DHAKA, Bangladesh (CIMMYT) – The Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) is helping farmers in Bangladesh save money and time with the implementation of simple calibration keys.

CSISA’s Mechanization and Irrigation project (CSISA-MI) has introduced keys to replace the tedious task of calibrating seeding rate of power tiller operated seeders (PTOS). This new, easy-to-use tool, allows farmers to save time and money with the fast and accurate adjustment of the seed distribution rate without additional resources (e.g. two-wheel tractor, land space, seeds, weighing scale, mathematical calculations, calculator etc.).

Previously, local machinery service providers (LSPs) needed to go through a time-consuming and resource-demanding calibration process so that the correct number of seeds per hectare are distributed. Potential LSPs who received training on calibration had difficulty remembering how to do the procedure due to its complexity, reducing their willingness to provide their services. Initial calibration is usually conducted on a road or farmers’ yard, rarely would an LSP or farmer confirm the calibrated seed rate under actual field operating conditions as is recommended.

Using the key, crop specific seed meter calibration can be completed in the field in under ten minutes and LPSs can quickly re-adjust the machine to sow multiple crops in a single day.

Currently, the calibration keys are only for the common crops in Bangladesh – wheat, mung bean, lentil, sesame, and jute. However, more keys can be added for other crops or different sizes of seed meter.

The keys are commercially produced by a local service provider, Alam Engineering Works, using metal cutting dies for precision with technical support from the project. A set of high-quality stainless steel keys costs about $2.

CSISA-MI is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded project that has been running successfully in the Feed the Future (FtF) zone in Bangladesh in partnership with International Development Enterprises (iDE). CSISA-MI has developed local service providers (LSPs), transformed the agricultural mechanization value chain and scaled-out key agricultural machinery services in the FtF zone to the individual farmers at low cost for higher yields, through agronomic and technical training. It has introduced Axial Flow Pump (AFP) for water conveyance, power tiller operated seeders for mechanized land preparation and seeding and Reapers for mechanized harvesting.

DEHLI, India (CIMMYT) – This November, the work of the Sustainable and Resilient Farming Systems Intensification (SRFSI) project was marked with notable recognition by the Australian Government with a visit from the Australian High Commissioner to India, Harinder Sidhu. The project is co-led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

Sidhu’s visit to observe the SRFSI project’s activities from a grassroots level allowed her to have hands-on experience and interaction with university students, farmers, women’s self-help groups, local service providers and private agencies engaged as members of an SRFSI innovation platform.

Sidhu met with the members of a farmers’ club which is solely operated and monitored by women of the local community. She was highly impressed with the efforts of these women to make themselves independent and self-reliant through new innovations in mushroom, fish and duck farming.

“It was heartening to observe the positive response of the farmers, especially women, to conservation and sustainable farming, and how the technology has improved incomes, reduced drudgery, had positive health impacts and facilitated the development of agri-entrepreneurs,” said Sidhu in her thank you letter.

On the last day of her visit to trial fields, Sidhu was impressed by the service provider business model developed by the SRFSI project to facilitate the creation of employment opportunities and motivation for youth to engage in farming activities.

Sidhu wrote, “I wish you and your team success in reaching out to farmers in north Bengal and working together with them to improve their lives and those of future generations.”

SRFSI is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and jointly implemented by the Department of Agriculture, Government of West Bengal and Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya Agricultural University.

DHAKA, Bangladesh (CIMMYT) – In South Asia, the population is growing and land area for agricultural expansion is extremely limited. Increasing the productivity of already farmed land is the best way to attain food security.

In the northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains, farmers use groundwater to irrigate their fields. This allows them to grow two or three crops on the same piece of land each year, generating a reliable source of food and income for farming families. But in the food-insecure lower Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains in Bangladesh, farmers have lower investment capacities and are highly risk averse. Combined with environmental difficulties including ground water scarcity and soil and water salinity, cropping is often much less productive.

Could the use of available surface water for irrigation provide part of the solution to these problems? The government of Bangladesh has recently promoted  the use of surface water irrigation for crop intensification. The concept is simple: by utilizing the country’s network of largely underutilized natural canals, farmers can theoretically establish at least two well-irrigated and higher-yielding crops per year. The potential for this approach to intensifying agriculture however has various limitations.  High soil and water salinity, poor drainage and waterlogging threaten crop productivity. In addition, weakly developed markets, rural to urban out-migration, low tenancy issues and overall production risk limit farmers’ productivity. The systematic nature of these problems calls for new approaches to study how development investments can best be leveraged to overcome these complex challenges to increase cropping intensity.

