A new fact sheet debunking myths about agricultural labor and mechanization has been presented at the Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI) end of project review meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The fact sheet, based on a recent study by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), shows African farming households are far more dependent on hire labor markets, and much more inclined to hire mechanization services, than previously assumed.
Over 50 agriculture for development specialists are gathering from May 11 to 17, 2019, to review the FACASI projectâs progress. The project investigated how small-scale mechanization, such as two-wheel tractors with attachments, can be used to improve farm power balance, reduce labor drudgery, and promote sustainable intensification in Eastern and Southern Africa. The project also built the capacity of farmers to use size-appropriate machinery and trained hire service providers, to increase the equitable availability of mechanization services.
At the review meeting, participants will focus on widening the availability and use of small mechanization through commercialization, social inclusion, policy implications, and how to best use research outputs. They will also get to see two-wheel tractors in action and meet project farmers in visits to different districts around Zimbabwe.
In attendance are representatives from the projectâs funder, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), and partners including Ethiopiaâs Ministry of Agriculture, the University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Lands Agriculture Water Climate and Rural Resettlement, the University of Southern Queensland, service providers and training centers from Zimbabwe, and private sector representatives from Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
For further information on CIMMYTâs agricultural mechanization work in Africa:
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Ethiopiaâs Ministry of Agriculture held a workshop on March 23, 2019, with the main stakeholders of the agricultural research and seed sectors to discuss how Quality Protein Maize (QPM) production and demand could be expanded, to ensure lasting nutrition benefits for consumers and incomes for farmers.
Maize is the second most cultivated cereal in Ethiopia, with 66% of cereal-farming households cultivating maize on 2.1 million hectares. It is a primary staple food in the major maize-growing areas as well as a source of feed for animals and a raw material for industries. With increasing pressures from climate change and population growth, maize is likely to be key to meeting the challenges of food and income security.
Despite its high productivity, maize grain does not provide balanced protein for human consumption. It is deficient in two essential amino acids, lysine and tryptophan, putting those who consume maize without alternative protein sources at risk of malnutrition and stunted growth and development. Infants and young children are especially at risk. Complementary and alternative sources of protein such as legumes or animal products â meat, eggs and milk â are often inaccessible or unaffordable to the poorest households.
QPM is a type of maize, developed through conventional breeding, that contains nearly twice the amount of tryptophan and lysine compared to common varieties. Research shows that eating QPM can improve quality protein intake among young children and QPM is nutritionally advantageous over conventional maize, especially for families with an undiversified diet dominated by maize.
Since 2012, CIMMYT has been working with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), the Ministry of Agriculture and other strategic partners like the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG2000) and Farm Radio International, to improve food and nutritional security in Ethiopian farming communities through the promotion and expansion of QPM under the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project. This project built on the achievements of a previous project called Quality Protein Maize Development (QPMD). Both projects were financed by the government of Canada.
Workshop participants discuss the challenges of promoting QPM. (Photo: Simret Yasabu/CIMMYT)
Ethiopians are willing to pay for QPM
During the workshop, CIMMYT senior scientist and NuME project leader Adefris Teklewold talked about the favorable conditions that had contributed to the projectâs success and which are also grounds for sustainability: government policies and strategies, technical knowledge and technology, and the productive collaboration among partners.
The NuME project operated in 36 woredas, or districts, of the Amhara, Oromia, SNNP and Tigray regions. More than 68% of the target population is now aware of the nutritional benefits of QPM, boosting the demand for the nutritious maize.
Four QPM varieties have been released since the beginning of the project and at least two promising varieties are in the pipeline. Figures show an adoption rate of 11% in the projectâs target areas. Today, the main issue to reach out more people is shortage of seed.
The project team trained people in food preparation and organized events to demonstrate the benefits of QPM. One fifth of the 1,788 QPM demonstrations were managed entirely by women. Through demonstrations and blind tastings, people could check that QPM maize did not affect the taste or functional properties of traditional foods like dabo bread or injera flatbread. For instance, they realized that injera using QPM also stayed moist and could be rolled easily. In addition, a recent study on school feeding revealed that dishes made from QPM received wider acceptance.
