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New publications: Caste-gender intersectionalities in wheat-growing communities in Madhya Pradesh, India

Written by Alison Doody on May 4, 2022. Posted in Publications.

A new study has revealed how the ways in which caste and gender interact in wheat systems in India are changing over time, how women struggle to be involved in decisions on wheat farming, how agricultural mechanization is pushing women of all castes out of paid employment, and how women’s earnings are an important source of finance in wheat.

There is growing awareness that not all rural women are alike and that social norms and technological interventions affect women from different castes in distinct ways. The caste system in South Asia, which dates back over 3,000 years, divides society into thousands of hierarchical, mostly endogamous groups. Non-marginalized castes are classified as “general caste” while those living in the social margins are categorized as “scheduled caste” and “scheduled tribe”. Scheduled caste and scheduled tribe farmers face both social and economic marginalization and limited access to information and markets, despite government efforts to level up social inequalities.

In India, women of all castes are involved in farming activities, although their caste identity regulates the degree of participation. General caste women are less likely to be engaged in farming than women of lower castes. Despite their level of participation across caste groups, women are rarely recognized as “farmers” (Kisan) in Indian rurality, which restricts their access to inputs, information and markets.

Gender experts from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partners investigated caste-gender relations among wheat farmers in Madhya Pradesh, India’s second-largest state by area. The team conducted focus group discussions and interviews in a village community, and carried out a review of GENNOVATE research in the same area. The team also carried out a survey involving about 800 wheat farmers from 18 village communities across the state.

Women work in the fields in India’s Madhya Pradesh state. Our study found that women are involved in all aspects of agricultural work on family farms. (Photo: CIMMYT)

The study, published last month in Gender, Technology, and Development, revealed five key findings:

First, caste distinctions are sharp. There is little interaction between women and men farmers from the scheduled caste category — even between subcastes in this category — and other castes. They live in separate enclaves, and land belonging to scheduled caste farmers is less fertile than others.

Second, all women are fully involved in all aspects of agricultural work on the family farm throughout the year.

Third, despite their strong participation in farming activities, women across caste groups are normatively excluded from agricultural decision-making in the household. Having said that, the findings were very clear that some individual women experience greater participation than others. Although women are excluded from formal agricultural information networks, they share knowledge with each other, particularly within caste groups.

Fourth, about 20 years ago, women across caste groups were being employed as hired agricultural laborers. Over the past four years, increasing mechanization is pushing many women off the field. While scheduled caste women compensate for the employment loss to a certain degree by participating in non-farm activities, general caste women are not able to move beyond the village and secure work elsewhere due to cultural norms. Women therefore face a collapse in their autonomy.

Fifth, gender poses a greater constraint than caste in determining an individual’s ability to make decisions about farm and non-farm related activities. However, a significant difference exists across the caste groups, presenting a strong case for intersectionality.

Challenging social norms in agriculture

The results of the study show that caste matters in the gendered evaluations of agricultural technologies and demonstrates the importance of studying women’s contributions and roles in wheat farming in South Asia.

In recent years, studies have revealed that women in wheat have more influence on farming decisions than previously thought, from subtle ways of giving suggestions and advice to management and control over farming decisions.

Agriculture in India is also considered to be broadly feminizing, with men increasingly taking up off-farm activities, leaving women to as primary cultivators on family fields and as hired laborers. However, rural advisory services, policy makers, and other research and development organizations are lagging behind in recognizing and reacting appropriately to these gendered changes. Many still carry outdated social norms which view men as the main decision-makers and workers on farms.

Read the full study:
Caste-gender intersectionalities in wheat-growing communities in Madhya Pradesh, India

Funding for this study was provided by the Collaborative Platform for Gender Research under the CGIAR Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets as well as the International Development Research Center of the Government of Canada, the CGIAR Research Programme on Wheat (CRP WHEAT https://wheat.org/), CIMMYT and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The paper additionally drew on GENNOVATE data collected in India in 2015–16 with financial support from CRP WHEAT. Development of the GENNOVATE research methodology was supported by the CGIAR Gender and Agricultural Research Network, the World Bank, and the CRP WHEAT and CRP MAIZE, and data analysis was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Cover photo: A woman harvests wheat in Madhya Pradesh, India. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Farmers in Mexico attend a workshop organized by CIMMYT to build their capacity in seed production. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)

Supporting the growth of local maize seed industries: Lessons from Mexico

Written by Steven M on March 8, 2022. Posted in Features.

