Farmer Gashu Lema’s son harvests improved variety “Kubsa” wheat, Gadulla village, Mojo, Ethiopia. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT/P. Lowe
A recent article in the journal Nature Plants validates the work of wheat breeders who produce yield-boosting varieties for farmers across a range of incomes and environments.
Based on a rigorous large-scale study spanning five decades of wheat breeding progress under cropping systems with low, medium and high fertilizer and chemical plant protection usage, the authors conclude that modern wheat breeding practices aimed at high-input farming systems have promoted genetic gains and yield stability across a wide range of environments and management conditions.
In other words, wheat breeding benefits not only large-scale and high-input farmers but also resource-poor, smallholder farmers who do not use large amounts of fertilizer, fungicide, and other inputs.
This finding underscores the efficiency of a centralized breeding effort to improve livelihoods across the globe – the philosophy behind the breeding programs of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) over the past 50 years.
It also contradicts a commonly held belief that breeding for intensive systems is detrimental to performance under more marginal growing environments, and refutes an argument by Green Revolution critics that breeding should be targeted to resource-poor farmers.
In a commentary published in the same Nature Plants issue, two CIMMYT scientists — Hans Braun, director of CIMMYT’s global wheat program and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, and Matthew Reynolds, CIMMYT wheat physiologist — note the significance of the study.
“Given that wheat is the most widely grown crop in the world, sown annually on around 220 million ha and providing approximately 20% of human calories and protein, the social and economic implications are large,“ they state.
Among other implications:
The study found that modern breeding has reduced groups of genes (haplotypes) with negative or neutral effects – a finding which will help breeders combine positive haplotypes in the future, including for hybrid breeding.
The study demonstrates the benefits of breeding for overall yield potential, which — given that wheat is grown over a wider range of environments, altitudes and latitudes than any other crop, with widely ranging agronomic inputs – has significant cost-saving implications.
Braun and Reynolds acknowledge that the longstanding beliefs challenged by this study have a range of influences, from concern about rural livelihoods, to the role of corporate agribusiness and the capacity of Earth’s natural resources to sustain 10 billion people.
While they welcome the conclusions as a validation of their work, they warn against seeing the study as “a rubber stamp for all things ‘high-input’” and encourage openness to new ideas as the need arises.
“If the climate worsens, as it seems destined to, we must certainly be open to new ways of doing business in crop improvement, while having the common sense to embrace proven technologies,” they conclude.
In 2016, the emergence of wheat blast, a devastating seed- and wind-borne pathogen, threatened an already precarious food security situation in Bangladesh and South Asia.
In a bid to limit the disease’s impact in the region, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) collaborated with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and researchers from nearly a dozen institutions worldwide to quickly develop a long-term, sustainable solution.
The result is BARI Gom 33, a new blast-resistant, high-yielding, zinc-fortified wheat variety, which Bangladesh’s national seed board approved for dissemination in 2017. In the 2017-18 season, the Bangladesh Wheat Research Council provided seed for multiplication and the country’s Department of Agricultural Extension established on-farm demonstrations in blast prone districts.
However, the process of providing improved seed for all farmers can be a long one. In a normal release scenario, it can take up to five years for a new wheat variety to reach those who need it, as nucleus and breeder seeds are produced, multiplied and certified before being disseminated by extension agencies. Given the severity of the threat to farmer productivity and the economic and nutritional benefits of the seed, scientists at CIMMYT argue that additional funding should be secured to expedite this process.
According a new study on the economic benefits of BARI Gom 33, 58 percent of Bangladesh’s wheat growing areas are vulnerable to wheat blast. The rapid dissemination of seed can help resource-poor farmers better cope with emerging threats and changing agro-climatic conditions, and would play a significant role in combatting malnutrition through its increased zinc content. It could also have a positive effect on neighboring countries such as India, which is alarmingly vulnerable to wheat blast.
“Our simulation exercise shows that the benefits of disseminating BARI Gom 33 far exceed the seed multiplication and dissemination costs, which are estimated at around $800 per hectare,” explains Khondoker Mottaleb, CIMMYT socioeconomist and lead author of the study. Even in areas unaffected by wheat blast, scaling out BARI Gom 33 could generate a net gain of $8 million for farmers due to its 5 percent higher average yield than other available varieties. These benefits would nearly double in the case of an outbreak in blast-affected or blast-vulnerable districts.
More than 50 percent of Bangladesh’s wheat growing areas are vulnerable to wheat blast. (Source: Mottaleb et al.)
