Combating desertification and drought is critical, but focusing on the bigger challenge of unsustainable agriculture can deliver more for farmers. Research from India offers new insights on practical solutions for better soil fertility, more efficient water use, reduced air pollution and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The world has made significant progress in reducing poverty and malnutrition over the last century. The number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut by half over the last twenty years, while the percentage of young children suffering from the effects of malnutrition has also declined 17 percent in fewer than 20 years (UNICEF). Yet these improvements have come at a cost to our planet. Can we feed the world and fight poverty without continuing to deplete water, degrade soils and change our climate?

June 17 is the UN Day to Combat Drought and Desertification, which puts a spotlight on efforts to reverse land and soil degradation. Land degradation and drought affect farmers everywhere, especially poor farmers, but tackling these issues without looking at the big picture may not accomplish the long-term change needed, according to researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“Land degradation and abiotic stresses, especially drought, are often symptoms of a bigger problem,” says M.L. Jat, a Principal Scientist and Cropping Systems Agronomist at CIMMYT. “Unsustainable land use, particularly poor farming practices and policies, have led to a wide set of challenges in many rapidly-developing countries. In addition to drought and land degradation, we are experiencing climate change, increased air pollution and water scarcity” he points out. The answer, he says, can be found by taking systems focus and selecting the right combination of agricultural techniques that improve the resilience and productivity of farms while combating drought, land degradation, climate change and air and water pollution.

Reversing the worrying trends in India

In India, a recent CIMMYT analysis led by Jat’s team and national partners underscores the need for action to improve current agricultural practices, which are “severely stressing the natural resource base.” The analysis shows that Indian farmers are grappling with many issues that intersect with desertification and drought. The Green Revolution, which led to enormous advances in India’s agricultural productivity and fed a rapidly expanding population, also left a worrying aftermath of inefficient or inappropriate resource use.

“The extent of land degradation is alarming” write the authors, with up to 145 million hectares of farmland now considered “practically infertile” and unable to sustain long-term agricultural production. Meanwhile, over pumping of India’s water resources for rice production has depleted groundwater to “critically low levels,” putting India in the unfortunate top world position in terms of withdrawal of fresh water from aquifers.

Further challenges in India include adapting farming to climate change (particularly increasing temperatures), reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to mitigate climate change impacts and dramatically cutting air pollution caused by the widespread burning of rice crop residues. The data indicate an urgent need to improve air quality, reverse soil degradation, and reduce GHG emissions.

Treat the causes instead of the symptoms

“Rather than treating each problem separately, we’re trying to find answers that can address a multitude of urgent challenges,” says Jat. “It’s like a doctor understanding and treating the whole person rather than the physical symptoms of the disease – but for agricultural systems,” he explained.

For the rice and wheat growing areas of Northwest India, taking a systems approach means building a closed-loop farming system. Farmers customarily burn leftover rice stems in the field in order to plant wheat, a practice that causes air pollution and depletes soil nutrition. The innovative ‘Turbo Happy Seeder’ tool allows farmers to sow wheat seed directly into unplowed fields and rice residues. Leaving the residues not only helps improve air quality in this region but builds up organic carbon and nitrogen in soils. It also offers a low-cost alternative to chemical fertilizers, saving the farmers money and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and environmental damage from overuse of fertilizers.

The scientists are also experimenting with “layering” various techniques to produce even more benefits to people and the planet. Field tests in India include combinations of climate-smart technologies for tillage, crop establishment, residue and nutrient management, along with use of improved crop varieties, information and communication technology and crop insurance. The scientists found that layering climate-smart agriculture practices improved productivity of the rice-wheat system up to 19 percent. Layering techniques helped farmers use 20 percent less water for irrigation. And global warming potential was cut by 40 percent. The results to date bring to light new possibilities for highly productive and resilient farms that have a smaller environmental footprint. This includes healthier soils, cleaner air and water, and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