Over the past several decades, maize breeders have made considerable strides in the development and deployment of new hybrids. These offer higher yields compared to older varieties and reduce the risks farmers face from the vagaries of a changing climate and emerging pest and disease threats. But, for small-scale farmers to adopt new, improved climate-resilient and stress-tolerant maize hybrids at scale, they must be first available, accessible and their benefits need to be widely understood and appreciated. This is where vibrant national seed industries potentially play an important role.

Prior to the 1990s, government agencies tended to play the lead role in hybrid production and distribution. Since then, expectations are that the private sector — in particular locally owned small-scale seed enterprises — produce maize hybrids and distribute them to farmers. When successful, local seed industries are able to produce quality new hybrids and effectively market them to farmers, such that newer hybrids replace older ones in agrodealer stores in relatively short periods of time. If small seed enterprises lack capacities or incentives to aggressively market new hybrids, then the gains made by breeding will not be realized in farmers’ fields. By monitoring seed sales, breeders at CIMMYT and elsewhere, as well as seed business owners, gain insights into smallholders’ preferences and demands.

A recent publication in Food Security assesses the capacities of 22 small and medium-sized seed enterprises in Mexico to produce and market new maize hybrids. The study draws on the experience of the MasAgro project, a decade-long development whereby the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in partnership with Mexico’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER), engaged with dozens of locally owned seed businesses to expand their portfolio of maize hybrids.

The authors, led by CIMMYT senior economist Jason Donovan, highlight the critical role the MasAgro project played in reinvigorating the portfolios of maize seeds produced by small and medium-sized enterprises. MasAgro “filled a gap that had long existed in publicly supported breeding programs” by providing easy access to new cultivars, available to local seed companies without royalties or branding conditions, and without the need for seed certification. The enterprises, in turn, showed a remarkably high capacity to take up new seed technology, launching 129 commercial products between 2013 and 2017.

“Without doubt the MasAgro project can be considered a success in terms of its ability to get new maize germplasm into the product portfolios of small seed companies throughout Mexico,” Donovan said.

The authors also delve into the challenges these maize enterprises faced as they looked to scale the new technologies in a competitive market that has long been dominated by multinational seed enterprises. They observed a lack of access to physical capital, which in turn evidenced a lack of financial capital or access to credit, as well as limited marketing know-how and capacity to integrate marketing innovations into their operations. While most maize enterprises identified the need to expand sales of new commercial products, “signs of innovation in seed marketing were limited” and most of them relied heavily on sales to local and state governments.

According to Donovan, “The MasAgro experience also shows that a strong focus on the demand side of formal seed systems is needed if breeding programs are to achieve greater impact in less time. This implies more attention to how farmers decide on which seed to purchase and how seed companies and seed retailers market seed to farmers. It also implies strong coordination between public sector to make building the local seed industry a national imperative.”

Beyond the Mexican context, the paper’s findings may be of particular interest to development organizations looking to supply local seed industries facing strong competition from regional and multinational companies. One example is the effort to support small seed businesses in Nepal, which face strong competition from larger Indian companies with long histories of engagement in Nepalese seed markets. There are also important lessons for policymakers in eastern and southern Africa, where strict controls over seed release and certification potentially lead to higher production costs and slower rates of introduction of new products by local maize seed companies.

Read the full article:
Capacities of local maize seed enterprises in Mexico: Implications for seed systems development

This paper is complemented by two CIMMYT-led publications in a special issue of Outlook on Agriculture that highlights experiences in sub-Saharan Africa. That special issue grew out of the CGIAR Community of Excellence for Seed Systems Development where CIMMYT led the discussion on seed value chains and private sector linkages.

Cover image: Farmers in Mexico attend a workshop organized by CIMMYT to build their capacity in seed production. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)

Pauline Muindi, gender research associate with CIMMYT, at the mock agrodealer shop where she acted as a clerk. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Buying into new seed

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on May 24, 2021. Posted in Features.