A woman in Jimma, Oromia region, participates in a blind tasting of QPM maize products. (Photo: Samuel Diro/CIMMYT)
Beyond the NuME project
Germame Garuma, Director General of Extension at the Ministry of Agriculture, said that âQPM is an important solution to help us improve the nutrition situation in the country.â The Ethiopian government now aims to ensure 10% of the total maize growing area is planted with QPM. Ethiopia has included QPM as a key intervention in national strategies and programs, such as the Agriculture Growth Program-II and the Seqota Declaration.
Garuma called on all government offices at various levels and NGOs working in the agriculture and nutrition sector to continue the promotion of QPM. Workshop participants drew a roadmap with four focus areas: overall coordination, dissemination, technology generation and seed production. With the leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture, more families will be able to improve their diet with QPM in the future.
Dagmo Nour, Project Manager at Global Affairs Canada, expressed interest in engaging further with CIMMYT and its partners to ensure the sustainability and scaling of QPM efforts by addressing critical issues with Ethiopian seed systems.
Workshop participants pose for a group photograph.
DUN LAOGHAIRE, Ireland and TEXCOCO, Mexico â Irish humanitarian aid agency GOAL has joined CIMMYTÂ (the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) in the fight against fall armyworm, a devastating insect pest that experts say threatens the food security of millions of people in Africa.
The fall armyworm has caused significant damage to maize crops in sub-Saharan Africa since its arrival to the region in 2016.
A study on the impact of the fall armyworm in eastern Zimbabwe reveals that nearly 12 percent of crops are lost annually due to the infestation. And the study states that if the problem spreads throughout the entire country tonnes of grain to the value of $32 million could be lost.
GOAL Zimbabwe has now teamed up with CIMMYT to identify conditions that promote fall armyworm infestation in order to educate farmers on best practices to fight the problem.
Regular weeding, conservation agriculture, use of manure and compost, and ending pumpkin intercropping have been found to help prevent infestation.
Mainassara Zaman-Allah, co-author of the study and abiotic stress phenotyping specialist at CIMMYT said, âGiven the limited coverage of the study in terms of area and season, it would be interesting to replicate it all over the country through the involvement of governmental agricultural departments, so that we get the full picture around the fall armyworm problem at a larger scale.â
Gift Mashango from GOAL Zimbabwe, said, âThe fall armyworm has further worsened the food security situation of smallholder farmers who are already coping with an ailing economy and climate change. Besides the adverse effects posed to the environment by chemical methods of combating the pest, the smallholder farmer cannot afford to meet the associated costs, hence the need to come up with innovative cost-effective farming systems like climate smart agriculture.â
About CIMMYT
CIMMYT â the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center â 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.
GOAL is an international humanitarian aid agency working in 13 countries to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable in our world, and those affected by humanitarian crises, have access to the fundamental rights to life. With its head office in Ireland, GOAL envisions a world where poverty and hunger no longer exist; where communities are prepared for seasonal shocks; where structural and cultural barriers to growth are removed and where every man, woman and child has equal rights and access to resources and opportunities.
Tackling the challenges of climate change and increasing scarcity of resources like arable land and water requires that farming and food systems around the world undergo fundamental shifts in thinking and practices. A new book draws on experiences of men and women farmers across eastern and southern Africa who have been associated with the Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) project. The inspiring and moving accounts tell the story of how these farmers have bravely embraced change to improve their farming methods and consequently the lives and livelihoods of their families.
The maize-growing regions of southern and eastern Africa face many challenges, including lower than average yields, crop susceptibility to pests and diseases, and abiotic stresses such as droughts that can be frequent and severe. There is also widespread lack of access to high-yielding stress resilient improved seed and other farming innovations, presenting a need for scalable technologies, adapted to farmersâ growing conditions.
Maize is the most important staple crop in the region, feeding more than 200-300 million people across Africa and providing food and income security to millions of smallholder farmers. Prioritization of cost reducing, yield enhancing and resource conserving farming methods is vital to catalyze a shift towards sustainable and resilient maize agri-food systems. Conservation agriculture (CA) is one promising approach.