From India to the rest of the world

The early evidence from India is promising and could offer inspiration for other countries grappling with their own resource and food challenges. India’s leaders have embarked on a conscious effort to invest in and promote technologies that simultaneously protect the environment, support farmers and feed its people. This approach marks a shift from the last 50 years of thinking and represents the kind of transformative change needed around the world to help accomplish several of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Further Reading

Agricultural policies and investment priorities for managing natural resources, climate change and air pollution – Policy brief

“Layering” climate smart rice-wheat farming practices in India boosts benefits – CIMMYT Blog

Kakraliya SK, Jat hs, Singh I, Sapkota TB, Singh LK, Sutaliya JM, Sharma PC, Jat RD, Choudhary M, Lopez S, Jat ML. 2018. Performance of portfolios of climate smart agriculture practices in a rice-wheat system of western Indo-Gangetic plains. Agricultural Water Management 202:122-133.

This work is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and supported by the Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (TAAS), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), and the World Bank Group. 

Last week director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Martin Kropff touched down in India.

For Kropff, the visit would help establish and strengthen several strong private-sector partnerships for CIMMYT, including with UPL Limited, the largest manufacturer of agrochemicals in India.

During his trip, Kropff hosted all India-based staff and partners to a gala dinner to give updates from the headquarters in Mexico and thank stakeholders for their valuable contributions to the CIMMYT mission of i mproving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Kropff spoke at a “Climate-smart agriculture as an investment destination for CSR” talk organized by the CGIAR program on Climate Change and Food Security (CCAFS), the Borlaug Institute of South Asia (BISA) and CIMMYT in association with The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry partners.

The visit culminated in the Ninth Executive Committee Meeting for BISA. BISA is a collaboration between CIMMYT and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The committee reviewed BISA’s financial and research updates, ICAR reiterated its commitment and support to BISA and ICAR director general, Trilochan Mohapatra and Kropff signed the ICAR-CIMMYT five-year work plan for 2018-2022. The work plan was co-developed in consultation with ICAR and CIMMYT scientists and outlines areas of synergy and priority such as exchange of germplasm, technologies, technical cooperation, personnel, joint experimentation, joint publications and capacity enhancement in several frontier areas of research.

Breeding research by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is generating not only higher-yielding maize and wheat varieties but also more nutritious ones, according to a recent post in the Thomson Reuters Foundation News.

The center’s mission to foster more productive, sustainable maize and wheat farming contributes directly to U.N. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, “Zero Hunger. But decades-long work to develop biofortified versions of maize and wheat is now bearing fruit in the form of nutrient-enhanced varieties of particular benefit for people who rely heavily on staple crops in their diets.

Quality protein maize – developed by CIMMYT in the 1980s – is grown on 1.2 million hectares around the world, while pro-vitamin A maize is grown on at least 100,000 hectares in Africa and has been shown to be as effective as vitamin supplements. High-zinc wheat is also taking off in Asia, and the first high-zinc maize varieties for Latin America were released in February.

Click here to read the entire post post in the Thomson Reuters Foundation News.

Recently, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)-led, Government of Canada’s Global Affairs Canada (GAC)-funded, Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project has led field visits for a number of high-level stakeholders.

On April 11, 2018 representatives from the Embassy of Canada in Ethiopia, Ivan Roberts, Head of Development Cooperation and Carolyn MacLeod, Development Team leader for Human Development, Environment and Agriculture, visited the Ethio Veg Fru Farm, one of the main field sites of the NuME project.

“We were very much interested and happy to see such a success story as the Ethio Veg Fru Farm,” said MacLeod. Roberts and MacLeod both said they appreciated the efforts made by the NuME project in working collaboratively with private seed companies to fill the seed shortage of QPM varieties. They were also happy with the field performance of the crop under production.

MacLeod said she looked forward to continued collaboration with CIMMYT and indicated continued support to projects such as NuME under the International Assistance Policy of Canada, in which agricultural development must benefit women and girls.