Based on these findings, the authors urge international development organizations and donor agencies to continue their support for BARI Gom 33, particularly for government efforts to promote the blast-resistant variety. The minimum seed requirement to begin the adoption and diffusion process in the 2019-20 wheat season will be 160 metric tons, which will require an initial investment of nearly $1 million for seed multiplication.
This study was supported by the CGIAR Research Program on wheat agri-food systems (CRP WHEAT), the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (CRP-A4NH), and the HarvestPlus challenge program (partly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).
In 2018, CIMMYT continued to innovate and forge strategic alliances to combat malnutrition, tackle the effects of climate change and respond to emerging threats.
Building on the release of a new wheat genome reference map, our researchers more precisely tagged genes for valuable traits, including disease resistance, heat tolerance, and grain quality, in more than 40,000 CIMMYT wheat lines.
In collaboration with our partners, CIMMYT released 81 maize and 48 wheat varieties. More than 40,000 farmers, scientists and technical workers across the world took part in over 1,500 training and capacity development activities. CIMMYT researchers published 338 journal articles.
As the maize-hungry fall armyworm spreads from Africa to Southeast Asia, CIMMYT joined with more than 40 partners in an international consortium to advance research against the devastating insect pest.
CIMMYT used a scaling approach to extend the benefits of crop research to more farmers and consumers in developing countries in transformative and lasting ways. Smallholder farmers in Mexico, Pakistan and Zimbabwe are benefitting from the use of appropriate machinery and implements for efficient and climate-smart agriculture. A manual developed with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations offers technical and business advice for local entrepreneurs offering mechanized services, such as sowing or threshing, to smallholder farmers.
As part of taste tests in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, consumers indicated their willingness to pay a premium for quality protein maize (QPM), which contains enhanced levels of the amino acids needed to synthesize protein.
A CIMMYT-led study on gender has explored the lives and viewpoints of 7,500 men and women from farming communities in 26 countries, providing invaluable information that will lead to better productivity and food security.
2018 showed us that the passion and values of staff and partners help CIMMYT to have major impact on the livelihoods of smallholders and the poor. This Annual Report pays tribute to them.
A farm worker carrying her baby on her back weeds maize in Tanzania. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
A new study shows that youth can face higher land rental prices than older farmers in Tanzania and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
“The rising importance of land rental markets reflects increasing rural population densities in many parts of the continent,” said Jordan Chamberlin, an agricultural economist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and study co-author.
“Evidence that the effective costs of rental market participation are relatively higher for younger farmers suggests that the markets are not yet mature,” Chamberlin explained. “This appears to stem partly from weak contract enforcement norms that make land rental arrangements more sensitive to trust and reputation. That puts younger farmers, who have not yet built up such social capital stocks, at a disadvantage.”
Young people today are already inheriting less land than previous generations and waiting longer to obtain the land they do inherit, according to the authors, who observe as one result a rising dependence on labor markets.
“Wage income’s importance will continue to rise in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, but policymakers should also foster equitable access to land for young agricultural entrepreneurs,” said Chamberlin.
The authors recommend measures such as tenant-landlord “matchmaking” programs, arrangements that encourage land sales by older farmers to younger farmers, and clarifying and simplifying regulations and procedures for title conversions and land purchases.
“Local governments may also share information about land rental rates for different areas, to provide a reference for rental negotiations,” added Chamberlain.
Francelino Rodrigues prepares an UAV for radiometric calibration for multispectral flight over a maize tar spot complex screening trial at CIMMYT’s Agua Fría experimental station, Mexico. (Photo: Alexander Loladze/CIMMYT)
A new study from researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) shows that remote sensing can speed up and improve the effectiveness of disease assessment in experimental maize plots, a process known as phenotyping.
The study constitutes the first time that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, commonly known as drones) with cameras that capture non-visible electromagnetic radiation were used to assess tar spot complex on maize.
The interdisciplinary team found among other things that potential yield losses under heavy tar spot complex infections could reach 58% — more than 10% greater than reported in previous studies.
Caused by the interaction of two fungal pathogens that thrive in warm, humid conditions, tar spot complex is diagnosed by the telltale black spots that cover infected plants. (Photo: Alexander Loladze/CIMMYT)
“Plant disease resistance assessment in the field is becoming difficult because breeders’ trials are larger, are conducted at multiple locations, and there is a lack of personnel trained to evaluate diseases,” said Francelino Rodrigues, CIMMYT precision agriculture specialist and co-lead author of the study. “In addition, disease scoring based on visual assessments can vary from person to person.”