Mary Nzau enters a mock agrodealer shop set up on a field on the outskirts of Tala town in Machakos County, Kenya. On display are nine 2kg bags of hybrid maize seed. She picks one. By the look of it, her mind is made up. After a quick scan of the shelf, she has in her hand the variety that she has been purchasing for years.

Regina Mbaika Mutua is less lucky. The variety she always buys is not on display in the mock shop. As part of the experiment, the research team has removed from the shelf the variety she indicated she usually buys. The team’s goal is to observe what factors influence her seed purchase decision in the absence of the variety she was expecting to purchase.

“Although I did not find the variety I was looking for, I picked an alternative as I have seen it perform well on a neighboring farm,” Mutua says, adding that she will plant it this season alongside recycled (farm-saved) seed on her one-acre farm.

Michael Mutua passes up the popular variety he has been planting for the previous two years. He picks one that has been advertised extensively on local radio. “I have heard about it severally on radio. I would like to experiment with this new seed and see how it performs on my farm. Should I like the results, I will give it a chance in ensuing seasons,” he says.

Pieter Rutsaert explains the study setup at a mock agrodealer shop. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

The big adoption conundrum

The goal of the out-of-stock study is to improve an understanding of how farmers make their maize seed choices, says Pieter Rutsaert, Markets and Value Chain Specialist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

“We do this by inviting farmers to a mock agrodealer store that we set up in their villages and give them a small budget to purchase a bag of seed. However, not all farmers walk into the same store: some will find their preferred variety, others won’t. Some will have access to additional trait information or see some varieties with price promotions while others don’t.”

Rutsaert acknowledges that breeding programs and their partner seed companies have done a great job at giving farmers access to maize hybrids with priority traits such as drought tolerance and high yield. CIMMYT then works closely with local seed companies to get varieties into the hands of farmers. “We want to extend that support by providing insights to companies and public breeding programs on how to get new varieties more quickly into the hands of farmers,” he says.

Pauline Muindi (left), gender research associate with CIMMYT, acts as a mock agrodealer clerk and attends a farmer. (Photo: CIMMYT)

The hybrid maize seed sector in Kenya is highly competitive. Amid intensifying competition, new varieties face a daunting task breaking into the market, independent of their quality. While farmers now have more options to pick from, a major challenge has been how to get them to adopt new varieties.

“Moving farmers from something they know to something they don’t is not easy. They tend to stick with what they know and have been growing for years,” Rutsaert says.

Pauline Muindi, gender research associate with CIMMYT, acted as the stand-in clerk at the mock store. She noticed that farmers tend to spend very little time in the shop when their preferred variety is available. However, this all changes in the out-of-stock situation, pushing farmers to step out of their comfort zone and explore new options.

The first step to overcoming this challenge is to entice maize farmers to try a new seed variety, even just once, Rutsaert observes. If it is a good variety, farmers will see that and then the market will work in its favor: farmers will come back to that variety in subsequent years and tell others about it.

“The good news is that many of the varieties we are currently seeing on the market have performed well — that’s why they’re popular. But there are newer varieties that are even better, especially in terms of attributes like drought tolerance. We would like to understand how farmers can be convinced to try out these newer varieties. Is it about the need for more awareness on varietal traits? Can we use price promotions? Or are there other factors?” he says.

A researcher interviews Mary Nzau (right), a farmer from Tala town in Machakos County, after her mock purchase. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Does seed price matter?

“With today’s climate uncertainty, it is better to stick to a variety that is adapted to such climate rather than banking on a variety one is oblivious of. The risk is not worth it,” Nzau says. She adds that she would rather buy a higher-priced seed packet she knows and trusts than a lower-priced one that she has not used in the past. Radio promotions of new or other varieties have limited sway over her decision to make the switch.

Faith Voni, another farmer, agrees. “It is better to purchase a higher-priced variety whose quality I can vouch for than risk purchasing a lower-priced one that I know little about. I do not wish to take such a risk.” Voni says she would also be more inclined to experiment with another variety that she had seen perform well on a neighbor’s farm.

Michael Mutua holds a different view. “If there is an option of an equally good but new variety that is lower-priced than the variety I prefer, my wallet decides,” he says.

Vivian Hoffmann, an economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and collaborator on the study, says price can be key for convincing consumers to try a new product. “Our previous research on maize flour choice found that a provisional 10 percent discount boosted sales tremendously,” Hoffmann says. “Of course, that only gets your foot in the door; after that, a new variety will need to win farmers over based on its merits.”