Launched in 2010, SIMLESA is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and funded by the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). The project supports farmers and partner organizations to achieve increased food production while minimizing pressure on the environment by using smallholder farmersâ resources more efficiently through CA approaches. SIMLESA is implemented by national agricultural research systems, agribusinesses and farmers in partner countries including, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
The farmersâ words in this book drive home the core philosophy of SIMLESA: that critical paradigm shifts in smallholder farming are possible and can lead to positive and potentially lasting impacts.
The candid accounts of the benefits yielded from adopting new practices like CA are a testimony to this idea: âNow we have seen with our own eyes these new methods are beneficial, and we want to continue what we are doingâŠ.my field is a school where others can learn,â said Maria Gorete, a farmer in Mozambique.
Policy makers and scientists from eastern and southern Africa met in Uganda at a regional forum convened by the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), on 3-4 May 2019. The forum discussed ways to scale up the learnings of SIMLESA and a joint communique recommending policy actions was signed by the Ministers of Agriculture of the Republic of Burundi, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the State of Eritrea, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, the Republic of Kenya, the Republic of Madagascar, the Republic of Rwanda, the Republic of South Sudan, the Republic of the Sudan, the United Republic of Tanzania, the Republic of Uganda, the Republic of Malawi and the Republic of Mozambique of the high level Ministerial Panel on Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Cropping Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA).
Cynthia Carmona will always remember the directive her supervisor gave to a researcher panicked by mounting paperwork: You go and work on the science. Weâll take care of the admin part.
âThey already have their hands full with research and building partnership strategies. They shouldnât have to be concerned about whether or not an invoice has been sent,â she says.
Growing up in the Mexican state of Sonora, Carmona was aware of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centerâs (CIMMYT) Obregon experimental station from a young age. âIt was an organization that I knew existed, but all I knew was that they worked on wheat.â
After studying international relations at TecnolĂłgico de Monterrey in Mexico City, Carmona spent a couple of years working in government and the private sector but she remained on the look-out for global-facing opportunities. Drawn to the opportunity to work with donors, Carmona joined CIMMYTâs Project Management Unit (PMU) six years ago.
âWhen I first arrived it was more of a grant management unit and we were divided by grant cycle. One person would work on proposals, another on contracts and so on, so you didnât really get to see the whole process from start to finish.â
The unit has evolved since then, and growing responsibility means that the team is now divided by specialty, from donor relations and resource mobilization to grant management and monitoring and evaluation. âThe structure we have now definitely gives you a broader understanding of each project.â
Carmona stresses that even though PMU staff donât work in the field or in laboratories, they do make significant contributions to project implementation by encouraging smoother processes, alleviating administrative problems and âspeaking a common languageâ between researchers and management. When she took on the role of grant management coordinator, she impressed upon her team the extent to which their action or inaction could affect the projects they support. âMaking things happen was my favorite part of the role, and I saw my job as that of an âissue solverâ.â
Carmona is currently based in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she is serving as interim project manager on CIMMYTâs Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project.
âIâm very excited about this new opportunity. CSISA has always been a flagship project for CIMMYT, so when they invited me to help them it was like a dream come true.â
She first visited Nepal in December 2018, where she spent time shadowing the outgoing manager who provided her with an introduction to the country, the region and the project itself.
âIt was like a two-week bootcamp. But even though it was intense, I didnât feel overwhelmed.â
Working in PMU, Carmona explains, provides a solid background for project management and an understanding of how CIMMYT projects work, from start to finish, as well as how to communicate with funders and build shared knowledge by bringing people together, from scientists and researchers to program and service unit staff.
Besides learning about how a project is run on-the-ground, Carmona is most looking forward to gaining field experience while in Nepal. âTalking to farmers and project teams, listening to their experiences and witnessing CIMMYTâs work on-the-ground really gives you a sense of belonging and a connection to our mission.â
The Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa project (SIMLESA), led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), has completed a series of country policy forums. The forums focused on maize-legume intercropping systems, Conservation Agriculture based on Sustainable Intensification (CASI) and other innovations that can help farmers in target countries shift to more sustainable farming practices resulting in better yields and incomes.