A major foliar disease that affects maize throughout Latin America, tar spot complex results from the interaction of two species of fungus that thrive in warm, humid conditions. The disease causes telltale black spots on infected plants, killing leaves, weakening the plant, and impairing ear development.
Phenotyping has traditionally involved breeders walking through crop plots and visually assessing each plant, a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. As remote sensing technologies become more accessible and affordable, scientists are applying them more often to assess experimental plants for desired agronomic or physical traits, according to Rodrigues, who said they can facilitate accurate, high-throughput phenotyping for resistance to foliar diseases in maize and help reduce the cost and time of developing improved maize germplasm.
“To phenotype maize for resistance to foliar diseases, highly trained personnel must spend hours in the field to complete visual crop evaluations, which requires substantial time and resources and may result in biased or inaccurate results between surveyors,” said Rodrigues. “The use of UAVs to gather multispectral and thermal images allows researchers to cut down the time and expenses of evaluations, and perhaps in the future it could also improve accuracy.”
Color-infrared image of maize hybrids in the experimental trials under fungicide treatment (A1) and non-fungicide treatment (A2) of tar spot complex of maize. Image data were extracted from two polygons from the two central rows in each plot (B).
Technology sheds new light on phenotyping
Receptors in the human eye detect a limited range of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum — the area we call visible light — consisting of three bands that our eyes perceive as red, green and blue. The colors we see are the combination of the three bands of visible light that an object reflects.
Remote sensing takes advantage of how the surface of a leaf differentially absorbs, transmits and reflects light or other electromagnetic radiation, depending on its composition and condition. The reflectance of diseased plant tissue is different from that of healthy ones, provided the plants are not stressed by other factors, such as heat, drought or nutrient deficiencies.
In this study, researchers planted 25 tropical and subtropical maize hybrids of known agronomic performance and resistance to tar spot complex at CIMMYT’s experimental station in Agua Fría, central Mexico. They then carried out disease assessments by eye and gathered multispectral and thermal imagery of the plots.
This allowed them to compare remote sensing with traditional phenotyping methods. Calculations revealed a strong relationship between grain yield, canopy temperature, vegetation indices and the visual assessment.
Future applications
“The results of the study suggest that remote sensing could be used as an alternative method for assessment of disease resistance in large-scale maize trials,” said Rodrigues. “It could also be used to calculate potential losses due to tar spot complex.”
Accelerated breeding for agriculturally relevant crop traits is fundamental to the development of improved varieties that can face mounting global agricultural threats. It is likely that remote sensing technologies will have a critical role to play in overcoming these challenges.
“An important future area of research encompasses pre-symptomatic detection of diseases in maize,” explained Rodrigues. “If successful, such early detection would allow appropriate disease management interventions before the development of severe epidemics. Nevertheless, we still have a lot of work to do to fully integrate remote sensing into the breeding process and to transfer the technology into farmers’ fields.”
Funding for this research was provided by the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE).
The burning of crop residue, or stubble, across millions of hectares of cropland between planting seasons is a visible contributor to air pollution in both rural and urban areas of India. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT)
Groundwater conservation policies are contributing to the air pollution crisis in northwestern India by concentrating agricultural fires into a narrower window when weather conditions favor poor air quality, according to a new study by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) published on Nature Sustainability.
Facing severe groundwater depletion from intensive crop cultivation, the state governments of Haryana and Punjab introduced separate legislation in 2009 to prohibit early rice establishment in order to reduce water consumption. The study revealed that later rice planting results in later rice harvest, leading to a delayed and condensed period when residues are burned prior to wheat establishment. Consequently, more farmers are setting fire to crop residues at the same time, increasing peak fire intensity by 39%, contributing significantly to atmospheric pollution.
“Despite being illegal, the burning of post-harvest rice residues continues to be the most common practice of crop residue management in northwestern India, and while groundwater policies are helping arrest water depletion, they also appear to be exacerbating one of the most acute public health problems confronting India,” said CIMMYT scientist Balwinder Singh.
“Burning agricultural waste dominantly releases PM2.5 aerosols, a type of fine particulate matter that is particularly harmful to human health,” he explained.
A holistic view of policies to support sustainable development
Farmers work on rice paddies. (Photo: Dakshinamurthy Vedachalam/CIMMYT)
The research results shed light on the sustainability challenges confronting many highly productive agricultural systems, where addressing one problem can exacerbate others, said Andrew McDonald, a professor at Cornell University and co-author of the study.