Hoffmann is interested in the extent to which drawing farmers’ attention to key varietal attributes influences their seed choice. “This information is generally already available on seed packets, but we live in a world of information overload. Promoting certain attributes through in-store signage is an approach that is widely used to help consumers make more healthier food choices. Doing the same for new seed varieties makes a lot of sense.”

Michael Mutua (left) responds to preliminary questions from one of the research team members before proceeding to make his seed selection at the mock agrodealer shop. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

The value of drought tolerance

Situated on Kenya’s eastern region, Machakos is characterized by persistent water stress. Climate change induced erratic rainfall has pushed traits that can tolerate the unfavorable weather conditions in the favorite’s corner. While other traits such as high yield and disease resistance are equally important, the seed, when planted, must first withstand the effects of droughts or water stress in some seasons and germinate. This is the most crucial step in the long journey to either a decent, bare minimum or no yield. A lot of farmers still plant recycled seed alongside hybrid varieties. But these are no match to water stress conditions, which decimate fields planted with farmer-saved seed.

“If a variety is not climate resilient, I will likely not harvest anything at all,” says Nzau. She has planted a drought-tolerant variety for ten years now. Prior to that, she had planted about three other varieties as well as recycled seed. “The only advantage with recycled seed is that given the right amount of rainfall, they mature fast — typically within two months. This provides my family with an opportunity to eat boiled or roast maize,” she notes.

However, varieties need to do more than just survive harsh weather conditions. Breeders face a daunting task of incorporating as many traits as possible to cater to the overarching and the specific interests of multiple farmers. As Murenga Mwimali, a maize breeder at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and collaborator in this research says, innovations in breeding technologies are making breeding more efficient.

“It is better to have a diversity of product profiles as different market niches are captured within a particular agroecological zones. This is such that farmers may not just benefit from the minimum traits like drought tolerance, but also more specific traits they are looking for,” Mwimali says.

Smallholder farmers continue to play a central role in the seed development process. Capturing what happens at the point of purchase, for instance, at the agrodealer, and understanding how they purchase seed offers valuable insights on the traits that are deemed essential in the breeding process. This work contributes to CIMMYT’s focus on fast-tracking varietal turnover by turning the levers towards a demand-driven seed system.

Cover photo: Pauline Muindi, gender research associate with CIMMYT, at the mock agrodealer shop where she acted as a clerk. (Photo: CIMMYT)

A researcher from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) demonstrates the use of a farming app in the field. (Photo: C. De Bode/CGIAR)

Taking stock of value chain development

Written by Steven M on January 7, 2021. Posted in Features.

In 1967 Albert O. Hirschman, the pioneering development economist, published Development Projects Observed. Based on an analysis of a handful of long-standing World Bank projects, the book was an effort, as Hirschman writes in the preface, “to ‘sing’ the epic adventure of development — its challenge, drama, and grandeur.” He sang this epic not in the register of high development theory, but rather through the ups and downs and unexpected twists of real-world development projects.

Today, a new group of researchers have taken up a similar challenge. Value Chain Development and the Poor: Promise, delivery, and opportunities for impact at scale, a new book edited by Jason Donovan, Dietmar Stoian and Jon Hellin, surveys over two decades of academic and practical thinking on value chains and value chain development. While value chain development encompasses a broad variety of approaches, it has largely focused on improving the ability of small scale, downstream actors — such as smallholders in agri-food value chains — to capture more value for their products or to engage in value-adding activities. Value chain development approaches have also focused on improving the social and environmental impacts of specific value chains. Donovan, Stoian and Hellin’s book assesses these approaches through careful analysis of real-world cases. The book was published with support from the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and on Policies, Institutions, and Markets.

Lessons learned

The book takes an unsparing look at what has and hasn’t worked in the field of value chain development. It begins by dissecting the drivers of the high degree of turnover in approaches that characterizes the field. The editors argue that “issue-attention cycles” among project stakeholders, coupled with monitoring and evaluation metrics that are more focused on tracking project implementation rather than producing robust measurements of their social impact, too often lead to the adoption — and abandonment — of approaches based on novelty and buzz.