Policy makers, development practitioners and agricultural scientists recently gathered to respond to these challenges at a workshop in Dhaka. They reviewed research results and discussed potential solutions to common limitations. Representatives from more than ten national research, extension, development and policy institutes participated. The CSISA-supported workshop however differed from conventional approaches to research for development in agriculture, in that it explicitly focused on interdisciplinary and systems analysis approaches to addressing these complex problems.

Systems analysis is the process of studying the individual parts and their integration into complex systems to identify ways in which more effective and efficient outcomes can be attained. This workshop focused on these approaches and highlighted new advances in mathematical modeling, geospatial systems analysis, and the use of systems approaches to farmer behavioral science.

Timothy J. Krupnik, Systems Agronomist at CIMMYT and CSISA Bangladesh country coordinator, gave an overview of a geospatial assessment of landscape-scale irrigated production potential in coastal Bangladesh to start the talks.

For the first time in Bangladesh, research using cognitive mapping, a technique developed in cognitive and behavioral science that can be used to model farmers’ perceptions of their farming systems, and opportunities for development interventions to overcome constraints to intensified cropping, was described. This work was conducted by Jacqueline Halbrendt and presented by Lenora Ditzler, both with the Wageningen University.

“This research and policy dialogue workshop brought new ideas of farming systems and research, and has shown new and valuable tools to analyze complex problems and give insights into how to prioritize development options,” said Executive Director of the Krishi Gobeshona Foundation, Wais Kabir.

Workshop participants also discussed how to prioritize future development interventions, including how to apply a new online tool that can be used to target irrigation scheme planning, which arose from the work presented by Krupnik. Based on the results of these integrated agronomic and socioeconomic systems analyses, participants also learned how canal dredging, drainage, micro-finance, extension and market development must be integrated to achieve increases in cropping intensity in southern Bangladesh.

Mohammad Saidur Rahman, Assistant Professor, Seed Science and Technology department at Bangladesh Agriculture University, also said he appreciated the meeting’s focus on new methods. He indicated that systems analysis can be applied not only to questions on cropping intensification in Bangladesh, but to other crucial problems in agricultural development across South Asia.

The workshop was organized by the Enhancing the Effectiveness of Systems Analysis Tools to Support Learning and Innovation in Multi-stakeholder Platforms (ESAP) project, an initiative funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE) through the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and supported in Bangladesh through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA). ESAP is implemented by Wageningen University’s Farming Systems Ecology group and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT).

CSISA is a CIMMYT-led initiative implemented jointly with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). CSISA works to increase the adoption of various resource-conserving and climate-resilient technologies by operating in rural “innovation hubs” in Bangladesh, India and Nepal, and seeks to improve farmers’ access to market information and enterprise development.

KATHMANDU, Nepal (CIMMYT) – Nepal’s push to grow its seed sector is expanding to banking, with new financial measures expected to benefit seed companies across the country.

Nepal launched its National Seed Vision 2013-2025 to improve food security by increasing its domestic production of high quality seeds, and make them available and affordable to farmers. The seed replacement rate, or the percentage of area using certified quality seeds rather than the farm saved seed, is set to increase up to 30 percent for cereal crops and over 90 percent for vegetables.

However, there is a lack of financing from formal sources across agricultural value chains, which led the country to mandate that banks allocate 10 percent of their lending – around NPR 1.3 billion ($12.7 million) – to agriculture in 2017.

A value chain is the full set of activities businesses go through to bring a product or service from conception to delivery, in agriculture, this could involve everything from the development of plant genetic material to selling the final crop at market.

Value chain finance refers to financial products and services that flow to or through any point in a value chain that enables investments that increase actors’ returns, as well as the growth and competitiveness of the chain. This could dramatically improve Nepal’s seed sector by giving farmers, seed companies and banks access to more resources to grow.

In fact, if banks financed just 30 percent of seed company working capital, it would give an extra $2 million to invest in research and development activities, such as variety development, quality improvement, maintenance breeding and other vital functions that are currently not carried out by Nepali seed companies. These funds could also be invested in infrastructure development such as storage and seed processing facilities.

Participants concluded at a recent consultative meeting on financing seed business in Nepal that soft loans – loans that have lenient terms like low interest rates or extended grace periods – to seed companies that charge a government-mandated 5 percent interest rate are an ideal way to provide this extra working capital. The commercial banks offering these loans would benefit by reaching more farmers, thereby expanding their customer base and would reach the government-mandated agricultural financing target.

The Nepal Seed and Fertilizer (NSAF) project provided a platform to banks and seed companies to share information and identify business opportunities to support NSAF’s seed system development approach during the meeting. Nearly 40 participants from national banks, seed companies and other governmental and non-governmental organizations participated.

Dyutiman Choudhary, NSAF coordinator, shared the overall seed system development approach of NSAF and the role of finance in seed business. An overview of successful cases and models of bank-seed company partnerships adopted in Asia and Africa was also given.