“Identifying and managing tradeoffs and capitalizing on synergies between crop productivity, resource conservation, and environmental quality is essential,” McDonald said.
“To devise more effective agricultural development programs and policies, integrative assessments are required that meld groundwater, air quality, economic, and technology scaling considerations in common frameworks,” he explained.
The current policy environment in India encourages productivity maximization of cereals and very high levels of residue production especially in the western Indo-Gangetic Plains, according to Bruno Gerard, another author of the study and head of CIMMYT’s Sustainable Intensification Program.
“If these policies are changed, companion efforts must facilitate sustainable intensification in areas such as the Eastern Gangetic Plains, where water resources are relatively abundant and closer coupling of crop-livestock systems provides a diverse set of end-uses for crops residues,” Gerard said.
The way forward
Northwestern India is home to millions of smallholder farmers and a global breadbasket for grain staples, accounting for 85% of the wheat procured by the Indian government. Thus, what happens here has regional and global ramifications for food security.
“A sensible approach for overcoming tradeoffs will embrace agronomic technologies such as the Happy Seeder, a seed drill that plants seeds without impacting crop residue, providing farmers the technical means to avoid residue burning,” said ML Jat, a scientist with CIMMYT who coordinates sustainable intensification programs in northwestern India.
“Through continued efforts on the technical refinement and business model development for the Happy Seeder technology, uptake has accelerated,” he added. “Financial incentives in the form of payments for ecosystem services may provide an additional boost to adoption.”
“Additional agronomic management measure such as cultivation of shorter-duration rice varieties may help arrest groundwater decline while reducing the damaging concentration of agricultural burning,” Jat explained.
The researchers suggested that long-term solutions will likely require crop diversification away from rice towards crops that demand less water, like maize, as recently started by the government in the state of Haryana.
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 CGIAR 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.
On May 15, 2019, as part of the CGIAR System Council meeting held at the ILRI campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, around 200 Ethiopian and international research and development stakeholders convened for the CGIAR Agriculture Research for Development Knowledge Share Fair. This exhibition offered a rare opportunity to bring the country’s major development investors together to learn and exchange about how CGIAR investments in Ethiopia help farmers and food systems be more productive, sustainable, climate resilient, nutritious, and inclusive.
Under the title One CGIAR — greater than the sum of its parts — the event offered the opportunity to highlight close partnerships between CGIAR centers, the Ethiopian government and key partners including private companies, civil society organizations and funding partners. The fair was organized around the five global challenges from CGIAR’s business plan: planetary boundaries, sustaining food availability, promoting equality of opportunity, securing public health, and creating jobs and growth. CGIAR and its partners exhibited collaborative work documenting the successes and lessons in working through an integrated approach.
There were 36 displays in total, 5 of which were presented by CIMMYT team members. Below are the five posters presented.
How can the data revolution help deliver better agronomy to African smallholder farmers?
This sustainability display showed scalable approaches and tools to generate site-specific agronomic advice, developed through the Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale in Africa (TAMASA) project in Nigeria, Tanzania and Ethiopia.
Maize and wheat: Strategic crops to fill Ethiopia’s food basket
This poster describes how CGIAR works with Ethiopia’s research & development sector to support national food security priorities.
Addressing gender norms in Ethiopia’s wheat sector
Research shows that restrictive gender norms prevent women’s ability to innovate and become productive. This significantly impacts Ethiopia’s economy (over 1% GDP) and family welfare and food security.
Quality Protein Maize (QPM) for better nutrition in Ethiopia
With the financial support of the government of Canada, CIMMYT together with national partners tested and validated Quality Protein Maize as an alternative to protein intake among poor consumers.
Appropriate small-scale mechanization
The introduction of small-scale mechanization into the Ethiopian agriculture sector has the potential to create thousands of jobs in machinery service provision along the farming value chain.
About the CGIAR System Council
The CGIAR System Council is the strategic decision-making body of the CGIAR System that keeps under review the strategy, mission, impact and continued relevancy of the System as a whole. The Council meets face-to-face not less than twice per year and conducts business electronically between sessions. Additional meetings can be held if necessary.
A community health worker in Rwanda talks to people on hygiene and the importance of a balanced diet, as part of the SUSTAIN project. (Photo: CIP)
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Millions of families in Africa and South Asia have improved their diet with a special variety of sweet potato designed to tackle vitamin A deficiency, according to a report published today.