Policy makers and scientists from eastern and southern Africa will meet in Uganda at a regional forum convened by the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), 3-4 May, 2019. The forum will discuss ways to scale up the learnings of SIMLESA.
In the following interview, Paswel Marenya, CIMMYT scientist and SIMLESA leader, reflects on 8 years of project learning, what CASI means for African smallholder farmers, the dialogue between scientists and policy makers and next steps.
Q: What does sustainable intensification of the maize-legume systems mean in the African context? Why is this important for smallholder farmers?
A: Sustainable intensification is the ability to produce more food without having a negative impact on the environment and the natural resource base, but in an economically profitable, and socially and politically acceptable way. In eastern and southern Africa (ESA), maize is the most important staple and the populationâs main calorie source. In Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Ethiopia annual per capita consumption of maize is around 100, 130, 70 and 50 kg respectively. This important cereal is at the center of nutrition and food security in the countries where SIMLESA has been working.
Legumes and cereals go hand-in-hand. In ESA the majority of agriculture producers â typically over 70 percent â are small farmers who farm on less than 5 hectares of land. Smallholders need sustainable diversification by intercropping maize with legumes. They get their calories from the cereals and derive proteins from the legumes. If they get marketable surplus, legumes are lucrative crops that typically fetch twice the price of maize.
Currently, the average legume yield in ESA is about 0.5 tons per hectare (t/ha). With the practices and the new varieties that SIMLESA tested, legume yield increased by 1-1.5 t/ha. Such significant yield improvement can have a huge impact on household income, food and nutritional security. For maize, the average yield in the region is about 1 t/ha, although in Ethiopia average yield is 2-2.5 t/ha. Using SIMLESA-recommended CASI practices yields of up to 3.5-4 t/ha were achieved in research-managed fields. Under farmer conditions, the yield can increase from 1-1.5 t/ha to about 2-2.5 t/ha.
SIMLESA has enabled farmers to significantly increase the productivity of maize and legumes without undermining soil health, and allowed farmers to become more resilient, especially in the face of erratic and harsh climate conditions.
Integration of small mechanization in CASI practices, particularly in Tanzania, is another positive outcome of SIMLESA. Farm labor tends to fall disproportionately on women and children in traditional systems, so the integration of machinery that can eliminate labor drudgery might alleviate the labor burden away from women.
Q: How did SIMLESA identify the best approaches to improve yields and incomes in a sustainable way in each target country?
A: Africa has not experienced the green revolution that South and Southeast Asia experienced in the 1960s and 1970s, with improved varieties, irrigation and government support. Africaâs heterogenous environment calls for a different approach that is more systems oriented. The integration of disciplines from agronomy, soil science, breeding, economics and social science â including market studies and policy analysis â are part of the approach SIMLESA has used. This interdisciplinary approach is something you seldom see in many projects.
To identify best approaches, SIMLESA has conducted adaptive agronomy research, which involves scientists replicating successful experiments done in agricultural institutes or research stations in farmersâ fields under farmer resources and local conditions.
SIMLESA also promotes the notion of conservation agriculture to shift thinking in farmer practices. Conservation agriculture involves farmers growing maize and legumes in minimally tilled fields, retaining crop residue on fields without burning or discarding and implementing crop diversification.
Q: What are some of the key takeaways from the policy dialogues SIMLESA initiated in the project countries?
A: One of the things we have done in the final year of SIMLESA is policy outreach. Having done all the adaptive agronomy, socio-economic and gender studies, it is time to mainstream the results. One way of doing this is to share specific, concrete results with decision makers and explain the implication of those results to them. To do that, we organized a series of workshops in seven target countries in the region, at both the local and national levels. We shared ideas on what can be done to mainstream SIMLESA in development and research programs and in knowledge systems.
For SIMLESA practices to become the norm, more farmers need to use conservation agriculture systems, adopt improved, drought-tolerant varieties, integrate and improve legume production and where possible, practice crop rotation. At a minimum, they should do optimal and resource-conserving intercropping, conserve crop biomass for extended periods in order to recycle nutrients and organic matter and move away from aggressive tillage.