The NuME project’s goal is to bring nutritious, quality protein maize (QPM) to rural maize producers in the Ethiopian maize belt and beyond.

Maize lacks two essential amino acids – lysine and tryptophan, making maize protein less useful for humans. In the southern region of Ethiopia, where maize accounts for more than 60 percent of the dietary protein intake, an estimated 85 to 90 percent of the population – especially young children and women – are at risk of inadequate lysine intake and protein deficiency.

In Ethiopia, maize now ranks first among cereals for production, and second in area planted. Ethiopian families increasingly rely on maize as a staple due to its higher productivity and lower production costs, compared to other cereals.

QPM looks and tastes the same as normal maize but contains up to twice as much lysine and tryptophan. Studies have shown that children who consume QPM grow roughly 10 percent more in both height and weight.

Over the last few years the Ethiopian government has been stepping up nutrition interventions targeting women and children, with aims for a 3 percent annual reduction in the number of stunted and underweight children. As part of this initiative, the Ethiopian government allocates around 10 percent of the total national budget to agriculture, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resource (MoANR) has officially made QPM part of their extension agenda.

The EthioVeg Fru Farm Plc., with the financial and technical support of the NuME Project, is multiplying parental lines of BHQPY545 under irrigation. BHQPY545, developed from CIMMYT lines, is a highly popular single cross QPM hybrid released by the Ethiopia Institute of Agricultural Research.

Although the variety has been quite popular, seed companies have been reluctant to produce and market the seed due to it low seed-yield potential, making it more difficult for seed companies to produce a sufficient supply. Due to the stigma of low seed-yield, NuME organized a high-level field day on March 27, 2018 to demonstrate the genetic potential of the parental lines and effectiveness offseason maize seed multiplication with irrigation.

Visitors to the field day included the state minister for agricultural development from MoANR, Tesfaye Mengiste, general managers of public and private seed companies and a Farmers’ Cooperative Union that work in partnership with the NuME project.

Mengiste stressed maize as the number one strategic food crop for the country as it is the most produced and consumed cereal. He thanked NuME for bringing QPM technologies to the country and said it has to be up to the extension system now to reach every farmer.

Impressed by the field performances he saw, Mengiste probed seed company managers about why they have not multiplied seeds during the offseason to overcome seed scarcity and help reach the annual target of 200,000 ha land planted with QPM, approximately 10 percent of land currently devoted to maize production.

Mengiste wondered why there seems to be a QPM seed paradox, where farmers criticize seed unavailability while seed companies complain about the lack of demand. He said that QPM is essential for the national food and nutrition security and urged seed companies to make all possible effort to produce and sell QPM seeds, as part of their responsibility to reach rural smallholder farmers in exchange for government support.

Most seed companies had considered the inbred lines incompetent and weak but the field visit made them realize the potential of the lines, even under high plant density. They were convinced that the poor field performance previously noticed was not due to lack of inherent potential, but to the agro-techniques applied.

The general manager of the South Seed Enterprise (SSE), Ato Belay Hariso said he learned a lot from the field day and will use the experience to produce seed using irrigation during the off-season to fill seed supply shortages.

After seeing the crop in the field and knowing that QPM is useful to curb malnutrition in the country, seed mangers expressed great enthusiasm to increase seed production of BHQPY545 and other QPM varieties.

Mengiste recommended a number of efforts to help increase the scalability of QPM seeds, starting with continued dissemination of QPM varieties by NuME and the governmental extension system until sustainable demand is created. He suggested that seed company managers must seriously plan QPM seed production for the coming main season and perhaps  look for more private seed companies, who have the interest and capacity to produce QPM seed to partner with. Mengiste said that seed enterprises should be able to sell all the QPM seed they produce by promoting the nutritional advantages of QPM, with support of the NuME project and the extension system.

The Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia project is funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and implemented by CIMMYT-Ethiopia in collaboration with various stakeholders from agriculture, nutrition and health sectors. The project is designed to contribute to the reduction of malnutrition, especially among women and young children, and to increase food security for resource-poor smallholder farmers in Ethiopia through the widespread adoption, production and utilization of QPM varieties and crop management practices that increase farm productivity.