A six-year project, launched in 2013, used a double-edged approach of providing farming families with sweet potato cuttings as well as nutritional education on the benefits of orange-fleshed sweet potato.
The Scaling Up Sweetpotato through Agriculture and Nutrition (SUSTAIN) project, led by the International Potato Center (CIP) and more than 20 partners, reached more than 2.3 million households with children under five with planting material.
The project, which was rolled out in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Rwanda as well as Bangladesh and Tanzania, resulted in 1.3 million women and children regularly eating orange-fleshed sweet potato when available.
“Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is one of the most pernicious forms of undernourishment and can limit growth, weaken immunity, lead to blindness, and increase mortality in children,” said Barbara Wells, director general of CIP. “Globally, 165 million children under five suffer from VAD, mostly in Africa and Asia.”
“The results of the SUSTAIN project show that agriculture and nutrition interventions can reinforce each other to inspire behavior change towards healthier diets in smallholder households.”
Over the past decade, CIP and partners have developed dozens of biofortified varieties of orange-fleshed sweet potato in Africa and Asia. These varieties contain high levels of beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A.
Just 125g of fresh orange-fleshed sweet potato provides the daily vitamin A needs of a pre-school child, as well as providing high levels of vitamins B6 and C, manganese and potassium.
Under the SUSTAIN project, families in target communities received nutritional education at rural health centers as well as cuttings that they could then plant and grow.
For every household directly reached with planting material, an additional 4.2 households were reached on average through farmer-to-farmer interactions or partner activities using technologies or materials developed by SUSTAIN.
The project also promoted commercial opportunities for smallholder farmers with annual sales of orange-fleshed sweet potato puree-based products estimated at more than $890,000 as a result of the project.
Two women sort orange-fleshed sweet potato in Faridpur district, Bangladesh. (Photo: Sara Quinn/CIP)
Perspectives from the Global South
The results of the initiative were published during the EAT Forum in Stockholm, where CGIAR scientists discussed the recommendations of the EAT-Lancet report from the perspective of developing countries.
“The SUSTAIN project showed the enormous potential for achieving both healthy and sustainable diets in developing countries using improved varieties of crops that are already widely grown,” said Simon Heck, program leader, CIP.
“Sweet potato should be included as the basis for a sustainable diet in many developing countries because it provides more calories per hectare and per growing month than all the major grain crops, while tackling a major nutrition-related health issue.”
At an EAT Forum side event, scientists highlighted that most food is grown by small-scale producers in low- and middle-income countries, where hunger and undernutrition are prevalent and where some of the largest opportunities exist for food system and dietary transformation.
“There are almost 500 million small farms that comprise close to half the world’s farmland and are home to many of the world’s most vulnerable populations,” said Martin Kropff, director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
“Without access to appropriate technologies and support to sustainably intensify production, small farmers — the backbone of our global food system — will not be able to actively contribute a global food transformation.”
Matthew Morell, director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), added: “If the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet guidelines are to be truly global, they will need to be adapted to developing-world realities — such as addressing Vitamin A deficiency through bio-fortification of a range of staple crops.
“This creative approach is a strong example of how to address a devastating and persistent nutrition gap in South Asia and Africa.”
The International Potato Center (CIP) was founded in 1971 as a research-for-development organization with a focus on potato, sweet potato and Andean roots and tubers. It delivers innovative science-based solutions to enhance access to affordable nutritious food, foster inclusive sustainable business and employment growth, and drive the climate resilience of root and tuber agri-food systems. Headquartered in Lima, Peru, CIP has a research presence in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. CIP is a CGIAR research center. www.cipotato.org
CGIAR is a global research partnership for a food-secure future. CGIAR science is dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resources and ecosystem services. Its research is carried out by 15 CGIAR centers in close collaboration with hundreds of partners, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, development organizations and the private sector. www.cgiar.org
How food is produced, consumed, and how much is lost or wasted shapes the health of both people and planet. The EAT-Lancet Commission report, released in January 2019, brought together 30 interdisciplinary scientists from across the globe to propose a dietary pattern that meets nutritional requirements and promotes health but uses less environmental resources.
The report promotes diets consisting of a variety of plant-based foods, with low amounts of animal-based foods, refined grains, highly processed foods or added sugars, and with unsaturated rather than saturated fats.
The EAT Food Forum 2019 is taking place in Stockholm June 11-14, 2019. Natalia Palacios, maize quality specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), will participate in a panel of agricultural research experts organized by CGIAR which will explore the implications of the EAT-Lancet report in the Global South, particularly for small farmers.
