India and Pakistan, which were on the brink of famine.
In today’s intensive agricultural systems, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has become increasingly crucial. Worldwide, companies currently produce over 100 million metric tons of this product every year, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicts that demand will continue to rise steadily, especially in Africa and South Asia.
Is it sustainable?
As demand continues to rise worldwide, the challenge of nitrogen management is to provide enough to meet global food security needs while minimizing the flow of unused nitrogen — which is 300 times more polluting than carbon dioxide — to the environment.
While many regions remain short of available nitrogen to achieve food and nutrition security, in others nearly half of the fertilizer nitrogen applied in agriculture is leaked into the environment, with negative consequences including increased environmental hazards, irreparable land degradation and the contamination of aquatic resources.
This challenge can be addressed by improving nitrogen use efficiency — a complex calculation which often involves a comparison between crop biomass (primarily economic yield) or nitrogen content/uptake (output) and the nitrogen applied (input) through any manure or synthetic fertilizer. Improving this ratio not only enhances crop productivity but also minimizes environmental losses through careful agronomic management and helps improve soil quality over time.
Currently, average global nitrogen use efficiency does not exceed 50%, which falls short of the estimated 67% needed to meet global food demand in 2050 while keeping surplus nitrogen within the limits for maintaining acceptable air and water qualities.
Cutting-edge technological options for nitrogen management are on the horizon, though in the short-term nitrogen use efficiency can best be improved at farmer-level, by targeting fertilizer application, use of slow-release nitrogen fertilizers, using precision nitrogen application tools (Green Seeker) or fertigation using micro irrigation.
Blue-sky technology
Much progress has been made in developing technologies for an efficient nitrogen management, which along with good agronomy are proven to enhance crop nitrogen harvest and nitrogen use efficiency with lower surplus nitrogen.
Scientists are investigating the merits of biological nitrification inhibition, a process through which a plant excretes material which influences the nitrogen cycle in the soil. Where this process occurs naturally — in some grasses and wheat wild relatives — it helps to significantly reduce nitrogen emissions.
In 2007, scientists discovered biological nitrification traits in a wheat relative and in 2018 they succeeded in transferring them into a Chinese spring wheat variety. The initial result showed low productivity and remains in the very early stages of development, but researchers are keen to assess whether this process could be applied to commercial wheat varieties in the future. If so, this technology could be a game changer for meeting global nitrogen use efficiency goals.
The active involvement of partners in the co-design of project and capacity building activities is key to the success of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for Improved Livelihoods (AGG) project, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). To that end, the AGG Regional Collaborative Breeding and Testing Networks launched with virtual meetings on September 14 and 15 for southern African partners, and October 28 and November 2 for eastern African partners.
In addition, the AGG team collaborated with researchers from the Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform on a number of capacity development webinars in October and November, on topics including Continuous Improvement for breeding processes, programs and products, enhancing and measuring genetic gain in crop breeding, and a three-webinar series on statistical analysis for plant breeders with CIMMYT’s Biometrics and Statistics Unit.
These training events and regional meetings provided opportunities for well over 100 breeders from CIMMYT, national agricultural research systems (NARS) and seed companies to refresh their capacities to improve genetic gains, and to collectively review and discuss upcoming project activities, current issues of interest, and broader project objectives within their current regional context.
Several themes of importance to partners emerged during the network virtual meetings, for attention in future AGG activities and capacity development work.
Gender inclusion and the impact of COVID-19
Ugandan partners, including Godfrey Asea, director of the National Crops Resources Research Institute at Uganda’s National Agricultural Research Organization, and Josephine Okot, founder and managing director of Victoria Seeds, applauded the project’s emphasis on inclusion of women’s knowledge and preferences in breeding programs.
“We notice that this time there is a lot of focus on gender-inclusiveness,” remarked Asea. “I can tell you there is need for enhanced capacity building for both the private sector and research in proper gender inclusion.”
They also noted the importance of building local capacity, not just for food security but also for other value chain items like raw materials. “COVID-19 has demonstrated to all policy-makers that we cannot depend on the global supply chains,” said Okot. “How can we leverage this project if, for instance, some private sector actors want to [know] the appropriate protein-content maize for, say, animal feed?”
Demand for knowledge
NARS members in Tanzania requested increased support on how to measure or assess genetic gains, especially at the national level, to allow them to establish a baseline upon which genetic gains would be pegged for the project lifecycle.
With statistics an essential element to plant breeding — from analyzing yield trials to ranking varieties — the webinar series in Statistical Analysis for Plant Breeders was a first step towards meeting these capacity development needs.
“The idea of this webinar series was to share insights on how we can improve the breeding plans using statistical methods in an effective way,” said Juan Burgueño, the head of CIMMYT’s Biometrics and Statistics Unit. “The training offered both theory and hands-on experience using open-access software.”