Across the seven countries, research on CASI practices should continue with proper knowledge systems put in place. Curated agronomy and socio-economic research data are easily accessible to a range of actors â scientists, farmers or agribusinesses â in a repository. Policy recommendations at country level have been summed up in a series of policy briefs.
The need to strengthen the training and mainstreaming of conservation agriculture in the curriculum at the tertiary-education level was stressed in Kenya and Tanzania. Developing the machinery value chain was recommended in Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique. Such tools as the hoe, jab planter, riplines and the two-wheel tractor are suitable for implementing conservation agriculture practices like planting seed on untilled or minimally tilled land with crop residue. Another suggestion from Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique was the need to focus on training of technicians who can provide machinery after-sales services and promote machinery hire to help farmers access the basic tools. Incubating businesses in custom hire services, provision of seed capital, and a focus on multi-functional mechanization also featured prominently. Another idea was to support small last-mile agribusinesses such as agro-dealers to aid scaling efforts.
Workshops also highlighted a need for government to work closely with extension services and industry associations to show the benefits of agricultural inputs on a consistent and long-term basis. This can help create markets and therefore the business case for agribusinesses to expand their distribution networks.
Farmer Anjeline Odero checks maize in her CA plot in Siaya county, Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Q: How relevant is the issue of indigenous or local knowledge in the implementation and scale up of CASI approaches?
A: CASI principles are compatible with traditional African farming practices, especially the diversification element. African agro-ecologies are not conducive to monocropping as such, especially in areas with poor markets. If you donât have good linkages with the markets, you will lose out, especially on the nutritional aspects. Where will you, for instance, get your proteins? African indigenous agriculture was a more self-containing system and self-regenerative in the sense that people did fallow farming, there was strong crop-livestock integration and mixed cropping systems.
Q: What are some of the adoption constraints that relate to the implementation or scale-up of CASI approaches?
A: Some of the constraints include the availability of appropriate machinery and suitable weed management. Currently, for weed management, the suggestion is to use herbicides. This is facing resistance in countries such as Kenya and Rwanda owing to the environmental effects of widespread herbicide use. The challenge is to find weed management technologies that minimize or eliminate herbicide use. The other constraint relates to markets. When you succeed in raising legume and maize production, you must find markets for them.
Another constraint concerns educating farmers on implementing the practices in the right way on a large scale. This expensive undertaking requires a public-private sector partnership. To have impact, you need large-scale farmer education and demonstrations.
Q: One of the key constraints is labor intensive activities that are inefficient and time wasting. This can be fixed with access to small mechanization. What are some of the approaches that enable smallholdersâ access to farm machinery? How sustainable are these approaches?
A: This is one  area that needs more work. Although machinery was not an integral part of the project design, SIMLESA scientists and national implementers found ways of assimilating machinery testing, including leveraging other CIMMYT projects such as the Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification project (FACASI), which was a SIMLESA collaborator on the farm mechanization component. Two-wheel tractors and other conservation agriculture machinery that were tested to promote the agronomy that SIMLESA was working on, especially in Tanzania, came from the FACASI project.
Q: SIMLESA stakeholders will gather at the ASARECA regional forum in early May to discuss actionable CASI programs for the public and private sector alike. What do you expect from this regional forum? If there were two or so policy recommendations to give, what would they be?
Some policy recommendations include creating an enabling environment that provides nationwide CASI demonstration sites for farmers. We are encouraging the government, the private sector and community organizations to join forces and find ways of facilitating the funding for multi-year, long-term CASI demonstration and learning sites. While CASI practices are becoming mainstream in the thinking of business and government leaders, these now need to be specifically be budgeted into various agricultural programs. One key program to promote CASI is retraining extension workers to on new systems of production based on CASI principles so they can facilitate knowledge transfer and help farmers act collectively and engage with markets more effectively.
Farmer Rukaya Hasani Mtambo weeds her CA plot of maize and beans in Hai District, Tanzania. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Testing SeedAssure, a decision support tool, on a tablet in the field. (Photo: Jerome Bossuet)
Should we reinvent the way we advise African smallholder farmers?