On June 5, the United Nations is using World Environment Day’s theme “Beat Plastic Pollution”

to challenge people around the globe to reduce their usage of single-use plastics by following the motto: If you can’t reuse it, refuse it.

Learn how the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is going ‘zero plastic’ in 2018 in the following Q+A with director of business services, Denis Huneault.

What does the no-plastic initiative look like at CIMMYT?

The plastic initiative is a replacement of all one-use plastics for the dining areas, plus a review of what can be done to replace all plastic bottles.

Eventually we will look at any other use of one time plastic, but for now, we just want to look at what we can do differently and how we can reduce our use of one-time plastic in the containers we’re using every day in the food products.

CIMMYT is already involved in the no-plastic initiative in Nairobi because the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) initiated such a program in their HQ, where our CIMMYT-Kenya office is located. The Government of Kenya has banned all use of disposable plastic, so now we are to follow suit here in Mexico.

Do you know what our current usage rates are for plastic here at CIMMYT?

Yes, we’re using around 140,000 pieces of plastic per month. So it’s a huge amount. It includes plastic bags, plastic containers, plastic utensils, plastic bottles of all kinds – it ends up being around 1,700,000 pieces of plastic per year.

So what’s the plan? How are we reducing this?

We’re going to introduce a permanent container that we will distribute to all CIMMYT employees. This container can be washed and reused. We’re going to introduce fresh, warm food at the café that we’re going to transport from the dining room, and there is a heating system being installed in the café to keep the food warm.

People will be served in their container, and then they will be responsible for washing their own container. We know that people may forget their container, or may not want to wash them, so we will have also environmentally-friendly disposable containers made from maize and wheat residues compressed into the form of a plate or a cup, and people who use these instead will be charged a little bit extra.

We are looking now at different types of containers and will ask people to vote on them. This is just in good time because we intend to use them for Science Week [an upcoming internal event that will bring roughly 200 visitors to CIMMYT].

Instead of boxed lunches at Science Week, we will provide reusable mesh bags that don’t disintegrate and that people can keep afterward to carry groceries, reducing the use of plastic bags there also.

When do you expect CIMMYT to be fully weaned off plastic?

We are looking at the end of the year because the biggest investment is in water. CIMMYT has a good well with good quality water that we test on a regular basis. It is free of pathogens and heavy metals and is actually already being used at the moment to refill the big water cooler jugs that we have. The water is treated and filtered, so now what we want to do is to install water fountains close to all the bathrooms. They will be connected directly to our wells, and there is an internal filter system in those fountains. We hope this will reduce the number of plastic water bottles used, plus we are going to introduce this into meeting rooms. So for like a Board meeting for example, instead of handing out water bottles, it would be cups of water and a pitcher.

We have to look at all these so it will take a bit of time. But we’ve already started with the warm food distribution; we already bought the equipment to provide the warm food, so we now need to install it. It should come together relatively quickly, but we need to have good communications to explain why we are doing this and what the impact is.

We will be accelerating in the next six months. Our goal is that by the end of the year we should have introduced all those measures. Installation of the fountains may take a bit longer since our campus is fairly large. In fact, once those are in place, we will have very good water — better than drinking from a plastic bottle because it is proven that there is plastic residue in your water when you use plastic bottles.

Have you had any reactions from the CIMMYT community so far about this initiative?

We ran a survey, and most definitely, people are interested. They are willing to make the necessary compromise in order to reduce our use of plastic.

And people are willing to pay more if they forget their containers?

Yes…most of them.

Plastic pollution is a defining environmental challenge for our time, be a part of the solution. Learn more about World Environment Day and how you can personally contribute to the global push against plastic pollution here.