Reaching farmers
Looking beyond breeding, meeting participants also discussed how to improve access and adoption of improved varieties among farmers.
“For a large country such as Tanzania, it is at times very hard to reach the farmers,” said Zabron Mbwaga, managing director of the Tanzania-based Beula Seed Company and Consultancy Limited. “We may have a lot of seed in the store, but how to get the farmers to adopt the newer varieties is quite difficult. This is more so when farmers tend to stick to varieties which they know well and are always reluctant to adopt the new varieties,” he explained.
“We need to put in a lot of effort to set up demonstration farms and enhance other awareness-raising activities such as radio programs so that farmers can know about the new varieties.”
This interest in working with smallholder farmers along the entire value chain was echoed by partners in southern Africa.
“Through this project, we would like to explore ways of collaborating along the whole value chain — as the Agriculture Research Council, other partners and small to medium enterprises — to make it an effective chain,” said Kingstone Mashingaidze, senior research manager at the South Africa Agricultural Research Council. “By planning together, we can identify best-fits for all activities in the value chain and ultimately benefit the smallholder farmers.”
About the AGG Regional Collaborative Breeding and Testing Networks
The AGG Regional Collaborative Breeding and Testing Networks aim to improve breeding efficiencies among partners by enabling the use of modern tools and approaches and enriching the existing network of research organizations, public and private seed companies, farmers’ organizations, non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations. It is expected that these networks will lead to increased efficiency and communications across the partnership network and within countries, improved sharing of best practices and protocols, and increased collective ownership of products for accelerated variety development and turnover.
The virtual meetings for the Regional Collaborative Breeding and Testing Network for southern Africa convened participants from Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, while meetings for eastern Africa had participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
AGG communications staff Joshua Masinde and Shiela Chikulo contributed to this story.
Once a world leading lentil producer, Nepal is now having to import them as farmers struggle with low productivity and warmer, wetter weather.
This could have serious implications in a country where lentils provide an important source of protein, especially for poor families.
Read more: https://www.thethirdpole.net/2020/11/25/climate-change-adds-to-woes-of-lentil-farmers-in-nepal/
Since the earliest days of global wheat breeding at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), breeders have made their crossing selections to meet farmers’ requirements in specific environments throughout the world’s wheat-growing regions.
To streamline and make this trait selection process consistent, in the 1970s CIMMYT breeders developed 15 mega-environments — sets of farming, climatic, weather, and geographic conditions to use as profiles for testing their varieties.
They took this a step further in the 1980s by developing sets of profiles for their varieties with common characteristics in current — and projected — climatic, soil and hydrological characteristics as well as socioeconomic features such as end-use quality and agronomic practices.
In newly presented research, CIMMYT wheat scientist Leo Crespo has taken another look at these mega-environments in the form of target population of environments (TPE) — specifically the ones that fall in the bread basket wheat production area of India — to create more nuanced definitions based on updated underlying conditions and desired traits.
Using meteorological and soil data, along with information about farmers’ practices in each region and more advanced analytical methods, Crespo defined three new specific TPEs for the region:
These TPEs encompass more than 28 million hectares, equivalent to more than 97% of India’s total wheat production area.
“While the mega-environments can be broad and transcontinental, we defined the TPE at a more regional level,” said Crespo. “In fact, two of our new TPEs — the NWPZ (TPE1) and part of the NEPZ (TPE2) — have distinct climate and soil characteristics, but they both fall under the same mega-environment: ME1.”
Comparing international environments
Crespo later cross-checked these TPEs with the testing environments that CIMMYT wheat breeders use in the research station in Obregon, in Mexico’s Sonora Valley.
Obregon has long been valued by wheat breeders worldwide for its unique capacity to simulate many wheat growing conditions. Wheat grown in the various testing environments replicate in Obregon — known as selection environments (SEs) — goes through an arduous testing process including testing in other agroeconomic zones and undergoing pest and disease infestations to demonstrate its resilience.
This process, though intensive, is much cheaper and more efficient than testing each potential new wheat line in every major wheat growing area. That is why it is so important to verify that the decisions made in Obregon are the right ones for farmers in the diverse growing areas of the world.
Crespo used data from one of CIMMYT’s global wheat trials, the Elite Spring Wheat Yield Trials (ESWYT), to estimate the genetic correlation between the TPEs and in Obregon, selection response indicators and performance prediction. He found that wheat lines that perform well in the Obregon selection environments are very likely to display high performance in the TPEs he defined in India.
“Our results provide evidence that the selection environments in CIMMYT’s Obregon research station correlate with international sites, and this has led to high genetic gains in targeted regions,” explained Crespo.