Development organization professionals from the agriculture, health, education, conservation and humanitarian sectors will gather from April 30 to May 2, 2019 in Kampala, Uganda for the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for Development ICT4D conference organized by Catholic Relief Services. The aim of this conference is to explore which digital innovations could accelerate progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. Jens Andersson, a social scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), will speak on how we could reinvent advisory services for African smallholder farmers, such as through decision support tools. The following interview reflects his thoughts on the issue.
Q: Some experts say that current agronomic research does not properly advise smallholder farmers. Farmers are given blanket recommendations on key subjects such as crop varieties, fertilizer use and seed spacing. Why do you think that we need to reinvent advisory services?
A: Smallholder farmers with limited resources often canât afford fertilizer and seed. Â They also donât reach agronomic management levels assumed by the blanket recommendations given by agricultural extension services. They may not have enough cash to invest, enough labor to carry out tasks â such as weeding â as frequently as recommended, or they may not prioritize crop production as a part of their livelihood. Consequently, input investments and agronomic management vary considerably from field to field and so does the fertility of those fields. Standard advice simply is not enough, given the diversity of farmersâ situations.
The challenge is to identify the key factors shaping maize yields in farmersâ fields and to identify how a farmer could more efficiently use his or her available inputs and available labor. It is not about telling farmers what to do, but about providing options that suit each farmerâs situation. Technologies such as remote sensing and ICTs can help tremendously in data collection for assessing the conditions of farmersâ fields and better tailoring agronomic advice to their specific situation.
Q: Since 2015, CIMMYT has been working with research, extension and development partners in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Tanzania to develop strategies to Take Maize Agronomy to Scale in Africa (TAMASA). Can you explain the overall approach on how to scale advice to farmers?
A: With ICTs, we can now link and integrate very diverse types of geospatial data, such as soil data, climate and weather data, as well as socio-economic data such as market prices and population densities. Mobile internet and GPS enable us to have such data available for any location. When combined with information obtained from farmers about their field conditions and preferences, agronomic advice can become location-specific.
This approach requires that agronomic data be collected in a geospatial manner. Therefore, TAMASA has conducted numerous agronomic experiments across agricultural landscapes in major maize growing areas in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Tanzania to establish a geographical distribution of soil nutrient availability and fertilizer responses. Such information can be used to model crop responses to fertilizer, and — when combined with fertilizer and crop price information — can provide nutrient recommendations for an individual field through an ex-ante spatial assessment framework. With this approach, extension providers can improve fertilizer recommendations, increasing farmersâ fertilizer use efficiency, productivity and profitability.
For example, in a trial conducted with 435 farmers in Nigeria, using the decision support tool Nutrient Expert resulted in farmers investing more in inputs and agronomic management and doubling their maize yields from 2 to 4 tons per hectare on average.
Q: What digital innovations do you want to showcase at the ICT4D conference? Which type of users are you targeting?
A: Providing location- or field-specific advice at scale requires understanding what information farmers need and what extension services they use. This is probably best illustrated with the example of the Maize-Variety-Selector (MVS) â a mobile phone application developed by TAMASA. Using climate data, information on the growth characteristics of specific maize varieties and multilocational agronomic trials, this application can advise on the most suitable maize varieties for a particular location and for a preferred planting and harvesting date. The application provides options tailored to farmersâ preferences and farming conditions.
Yet, such advice is of limited value in situations where the advised crop varieties are not available in local agro-dealer shops, or when farmers canât be sure they are actually buying the variety of their choice due to poor packaging and labeling practices, as is sometimes the case in Nigeria.
In addition, government extension services in sub-Saharan Africa are overburdened and not capable of reaching many individual farmers: there is usually only one extension worker for every 2,500 farmers or more.
To improve extension outreach in Western Kenya, TAMASA developed a plant density and seed requirement mobile phone application â Maize-Seed-Area (MSA) â in consultation with both extension workers and agro-dealers. Using this application, extension workers reported they could now provide information on specific maize varieties because the application has a built-in database of available maize varieties.
The Maize-Seed-Area (MSA) mobile phone application.