Denis Huneault has been the Director of Business Services at CIMMYT since May 2016. In addition to managing the business services units at HQ, he coordinates the support services delivery in CIMMYT’s country offices around the world. Major responsibilities also include process improvement and risk management. Before joining CIMMYT, he was the Director of Administration and Finance at AfricaRice from 2012 until 2016. He has a long international career managing the administration of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Canadian Red Cross delegations in Sri Lanka, Russia, Sudan, Indonesia and Haiti from 2000 until 2012. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Economics from HEC Montreal (1986) and a M.Sc. in International Business also from HEC Montreal (1994). During the 1990’s, he contributed to the Canadian public sector by working for the House of Commons, the Ministry of Industry of Quebec and for the implementation of a Canadian International Development Agency project in Indonesia.

On the 14th of May, the Río Fuerte Sur Farmers’ Association (Asociación de Agricultores del Río Fuerte Sur, or AARFS), whose membership includes 2,500 farmers from northern Sinaloa, granted Bram Govaerts the 2018 Tecnoagro Award.

Starting 27 years ago, this award has been granted to people who promote the development of science and technologies aimed at improving farmers’ productivity and their ability to overcome the challenges of Mexican agriculture.

Govaerts received the 2018 Tecnoagro Award in recognition of the efforts of CIMMYT and, in particular, of its Sustainable Intensification Program, for promoting the adoption of conservation agriculture in northern Sinaloa, where the MasAgro program has had great success thanks to its close collaboration with AARFS farmers.

“It gave me great satisfaction to hear the words of Montiel Ibarra, an agricultural engineer who is Chairman of the Management Committee of the AARFS, indicating that MasAgro practices are the most appropriate alternative because they allow farmers to reduce costs, become more competitive, transform Sinaloa’s agriculture and make it more sustainable,” said Govaerts. “The best award is the one farmers give,” added CIMMYT’s Regional Representative in the Americas.

CIMMYT’s latest data indicate that Sinaloan farmers have saved, on average, $4,564 Mexican pesos and increased their productivity by 1.3 tons per hectare by implementing MasAgro’s sustainable intensification practices.

Additionally, conservation agriculture and the technologies that MasAgro promotes have made it possible for farmers to save up to 50% of the water used in their irrigation systems and reduce their pesticide applications by up to 66%, thanks to innovative integrated pest management practices.

Sinaloan farmers have also saved up to 170 kg of nitrogen fertilizer per hectare by applying optimal fertilizer doses estimated by remote sensors that very precisely determine the nutrient needs of maize or wheat crops.

Upon accepting the 2018 Tecnoagro Award, Govaerts joined AARFS’ call for farmers to adopt the sustainable intensification practices promoted by CIMMYT through MasAgro and reaffirmed his commitment to agricultural development both in Mexico and the world.

At a recent TEDx event in Johannesburg, South Africa, agricultural economist and development practitioner Ed Mabaya invited the audience to think of improved seed varieties as ‘tiny little robots’ that can be deployed to remote African villages to deliver nutrition and improved livelihoods. During his talk, Mabaya showed the impact of Bazooka maize, a drought- and disease-resistant variety that scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) helped develop. Read the below conversation with Mabaya to learn about the importance of improved seed varieties and how to make their use more widespread.

Q: How did your experience growing up in Zimbabwe motivate your career choice?

A: I am one of 11 children born to smallholder farmers in rural Zimbabwe. My parents are among the first generation of smallholder farmers who shifted from producing “just enough to feed the family” to “making the most from their land.” They were the early adopters of hybrid maize varieties in the 1980s, creating what was later referred to as Zimbabwe’s Green Revolution.

In addition to keeping their families well nourished, farmers like my parents could take their surplus to nearby city markets, make money and invest it in education and health for their children. Farming beyond subsistence indeed opened new horizons for their children. I am where I am today in part because my parents used improved seed.

Q: Why did you decide to focus on Bazooka maize and NABE 15 beans in your TEDx talk? Are there other crops with resistance to disease and drought that you consider ‘Hunger Busters’?