The unfortunate consequences are that strengths and limitations of any given approach are never fully appreciated and that projects — and even entire approaches — are abandoned before they’ve had a chance to generate deep social impacts. Moreover, the opportunity to really learn from development projects — both in terms of refining and adapting a given approach to local conditions, and of abstracting scalable solutions from real development experiences — is lost.

A recurring theme throughout the book is the tension between the context-sensitivity needed for successful value chain development interventions and the need for approaches that can be scaled and replicated. Programs must develop tools for practitioners on one hand and demonstrate scalability to funders on the other. For example, a chapter on maize diversity and value chain development in Guatemala’s western highlands illustrates how an approach that was successful in Mexico — connecting producers of indigenous maize landraces with niche markets — is ill-suited to the Guatemalan context, where most producers are severely maize deficient. And a chapter reviewing guides for gender-equitable value chain development highlights how — for all their positive impact — such guides often overlook highly context- and culturally-specific gender dynamics. Intra-household bargaining dynamics and local masculinities, for example, can play critical roles in the success or failure of gender-focused value chain development interventions.

This new book takes an unsparing look at what has and hasn’t worked in the field of value chain development.

Finally, while lauding the valuable impact many value chain development initiatives have achieved, the editors warn against an exclusive reliance on market-based mechanisms, especially when trying to benefit the poorest and most marginalized of smallholders. In the case of Guatemala’s maize-deficient highland farmers, for example, the development of niche markets for native maize proved to be a poor mechanism for achieving the stated goal of preserving maize biodiversity and farmers’ livelihoods. Non-market solutions are called for. Based on this and similar experiences, the editors note that, while value chain development can be a valuable tool, to truly achieve impact at scale it must be coordinated with broader development efforts.

“The challenge of ensuring that value chain development contributes to a broad set of development goals requires transdisciplinary, multisector collaboration within broader frameworks, such as integrated rural-urban development, food system transformation, and green recovery of the economy in the post COVID-19 era,” write the editors.

This bracing and clear reflection on the promise and limitations of current development approaches is not only timely; it is perhaps more urgent today than in Hirschman’s time. While tremendous gains have been made since the middle of the 20^th century, many stubborn challenges remain, and global climate change threatens to undo decades of progress. Projects like Value Chain Development and the Poor and the ongoing Ceres2030 initiative provide development practitioners, researchers, funders and other stakeholders a much needed assessment of what can be built upon and what needs to be rethought as they tackle these gargantuan challenges.

Embracing uncertainty

At the time Development Projects Observed was published, the study and practice of development was already entering a crisis of adolescence, as it were. Having achieved quasi-independence from its parent discipline of economics, it had to settle on an identity of its own.

Hirschman’s book represented one possible way forward — an understanding of development practice as a blend of art and science. The book’s most famous concept, that of the Hiding Hand, illustrates how planners’ optimism could fuel enormously complex and challenging projects — undertakings that might never have been attempted had all the challenges been known beforehand. At the same time, projects’ inevitable failures and shortcomings could spur creative local responses and solutions, thus ensuring their eventual success and rootedness in their specific context.

As Michele Alacevich points out in the Afterword to the book’s most recent reissue, the World Bank’s response to Hirschman’s book demonstrates the road that development research and practice ultimately took. The book was disregarded, and the Bank turned to the growing literature on cost-benefit analysis instead. “Whereas Hirschman’s analysis had placed uncertainty — an unmeasurable dimension — center stage, cost-benefit analysis assimilated it to risk, therefore turning it into something measurable and quantifiable,” Alacevich writes. Faced with a newfound awareness of the limits to the field’s powers and abilities — a rite of passage for all prodigies — development institutions appeared to try to outrun these limitations through ever-increasing technification.

The issue-attention cycles identified by Stoian and Donovan may represent a new, more frenetic and self-defeating iteration of this discomfort with uncertainty. If so, Value Chain Development and the Poor serves as an urgent call for development institutions and practitioners to make peace with the messiness of their vocation. As Hirschman observed decades ago, only by embracing the uncertainty and art inherent in development work can its students and practitioners further the enormously complex scientific understanding of the endeavor, and, crucially, generate broad and lasting social change.