Experiences of agro-dealers were different, as some found that their customers had made up their minds about what variety to buy before entering an agro-dealer shop. Agro-dealers reported that their customers particularly liked the seed requirement calculator, which provides immediate advice on how much seed to buy of a particular variety. In a phone survey, farmers indicated that they trusted the agro-dealersâ advice when it was provided by the mobile phone application.
Q: TAMASA has been exploring the use of decision support tools for large-scale agronomic investments such as country-wide fertilizer subsidy programs. Could you explain your approach to this issue and its potential applications?
A: Some regional soil fertility programs and African governments aim to improve farmersâ yields and incomes through costly, large-scale distribution of fertilizers or soil inputs. Generating more site-specific agronomic recommendations at scale and taking into account the spatial diversity of a landscape, market prices and other supply chain elements will optimize the impact of such operations.
TAMASA has integrated various geospatial datasets such as the ISRIC World Soil Informationâs SoilGrids, the World Bankâs Living Standards Measurement Study agriculture dataset (LSMS-ISA), and the Global Yield Gap Atlas. Thanks to the ex-ante spatial assessment framework, we can better target future areas of intervention that currently have low maize yields but could potentially have profitable fertilizer usage.
Mapping predictive yield response and profitability can give us precious insights. For instance, many Ethiopian farmers face acid soils, and the government and development agencies have been thinking about lime distribution at scale to combat this issue. We could potentially create a lime dashboard by adapting the ex-ante spatial framework and provide key information to policymakers at the local and national level.
Q: Are you looking for potential partners at the ICT4D conference to help scale up this work?
A: At the ICT4D conference, we are looking forward to teaming up with new development partners, seed producers and governments to make these field- and farmer-specific advisory applications and decision support tools for agronomic investments more widely available to African smallholder maize farmers.
A recent study by socioeconomists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Bangladesh examined the role of fertilizer traders in influencing farmer decision-making on which fertilizer to apply and at what rate.
In developing countries, the emerging private sector is gradually filling the gap between supply and demand of agricultural extension services. In Bangladesh, most farmers still rely on either their own experience or that of their peers, but increasingly seek suggestions from traders when deciding on the amount and dose of fertilizer to be applied, due to the constraints associated with public agricultural extension services. These private fertilizer traders are increasingly prominent as information sources in the more accessible, intensive and commercially-oriented boro rice production systems.
Using primary data collected from 556 randomly selected farm households in Bangladesh, the study examined farmersâ chemical fertilizer use and the associated rice production efficiency based on different information sources that farmers rely on, such as fertilizer traders, government extension agents, and personal experience.
The research show that farmers who relied on traders statistically had a higher production efficiency than those who did not. These results suggest that fertilizer traders are in fact supplementing government agricultural extension activities by providing useful information which supports resource-poor farmers to mitigate market failures and achieve higher production efficiency.
This study was supported by USAID through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia â Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MI) project, as well as USAID and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the second phase of the CSISA project.
Farmers in Bangladesh practice traditional puddling of the soil before transplanting rice. (Photo: P. Wall/CIMMYT)
Read more recent publications by CIMMYT researchers:
New farm-level research into agricultural labor in eastern and southern Africa found that a lack of farm power is costing smallholders in productivity, demonstrating a far higher demand for mechanization than commonly thought.
âThe high number of households already hiring farm power challenges common myths that suggest smallholder farms depends almost entirely on labor as itâs provided by family members. The demand for mechanized farm power is there, the supply isnât and that is the issue,â he explained.
Unlike studies before it, the research avoided country-level indicators, such as the share of fallow land or population density, to assess the need for mechanized farming operations. Instead, it gathered detailed labor data from households in eight sites dominated by smallholder agriculture across Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
The study demonstrated that households that invest in agricultural power improve food production.
âTo increase farm productivity, profitability, and sustainability, African farmers need greater access to affordable farm machinery to optimize processes,â Baudron said.
Small-scale mechanization appropriately sized for small farms â such as technologies based on two-wheel tractors, including direct planters â represents a shift away from conventional mechanization strategies dependent on large machines, leading to land consolidation and the disappearance of otherwise-productive small farms, Baudron said.