Banks requested additional information about risks in the seed business and sought guidance to assess and reduce risks associated to their loans. It was agreed that value chain finance through three-party agreements between banks, farmers and seed companies could be a viable approach that could be initiated immediately.

“Through this sort of agreement, seed companies guarantee they will purchase seeds from farmers,” said the Seed Entrepreneurs Association of Nepal Chair. “This guarantees a market for seed, minimizing the risk of market failure for banks.”

Four national banks so far have shown interest in partnering with the NSAF seed companies to finance seed production with soft loans. A proposed working group comprised of banks, seed companies and the Government of Nepal will provide strategic direction to finance seed business. NSAF will lead the working group to guide strategic decisions on financing seed business by sharing evidence based information, providing a common platform and catalyzing innovations to ease access to finance by seed companies.

The Nepal Seed and Fertilizer project (NSAF) is funded by the United States Agency for International Development and led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in collaboration with Nepal’s Ministry of Agricultural Development and private sector. Learn more about NSAF through this infographic and fact sheet from the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative.

ANKARA, Turkey (CIMMYT) – In a world of rapidly changing climates and related threats to agriculture and food production, including the emergence and spread of deadly crop pathogens and pests, Turkey’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MFAL) has for the first time allocated funding to establish a world-class center for research on soil borne pathogens.

The announcement was made at an international workshop on soil borne pathogens (SBP) organized at MFAL in Ankara in October by the Directorate of Turkey’s Plant Protection Central Research Institute, Ankara (PPCRI). The new SBP research center will be located at that PPCRI, according to Dr. Nevzat BİRİŞİK, Director General, MFAL General Directorate of Agricultural Research and Policies.

“Among other things, the new center will focus on controlling the expansion of soil borne pathogens to new cropping areas, as well as linking to international research and experts on the pathogens, which cause massive damage each year to agriculture in Turkey,” BİRİŞİK said.

More than 147 delegates from across the ministry of agriculture and representatives of private companies gathered at this workshop, bringing together senior government officials and high-level experts to review and discuss scientific and technical activities in the management of soil borne pathogens in cereals.

The Turkish Ministry of Agriculture has given ongoing support to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)-led SBP program in Turkey to fight against diseases affecting cereal crops, which occupy 65 percent of Turkey’s farmland.

Soil borne pathogens cause significant damage in cereals, with global yield potential losses in wheat of up to 20 percent. Changing climates that are reducing growing conditions in tropical areas are also enabling the spread of SBPs into northern regions at increasing rates. This spread presents the risk of areas previously unaffected by SBPs having serious issues. Climate change may also affect the resistance of crops to specific soil pathogens through impacts of warming or drought and through the increased pathogenicity of organisms by mutation induced by environmental stress.

The SBP program is also involved with the use of chemical control on soil pathogens, with regard to the outlook and future expectations of pioneering pesticide producers in the world. The SBP program at CIMMYT-Turkey is using seed treatment to investigate whether or not it can synergistically reduce diseases populations. Seed treatment is absolutely required where diseases are present or where farmers do not accept changing their local, highly susceptible varieties with the resistant and modern ones.

The Corporate Communications Department of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement

Center (known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT, staging.cimmyt.org) is seeking a candidate for a one-year, paid consultancy to assist in web production, social media management, writing, editing, public relations and event coordination.

Located 40 km outside of Mexico City, CIMMYT is a not-for-profit, international agricultural research- for-development organization that generates and promotes improved maize and wheat varieties and cropping systems for farmers in developing countries to ensure global food security and help combat poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

The Communications Junior Consultant will work full-time assisting department writers, editors and project managers in duties such as:

• Managing CIMMYT social media, including monitoring on-line traffic, use of social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google +, and Flickr), and helping to plan and implement social media campaigns.
• Writing, editing and proofing articles for weekly newsletters, annual reports, brochures, and other institutional outlets.
• Developing online content about projects, results, meetings, and partnerships.
• Monitoring conventional media for agricultural and development-related articles.
• Other communications and dissemination tasks, as required and agreed.

The ideal candidate will be able to commit for one year and have an undergraduate degree in communications and/or journalism, a proven interest in social media and knowledge and experience in on-line applications. She/he will also have excellent writing and/or editing experience in English. Knowledge of Spanish, science, agriculture and agricultural development are advantages.

CIMMYT offers Junior Consultants a monthly stipend paid in US dollars, a housing allowance, health insurance and an airline ticket to and from Mexico. CIMMYT will assist in obtaining necessary travel documents, including a work visa. To apply, please e-mail a letter of interest, a resume, two writing samples, and contact information for two references to:

Matt O’Leary

Social Media Coordinator

m.oleary@cgiar.org

CIMMYT is an equal-opportunity employer and strives for staff diversity in gender and nationality.