The eBook is available for free (Open Access):
Value Chain Development and the Poor: Promise, delivery, and opportunities for impact at scale

Cover image: A researcher from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) demonstrates the use of a farming app in the field. (Photo: C. De Bode/CGIAR)

Breaking Ground: Jordan Chamberlin avidly explores the changing landscapes of Africa

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on October 1, 2020. Posted in Features.

Sub-Saharan Africa is undergoing important transformations, including climate change, population growth, urbanization and migration flows, and growth in digital technologies. What can we say about the likely development trajectories that African rural economies are on, and the implications for poor farming households? These are central questions for Jordan Chamberlin, an economist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Kenya.

Chamberlin’s desk is covered with screens teeming with numbers, complex mathematical equations, lines of code and aerial views of African landscapes. He combines traditional microeconomic analysis with geospatial modelling skills to study some of the ways in which rural transformations are occurring. In this era of big data, he examines the wealth of spatial and socioeconomic datasets to explore the relationships between drivers of change and smallholder welfare, sometimes revealing surprising insights on how rural communities in Africa are evolving.

“Are commercial farms good or bad for neighboring smallholder farmers? Which households can benefit from the rapidly evolving rural land markets in Africa? What drives migration between rural areas? These are some examples of the complex but increasingly important questions that inform how we understand the evolution of agri-food systems in developing countries,” Chamberlin explains. “Fortunately, we also increasingly have access to new data that helps us explore these issues.”

In addition to household survey datasets — the bread and butter of applied social scientists — today’s researchers are also able to draw on an ever-expanding set of geospatial data that helps us to better contextualize the decisions smallholder farmers make.

He cites current work, which seeks to understand input adoption behaviors through better measurement of the biophysical and marketing contexts in which small farms operate. “Evidence suggests that low use rates of inorganic fertilizer by smallholders is due in part to poor expected returns on such investments,” he explains, “which are the result of site-specific agronomic responses, rainfall uncertainty, variation in input-output price ratios, and other factors.”

We are increasingly able to control for such factors explicitly: one of Chamberlin’s recent papers shows the importance of soil organic carbon for location-specific economic returns to fertilizer investments in Tanzania. “After all, farmers do not care about yields for yields’ sake — they make agronomic investments on the basis of how those investments affect their economic welfare.”

Better data and models may help to explain why farmers sometimes do not adopt technologies that we generally think of as profitable. A related strand of his research seeks to better model the spatial distribution of rural market prices.

Jordan Chamberlin (left) talks to a farmer in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in 2019, while conducting research on youth outmigration from rural areas. (Photo: Jordan Chamberlin)

A spatial economist’s journey on Earth

Ever since his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, where he worked as a beekeeping specialist, Chamberlin knew he wanted to spend his professional life working with smallholder farmers. He wanted to better understand how rural development takes place, and how policies and investments can help rural households to improve their welfare.

In pursuit of these interests, his academic journey took him from anthropology to quantitative geography, before leading him to agricultural economics. “While my fundamental interest in rural development has not changed, the analytical tools I have preferred have evolved over the years, and my training reflects that evolution,” he says.

Along with his research interests, he has always been passionate about working with institutions within the countries where his research has focused. While working with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Ethiopia, he helped establish a policy-oriented GIS lab at the Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI). Years later, as part of his work with Michigan State University, he served as director of capacity building at the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI), a not-for-profit Zambian research organization. He continues to serve as an external advisor on PhD committees, and considers mentorship a key part of his professional commitments.

He joined CIMMYT at the Ethiopia office in 2015 as spatial economist, part of the foresight and ex ante group of the Socioeconomics program.

As part of his research portfolio, he explores the role of new technologies, data sources and extension methods in the scaling of production technologies. Under the Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale in Africa (TAMASA) project, one area he has been working on is how we may better design location-specific agronomic advisory tools. Working with the Nutrient Expert tool, developed by the African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI), he and his research team have conducted randomized control trials in Ethiopia and Nigeria to evaluate the impacts of such decision-support tools on farmer investments and productivity outcomes. They found that such tools appear to contribute to productivity gains, although tool design matters — for example, Nigerian farmers were more likely to take up site-specific agronomic recommendations when such information was accompanied by information about uncertainty of financial returns.

Jordan Chamberlin (center) talks to colleagues during a staff gathering in Nairobi. (Photo. Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Creative rethinking

While Chamberlin’s research portfolio is diverse, one commonality is the drive to use new data and tools to better guide how development resources are allocated.