Palacios and her CIMMYT colleagues Santiago Lopez Ridaura, agronomist, and Jason Donovan, socioeconomist, got together for a conversation with CIMMYT editors to analyze how EAT-Lancet recommendations adapt to smallholder farmers’ realities.
Can nutrition bring the food system together?
Santiago Lopez Ridaura: Nutrition is the perfect setting to create system approaches to food. Nutrition involves everything: production quality, the genetics of the seed, input supply, output demand, as well as the purchasing power of farmers, dietary and cooking habits. It truly requires an interdisciplinary approach to look at food systems through a nutrition lens.
Natalia Palacios: We must stop thinking about the crop and think about the diet. Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research is key to improve nutrition and agricultural sustainability in the context of smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Lopez-Ridaura: An economic analysis, a soil fertility study, or pest and disease breeding alone does not give us a holistic view of the food system. However, nutrition gives us the opportunity to have an integrated view. Equally, sustainability and avoiding food loss relate to all parts of the food system.
It’s a synergy of things. CIMMYT has been advocating for a systems approach to maize and wheat farming and nutrition, and sustainability fits right in with this.
Jason Donovan: It’s time to develop that dialogue, including specialists from different fields such as nutritionists, economists, agronomists, breeders and gender specialists when we investigate and form research questions on the health benefits and sustainability of our food systems and take holistic view of how all these things come together.
Palacios: A shift in our priority research is needed. It is important to integrate resilient production with nutrition. Focus only on productivity should no longer be the driver. We might not need big changes in the technologies and interventions, but we need to make sure nutrition and consumer demands are included.
There is no silver-bullet solution. You need to take action from different points, whether it is biofortified crops, intercropping for diversified diets or access to markets.
Is the EAT-Lancet report a recipe for a planetary diet?
Palacios: The report takes a global focus and is overwhelmingly targeted at high income nations. However, if we look at its five strategies, they are actually applicable for low- and middle-income countries as well: Seek international and national commitment to shift toward healthy diets; reorient agricultural priorities from producing high quantities of food to producing healthy food; sustainably intensify food production to increase high-quality output; strong and coordinated governance of land and oceans; and halve food losses at the production side and food waste at the consumption side.
CIMMYT scientists Natalia Palacios (left), Santiago Lopez-Ridaura (center) and Jason Donovan discuss the implications of a “planetary health diet” for producers and consumers in low- and middle-income countries. (Photo: Alfonso Cortés/CIMMYT)
Lopez-Ridaura: Rather than a recipe, the commission proposes a “reference healthy diet” that will need to be adapted to different regions and cultures. More importantly, the trajectories towards such diet will probably be very different, depending on the region and culture, the current dietary habits of the population, and the production systems they are based on.
In some cases, consumption of meat and sugars will need to decrease, but in other regions it might need to be increased. It all depends on the current situation.
Donovan: The report highlighted the sustainability issues around our food production. Although it was focused toward high-income countries who consume a lot of proteins. One of the big questions I had after reading it was the “how” question. In a lot of countries where we work — in Africa, Asia and Latin America — the consumption of meat is increasing at a rapid pace.
So, the question that struck me was how do these societies with fast rural and urban transformations, and an increasing taste for animal-based food products, fit into the context of the report? How can we promote plant-based diets in these contexts?
Adjusting their diets towards a universal healthy reference diet would be difficult as there is little room for maneuver.
Is adaptation the key to success?
Lopez-Ridaura: Yes, adaptation is needed and I think the EAT-Lancet Commission colleagues are well aware of that. The healthy reference diet needs to be seen as such, as a reference, with some basic principles regarding food quantity and quality as well as sustainable use of resources.
Each region, sub-region or even families and individuals will need to adapt their dietary habits and production systems in order to attain healthy diets and halt the degradation of the resource base.
Palacios: It is important to look at smallholder farmers in the context of diet and sustainable agriculture. We need to ask, what are they growing? How are they growing it? How are they eating it? What do they sell?
Quite often smallholder farmers are already using agricultural practices that improve their nutrition and benefit the environment. For example, look at the milpa farm system: it combines maize, beans, squash, chili, tomatoes and seasonal fruits to provide a diverse plant-based diet. The milpa system, combined with crop residue retention and other conservation agriculture techniques can improve soil fertility.
It is important that these initiatives are promoted through national and local government policy and supported by the private sector if they are to have real impact on the health of people and the planet.