âGovernments in the region need to create an enabling environment for mechanization supply chains to develop,â he explained. âThis includes the creation of mechanization policy instruments, such as subsidies and training, that further respond to smallholder demand.â
Training and supporting hire service providers has shown to improve the equitable access to mechanization, which reduces labor drudgery and promotes sustainable intensification practices.
The research also presented a more nuanced analysis of the interrelations between male and female labor than usually presented in academic studies. It found women provide less labor than men and hired labor and suggests reducing drudgery among women relies upon understanding menâs chores and improving both as a two-way process.
In all sites studied rural women found that the priority for mechanization should be given to crop establishment, which would benefit both men and women. Land preparation and planting are tasks commonly performed by males, but their optimization influences weeding and postharvest tasks, primarily completed by women.
âThese interconnections between menâs and womenâs tasks have rarely been mentioned before, and should be tapped into for gender-sensitive interventions,â said Baudron.
Florence Ochieng harvests green maize on her 105-acre family farm near Kitale, Kenya. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)
Five persistent myths related to labor in African smallholder agriculture, challenged
Myth 1: Labor is abundant and cheap; thus, farm power does not limit agricultural productivity
Reality: It is commonly believed farm power does not limit agricultural productivity because there is an abundant amount of cheap labor options in southern and eastern Africa. However, the farm-level study showed a lack of farm power is holding back productivity and illustrated a much higher demand for mechanization than macroeconomic analyses, pointing to a problem of access rather than a lack of demand. It revealed the importance of labor or other sources of farm power in explaining the variability of land productivity. It also found that investments in farm power at the farm level improved land productivity.
Myth 2: Most of the labor is provided by women
Reality: Across the eight sites studied, women were found to provide just 7 to 35% of the labor invested in household farming, far less than the often-claimed percentage of 60 to 80%. Overall, the farm-level study found women tended to provide less labor for farming than men and hired labor. Even when considering female-headed households alone, women were only the main providers of labor in half of the sites â hired labor or children were we the main providers of labor.
The largest share of female labor tended to be invested in activities characterized by high drudgery, weeding and postharvest in particular, although this varied across sites. Weeding was also the main task performed by men in four of the sites studied. In fact, the study revealed that weeding tended to be a shared task between men, women, children, and hired labor, and not as dominated by female labor as commonly thought.
Myth 3: Agricultural tasks are carried out almost entirely by family labor
Reality: The study showed the majority of farming households in the region hire labor to complete agricultural tasks. Farm power hired included human labor, draught animals and, to a much lesser extent, tractor power.
This challenges the common view of Africa being dominated by family farms which, according to FAO, ârely mainly on the labor of family members.â African farming households may be far more dependent on labor markets than commonly assumed, and thus far more inclined to hire mechanization services.
Myth 4: Consolidation, by enabling âefficientâ mechanization, would have a positive impact on agricultural productivity
Reality: The study found the maximum land productivity a farm can achieve decreased with increasing farm area in the majority of sites. This supports the so-called ânegative farm sizeâproductivity relationshipâ which has been reported by other studies in eastern and southern Africa.
Mechanization should not be a cause of consolidation â it should rather be driven by economic development. The concept of âappropriate mechanizationâ embraced by CIMMYT argues that machines should adapt to farm size, and not the opposite. Recent research and development initiatives taking place in the region point to the potential of using small single-axle tractors for agricultural mechanization in areas dominated by small and fragmented fields.
Myth 5: African agriculture is characterized by a wide gender gap
Reality: Research across all eight sites provided little evidence of a consistent gender gap. Land productivity was found not to differ significantly between male-headed households and female-headed households.
The research suggests the limited evidence of any substantial gender gap may stem from the fact that resources are highly inadequate across all sites, limiting large inequalities to manifest. This is not to deny the usefulness of current interventions targeting women-headed households, but rather to highlight the importance of preserving, strengthening, and tapping on social mechanisms in rural communities.
A new fact sheet debunking myths about agricultural labor and mechanization has been presented at the Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI) end of project review meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe.