“We can achieve even greater gains by targeting selections for farmers in the TPEs and improving the testing in those TPEs, along with the high-quality evaluations from the selection environment.”
These findings confirming the relationship between the selection environments and farmers’ fields in one of the world’s largest wheat growing regions allow CIMMYT to realize its mission to deliver superior wheat germplasm to national partners for their breeding programs, or for direct release as varieties for farmers throughout the world.
Watch Leo Crespo’s full presentation at the BGRI Technical Workshop.
A new small-mechanization pilot initiative launched in July is equipping farmers with the business and technical skills they need to provide mechanization services to communities in six wards of Masvingo district, Zimbabwe.
With funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) managed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is leading implementation of the pilot in collaboration with Kurima Machinery and the Zimbabwe Agriculture Development Trust (ZADT), who are supporting the technical training and financial management, respectively.
Anchored on a strong business model, 15 farmers have signed up to become service providers and invested an initial deposit of $500 to access the mechanization package comprising a two-wheel tractor and trailer, a direct planter and a maize cob sheller. Through a “lease-to-own” credit facility, eligible service providers will have 24 months to pay the remaining balance for the set of equipment.
“This approach addresses re-payment challenges in past interventions, where equipment was distributed without a firm commitment from the service providers and without putting in enough effort to establish a viable business,” says Christian Thierfelder, a cropping systems agronomist at CIMMYT. “An advantage of this new form of financial commitment by the service providers is that it guarantees full participation and a change in their perception towards farming as a business.”
Since 2013, smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe have been exposed to the benefits of combining small-mechanization with conservation farming systems to improve productivity — land preparation, planting and harvesting to achieve higher yields while reducing production costs. Besides making farming tasks more efficient for individuals, this set of equipment can be used to provide critical services to other farmers in their wards.
The two-wheel tractor can have various implements attached to it for services such as planting, transportation and shelling. It can also be used to run other important implements such as water pumps, mills or threshers.
This mechanization pilot therefore presents an additional pathway out of poverty and into sustainable production and income generation at household level, while boosting the local economy and rural employment in Masvingo district.
Training for local service provision
Eligible service providers were recently invited to attend a one-week specialized business and technical training course at Gwebi Agricultural College, just outside of Harare. The training package consisted of two main components: business management; and two-wheel tractor operation, maintenance and repair.
Elliot Zvovovo, a participating service provider, explains how the balanced training approach equipped him fully with all the knowledge and skills he needs to run his business. “I learned different ways of record keeping, managing income and treating my clients professionally,” he says.
“On the machinery side, I learned about of all the parts of a two-wheel tractor and practiced assembling the engine so that maintenance and repair will be easy for me.”
Julius Shava, another participating service provider, agrees, adding that knowing how to maintain the two-wheel tractor and troubleshooting will also minimize costs of hiring external mechanics to attend to faults. “I realized the importance of routine checks for oil and water levels, how to crank-start the tractor and hitch the planter all by myself.”
Supporting agricultural extension in line with service providers is critical to mainstreaming transformational change in rural areas. As such, seven local extension officers — key partners in the implementation of small-mechanization activities — were also invited to participate in the training.
“The training proved to be very effective, particularly the emphasis on mastering business principles and on the technical side, integrating service providers’ existing knowledge of conservation farming with small-mechanization,” says Canaan Zhakata, an extension officer for Ward 15.
Through the practical sessions, all service providers have now learned how to operate a two-wheel tractor, calibrate the direct planter for seed and fertilizer rates and use the sheller — giving them full technical skills and knowledge,” explains Dorcas Matangi, a research associate at CIMMYT.
The certification they have received will increase farmers’ confidence as they return to Masvingo to commence service delivery, with continued on-site support from their local extension officers. “Once we return to Masvingo, we can assist the new service providers by monitoring their service delivery to ensure full compliance with the technical requirements for operating the machinery,” says Tsvakai Dumbu, an extension officer for Ward 17.
A profitable business for the local economy
This mechanization pilot is poised for success as it draws on existing positive results gained by the women and youth service providers in western Zimbabwe, who are running successful mechanized enterprises following the recently completed Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI) project.
“During a recent seed fair, we heard of a youth group in Makonde that is making up to $7,000 just from maize shelling services,” says Zvovovo. “Knowing that it takes just one day to shell up to three tons of maize with the sheller, I now know that reaching such an income is achievable.”
This pilot will prove that there is scope for small-mechanization to expand on productivity through the two-wheel tractor, trailer and sheller, as shown in other parts of eastern and southern Africa. It will explore leverages on the opportunities and demand for services in Masvingo.
Cover image: An extension officer from Masvingo district drives a two-wheel tractor during a training for service providers and extension officers at Gwebi Agricultural College, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Shiela Chikulo/CIMMYT)