Donovan: Local policies to promote healthy diets and diversification in the field are being put in place — Latin America is a good example. However, this is not at a scale where it can have real impact on the health of people and environments. There is pressure on the private sector to respond, especially considering the increasing consumption of processed foods. It is important to engage with the private sector on issues of nutrition and sustainability.
Solutions will be at multiple levels when we look at nutrition and food systems. Too often the actors in a food system act alone, for example many NGOs, universities, and government programs. There needs to be unity in action — players need to work together as creators of holistic solutions. This is currently a gap, as many nutritionists do not look at agriculture or food systems. Addressing this can have a significant impact on the health of family farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
In 2013, Mexico had the fourth highest sales of ultra-processed products worldwide. This is indicative of one of the most important changes in food systems in middle-income countries in recent years: the shift away from meals prepared at home with fresh or minimally processed products towards meals that include ultra-processed foods.
“Typically, these products do not have any wholefood ingredient, are ready to eat, and are high in fat, sodium and sugar but low in fiber, protein and vitamins,” says Ana Gaxiola, a nutritionist consultant working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “The health risks associated with their consumption have important, long-term implications for the health and nutritional status of individuals, families and communities.”
Latin America has a sophisticated maize and wheat processing sector with the potential to segment urban markets according to income, preferences and knowledge. This has important implications for equity in access to food with higher nutritional value.
In 2018, CIMMYT researchers began a new investigative project in collaboration with two CGIAR research programs, Agriculture for Health and Nutrition (A4NH) and WHEAT, seeking to understand how affordability affects diets in different areas of Mexico City. “We want to better understand access to healthier maize- and wheat-based foods across differences in purchasing power,” explains CIMMYT senior economist Jason Donovan. “Part of that involves looking at what processed products are available at what price and in different neighborhoods and the dietary implications of that.”
A researcher captures nutritional information from a packet of tortillas. (Photo: Emma Orchardson/CIMMYT)
This is relatively new territory for those involved. “This kind of research has been done before,” explains Gaxiola, “but only looking at supermarkets in Mexico City and without differentiating between socioeconomic levels.” Previous studies have also failed to include data from abarrotes, the small convenience stores ubiquitous throughout the city.
The study compares Polanco and San Vicente, two neighborhoods in Mexico City chosen to represent high- and low-income areas, respectively. Using economic data in combination with label and packaging information it analyzes the variation in availability of processed and ultra-processed maize and wheat products, taking into account ingredients, nutritional content, portion size, price and other added value. The study will later include a qualitative element, in which the team will conduct interviews with shop managers to find out how they decide which products to stock, and with consumers to discuss the products they buy and the factors influencing their decisions.
“We’re also interested in how the products are being promoted,” says Miriam Perez Luna, a CIMMYT research assistant involved in the study. “Do companies employ celebrity endorsements or cartoons to appeal to children? Do they have any special certifications based on where or how the products were produced? This information goes into our database so we can examine how products are being marketed, whether in stores or online and through social media.”
In a small food shop in San Vicente, a low-income area, snacks high in salt and sugar line the shelves. (Photo: Emma Orchardson/CIMMYT)
Now at the end of the data collection period, Gaxiola and a team of researchers have collected more than 20,000 images of packaging, bar codes and nutritional information for a variety of products including biscuits, breads, cakes, cereals, flours, pastas, soups and tortillas. Once the data has been cleaned, they will begin to analyze each individual product and create an index for how healthy they are. Preliminary results from the study will be made available later in the year, but the team are keen to share some of their initial observations.
They were unsurprised to note that many products were more expensive in the upscale Polanco neighborhood, and smaller convenience stores tended to charge more for certain products than larger supermarkets.
There have however, been some unexpected findings. For example, many of the discussions about lack of access to nutritious food options focus on the diets of the urban poor, but there may be reason to believe that affluent consumers face similar challenges. “You’ll be surprised to hear that a lot of what we found in Polanco was not that healthy, because most of it is heavily processed,” says Gaxiola.
Based on the Pan-American Health Organization’s classification system, a product containing more than one milligram of sodium per calorie, 10% refined sugar and 30% total fat is an unhealthy one. “We still need to carry out the analysis, but I’d say more than 70% of the products we’ve encountered could be deemed unhealthy, based on this classification system.”
In a small supermarket in San Vicente, the research team found nearly 50 different types of biscuits and around 80 savory maize-based snacks like chips and tortillas. (Photo: Emma Orchardson/CIMMYT)
The implications of this are significant for a country like Mexico, which currently faces an epidemic of obesity and overweight. “There’s a lot of advocacy now around nutritional information, but it can be hard to understand sometimes, even for me,” says Gaxiola. “It has to be become something that everyone can understand and use to make healthier choices.”