“Given the scarcity of resources available to governments and their partners, it is important to have sound empirical foundations for the allocation of these resources. Within CIMMYT, I see my role as part of a multidisciplinary team whose goal is to generate such empirical guidance,” he says.

This research also contributes to better design of agricultural development policies.

“Even though many of the research topics that my team addresses are not traditional areas of emphasis within CIMMYT’s socioeconomic work, I hope that we are demonstrating the value of broad thinking about development questions, which are of fundamental importance to one of our core constituencies: the small farmers of the region’s maize and wheat-based farming systems.”

Crop and bio-economic modeling for an uncertain climate

Written by on December 19, 2016. Posted in Blogs.

Gideon Kruseman, CIMMYT ex-ante and foresight specialist presents household level bio-economic models at workshop. CIMMYT/Khondoker Mottaleb

Gideon Kruseman is CIMMYT’s ex-ante and foresight specialist.

The potential impact of climate change on agriculture and the complexity of possible adaptation responses require the application of new research methods and tools to develop adequate strategies. At a recent five-day training workshop titled “Crop and Bio-economic Modeling under Uncertain Climate,” scientists applied crop and bio-economic models to estimate biophysical and economic impacts of climate variability and change.

Crop system modeling is used to simulate yields for specific weather patterns, nutrient input levels and bio-economic household modeling involves using quantitative economic methodology to incorporate biological, chemical and/or physical processes to analyze the impact of technology development, policy interventions and such exogenous shocks as extreme weather events on the decision-making processes of smallholder farmers and related development indicators. Events influence results in two ways: the probability of occurrence will shape decision-making and actual occurrence will shape realized results.

During the training, which was organized and hosted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which took place in November in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, scientists examined how technology development and policy or development interventions may influence farm household decisions on resource allocation and cropping patterns.

The training was beneficial due to its “holistic approach to solve smallholder agricultural production problem using decision support tools,” said Theodrose Sisay from the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research.

Attendees learned in practical terms how shifting weather patterns will change farmer perception of the probability of occurrence of extreme events, which may influence subsequent cropping patterns and technology choices. Cropping system models shed light on the effects of different weather patterns on crop yields under varying management practices. Bio-economic household modeling then places those results in the context of smallholder livelihood strategies.

Bio-economic household model results demonstrated the conditions under which cropping patterns are likely to change as a result of resource constraints and household preferences. The analysis illustrated how cropping patterns may shift as a result of climate change:

Before climate change. After climate change.

Figure: comparison of model results of climate change scenarios

The workshop was organized under the Global Futures & Strategic Foresight (GFSF) project and the “Flagship 1” component of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), which in part explores global and regional foresight modeling tools.

Participants included representatives of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), as well as researchers from agricultural research institutes and universities from Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Uganda.

This was the third and last of a series of training workshops offered to same group of trainees since 2014. Not only did the 16 participants learn how to apply crop and bio-economic models allowing them to estimate biophysical and economic impacts of climate variability and change, but they also learned how to assess different adaptation options.

The tools they worked with included the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT), and a bio-economic household model using Gtree with the general algebraic modeling system (GAMS). The training involved plenary discussions, group work, and individual hands-on exercises.

The training program served as a refresher course on GAMS, said Janvier Egah, a socio-economist from Benin.

“Over time, I had forgotten everything,” he added. “With this training, I remembered the notions of the past course and learned new concepts such as integrating the costs of climate change in bio-economic models. These models interest me particularly and I want to write and submit proposals to apply them.”

The participants came with their own input data for the DSSAT cropping system model and learned how to calibrate the model. The participants developed climate change scenarios, ran simulations and interpreted the simulation outputs using graphical and statistical interfaces.

Workshop participants. Photo credit: CIMMYT

The participants, who have worked together in these workshops on three different occasions, indicated a strong willingness to continue collaborating after the conclusion of the project. They took steps to develop a concept note for a collaborative research grant with a major component related to the use of crop and bio-economic models.

The workshop had a stronger component related to the economic analysis of household decision-making than previous training sessions, and trainees used simulation models based on mathematical programming techniques.

At the conclusion of the workshop, participants expressed interest in pursuing further analysis of this type in the future as a complement to crop growth modelling.