A: To showcase the transformative power of improved seed to a general audience, I needed one cereal and one legume crop variety that offered easy-to-understand benefits. My key requirements where higher yields, disease resistance and climate change adaptation. These are key challenges facing smallholder farmers worldwide. Having these attributes in one variety is as close as one can get to a silver bullet for smallholder agriculture.

Most importantly, I wanted varieties that have been successfully commercialized – not just prototypes. I find it easier to use farmer testimonials to not only demonstrate the benefits, but also to show that these technologies are available and affordable to resource-poor farmers. Both Bazooka and NABE 15 met all of these criteria. Bonus features for NABE 15 were higher levels of micronutrients and shorter cooking times.

Q: In your talk, you discuss how the genius of these seeds is not enough to scale up their adoption. Can you provide specific examples of bottlenecks, and how policy reform, partnerships and strategic investments have helped to increase the use of this type of seeds?

A: We have made significant progress over the past two decades in overcoming many bottlenecks that limit adoption of improved varieties by smallholder farmers. A recent example is the proliferation of fake or counterfeit seed in many African countries. If a farmer purchases certified seed that turns out to be fake, they will experience low germination and poor performance that is often worse than their own recycled seed. Not only do they lose a key investment for that season, but also they are likely to ‘dis-adopt’ certified seed.

However, several countries are taking notable steps to address the challenge. The Seed Trade Association of Kenya (STAK), working closely with the government seed regulator, is leading the effort to have security labels inserted in each packet of seed. These labels, authenticated via SMS on mobile phones, demonstrate the power of public-private-partnerships to deliver solutions to rural development.

Q: How do the key bottlenecks vary from country to country?

A: I am the lead investigator of The African Seed Access Index (TASAI), a tool that identifies bottlenecks on the improved seed value chains, from breeding all the way to agro-dealers in rural areas. Based on recent studies conducted in 14 African countries, we know that the bottlenecks vary significantly by country and crop.

For example, access to foundation seed is a key challenge for beans in Malawi, seed inspectors are inadequate in Senegal, and the availability of seed in small packages is limited in South Africa. More importantly, seed systems are dynamic and the constraints can change from year to year. A summary of ten emerging findings from recent TASAI studies is available online.

Q: Was there anything you wish you could have included in the TEDx Talk but had to leave out due to time constraints?

A: I could have used more time to describe the pathway that improved seed takes from research and development all the way to the village. Seed systems in Africa are highly complex, often involving multiple institutions with different interests. This complexity is the main reason why you will find ice-cold Coca-Cola in many African rural stores, but you might not find good seed.

The fact that seed is a living organism also presents the challenge of maintaining viability along this long and complex system. To understand the challenges of seed access in Africa, the devil is often in the details.

Q: What was the general response from attendees at the TEDx event? Did anyone ask surprising or difficult questions afterwards?

A: Overall, the presentation was well received. The general response was along the lines of “Wow! I had never thought of seed that way.” A few farmers in the audience wanted to know if and how they can get their hands on Bazooka and NABE 15 seed. However, there were several skeptics in the room who were mostly concerned about GMOs and the dominance of multinational seed companies.

I had anticipated these concerns and I tried my best to preemptively address them in my talk. While I find most these concerns to be misinformed, we would be remised to ignore them as they are shaping public perceptions of the formal seed sector. Unfortunately, it is hard to shift perceptions in just one talk.

Ed Mabaya is a scholar and a development practitioner with more than a decade of experience working with African seed systems. He is the Principal Investigator at The African Seed Access Index (TASAI), which monitors national indicators related to seed sector development. As a Senior Research Associate in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, he conducts research on food marketing and distribution, seed systems and the role of efficient agricultural markets in Africa’s economic development. He is also Assistant Director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD).

Mabaya was one of the speakers at the CIMMYT 50 celebrations in September 2016, and at TEDx MidAtlantic 2017. You can watch Mabaya’s talk at CIMMYT here and at TEDx MidAtlantic here.