For this to happen it is important to close the data gap on how urban consumers interact with their food environments. Understanding how they choose among different types of maize- and wheat-based products and how much of this is shaped by socioeconomic disparities is a key first step towards engaging with the private and public sectors on options for promoting healthier processed wheat and maize products in fast-evolving food systems.
This study is being carried out by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT).
Participants in the scaling workshop stand for a group photo with the trainers. (Photo: CIMMYT)
How to scale up agricultural innovation in a sustainable and responsible manner? Through a workshop from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a group from Mexico’s state of Chiapas learnt the basic principles of scaling. This knowledge will allow them to design and implement strategies that live well beyond the end of a project and that take into account the systems in which they operate.
Through presentations, group exercises and discussions, 23 people associated with the MasAgro project in Chiapas — technical advisors, coordinators and collaborators — received training on scaling sustainable and responsible agricultural innovations.
The scaling process is relevant because oftentimes the size of a problem does not match the size of its solutions. To support scaling efforts, all relevant actors and entities must subscribe to a paradigm shift to achieve a positive sustainable impact for the greatest number of people.
Executing innovations in scaling requires a paradigm shift in all relevant actors and entities involved in order to achieve positive, sustainable impact that reaches the greatest number of people.
The workshop was divided into three sections. The first section was focused on basic concepts and the definition of realistic and responsible scaling goals. In the second, the group discovered the “Scaling Scan” tool. The third section was focused on the identification of opportunities and potential actions at the project level and through strategic collaborations.
The workshop “Scaling farming innovations: the what, for what and how” took place on April 24 and 25, 2019, in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. The event was led by Lennart Woltering, international scaling expert at CIMMYT, María Boa, CIMMYT scaling coordinator, and Jorge García, CIMMYT Hub Manager from the MasAgro project in Chiapas.
This training was held under the project for Strengthening Market Access for Small Producers of Maize and Legumes in Oaxaca, Chiapas and Campeche, which is financed by the Walmart Foundation.
In 2017, a call for proposals from Copernicus Climate Change Service Sectoral Information Systems led the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT to collaborate with Wageningen University, the European Space Agency (ESA), and other research and meteorological organizations to develop practical applications in agricultural and food security for satellite-sourced weather data.
The project, which recently ended, opened the door to a wide variety of potential uses for this highly detailed data.
ESA collects extremely granular data on weather, churned out at an hourly rate. CIMMYT researchers, including Foresight Specialist Gideon Kruseman, reviewed this data stream, which generates 22 variables of daily and sub-daily weather data at a 30-kilometerlevel of accuracy, and evaluated how it could help generate agriculture-specific weather and climate data sets.
“For most people, the reaction would be, ‘What do we do with this?’ Kruseman said. “For us, this is a gold mine.”
For example, wind speed — an important variable collected by ESA satellites — is key for analyzing plant evaporation rates, and thus their drought tolerance. In addition, to date, information is available on ideal ago-climatic zones for various crop varieties, but there is no data on the actual weather conditions during a particular growing season for most sites.
By incorporating the information from the data sets into field trial data, CIMMYT researchers can specifically analyze maize and wheat cropping systems on a larger scale and create crop models with higher precision, meaning that much more accurate information can be generated from the trials of different crop varieties.
The currently available historic daily and sub-daily data, dating back to 1979, will allow CIMMYT and its partners to conduct “genotype by environment (GxE)” interaction analysis in much higher detail. For example, it will allow researchers to detect side effects related to droughts and heat waves and the tolerance of maize and wheat lines to those stresses. This will help breeders create specific crop varieties for farmers in environments where the impact of climate change is predicted to be more apparent in the near future.
“The data from this project has great potential fix this gap in information so that farmers can eventually receive more targeted assistance,” said Kruseman.
These ideas are just the beginning of the agricultural research and food security potential of the ESA data. For example, Kruseman would like to link the data to household surveys to review the relationship between the weather farmers experience and the farming decisions they make.
By the end of 2019, the data will live on an open access, user-friendly database. Eventually, space agency-sourced weather data from as far back as 1951 to as recent as five days ago will be available to researchers and weather enthusiasts alike.
Already CIMMYT scientists are using this data to understand the potential of a promising wheat line, for seasonal forecasting, to analyze gene-bank accessions and for a statistical analysis of maize trials, with many more high-impact applications expected in the future.
