In this op-ed, Harvard Professor Gabriela Soto Laveaga stresses the importance of tackling hunger as more than a technical problem to be addressed through scientific advancement alone, praising CGIAR for its community-centered & inclusive approach to food systems amid the climate crisis.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/22/throwing-money-problem-wont-solve-world-hunger/
“I wonder why I never considered using drip irrigation for all these years,” says Michael Duri, a 35-year-old farmer from Ward 30, Nyanga, Zimbabwe, as he walks through his 0.5-hectare plot of onions and potatoes. “This is by far the best method to water my crops.”
Duri is one of 30 beneficiaries of garden drip-kits installed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), an implementing partner under the Program for Growth and Resilience (PROGRESS) consortium, managed by the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund (ZRBF).
“In June 2020, I installed the drip kit across 0.07 hectares and quickly realized how much water I was saving through this technology and the reduced amount of physical effort I had to put in,” explains Duri. By September, he had invested in two water tanks and more drip lines to expand the area under drip irrigation to 0.5 hectares.
Water woes
Zimbabwe’s eastern highland districts like Nyanga are renowned for their diverse and abundant fresh produce. Farming families grow a variety of crops — potatoes, sugar beans, onions, tomatoes, leafy vegetables and garlic — all year round for income generation and food security.
Long poly-pipes lining the district — some stretching for more than 10 kilometers — use gravity to transport water from the mountains down to the villages and gardens. However, in the last five-to-ten years, increasing climate-induced water shortages, prolonged dry spells and high temperatures have depleted water reserves.
To manage the limited resources, farmers access water based on a rationing schedule to ensure availability across all areas. Often during the lean season, water volumes are insufficient for effectively irrigating the vegetable plots in good time, which leads to moisture stress, inconsistent irrigation and poor crop performance. Reports of cutting off or diverting water supply among farmers are high despite the local council’s efforts to schedule water distribution and access across all areas. “When water availability is low, it’s not uncommon to find internal conflicts in the village as households battle to access water resources,” explains Grace Mhande, an avid potato producer in Ward 22.
Climate-proofing gardens
Traditionally, flood, drag hose, bucket and sprinkler systems have been used as the main irrigation methods. However, according to Raymond Nazare, an engineer from the University of Zimbabwe, these traditional irrigation designs “waste water, are laborious, require the services of young able-bodied workers and use up a lot of time on the part of the farmers.”
Prudence Nyanguru, who grows tomatoes, potatoes, cabbages and sugar beans in Ward 30, says the limited number of sprinklers available for her garden meant she previously had to irrigate every other day, alternating the sprinkler and hose pipe while spending more than five hours to complete an average 0.05-hectare plot.
“Whereas before I would spend six hours shifting the sprinklers or moving the hose, I now just switch on the drip and return in about two or three hours to turn off the lines,” says Nyanguru.
The drip technology is also helping farmers in Nyanga adapt to climate change by providing efficient water use, accurate control over water application, minimizing water wastage and making every drop count.
“With the sprinkler and flood systems, we noticed how easily the much-needed fertile top soil washed away along with any fertilizer applied,” laments Vaida Matenhei, another farmer from Ward 30. Matenhei now enjoys the simple operation and steady precision irrigation from her drip-kit installation as she monitors her second crop of sugar beans.
Frédéric Baudron, a systems agronomist at CIMMYT, observes that Zimbabwe has a long history of irrigation, but this has mostly tended to be large-scale. “This means either expensive pivots owned by large-scale commercial farmers — a minority of the farming population in Zimbabwe as in much of sub-Saharan Africa — or capital-intensive irrigation schemes shared by a multitude of small-scale farmers, often poorly managed because of conflicts amongst users,” he says. A similar pattern can be seen with mechanization interventions, where Zimbabwe continues to rely on large tractors when smaller, and more affordable, machines would be more adapted to most farmers in the country.
“Very little is done to promote small-scale irrigation,” explains Baudron. “However, an installation with drip kits and a small petrol pump costs just over $1 per square meter.”
A disability-inclusive technology
The design of the drip-kit intervention also focused on addressing the needs of people with disabilities. At least five beneficiaries have experienced the limitations to full participation in farming activities as a result of physical barriers, access challenges and strenuous irrigation methods in the past.
For 37-year-old Simon Makanza from Ward 22, for example, his physical handicap made accessing and carrying water for his home garden extremely difficult. The installation of the drip-kit at Makanza’s homestead garden has created a barrier-free environment where he no longer grapples with uneven pathways to fetch water, or wells and pumps that are heavy to operate.
“I used to walk to that well about 500 meters away to fetch water using a bucket,” he explains. “This was painstaking given my condition and by the time I finished, I would be exhausted and unable to do any other work.”
The fixed drip installation in his plot has transformed how he works, and it is now easier for Makanza to operate the pump and switches for the drip lines with minimal effort.
Families living with people with disabilities are also realizing the advantages of time-saving and ease of operation of the drip systems. “I don’t spend all day in the field like I used to,” says George Nyamakanga, whose brother Barnabas who has a psychosocial disability. “Now, I have enough time to assist and care for my brother while producing enough to feed our eight-member household.”
By extension, the ease of operation and efficiency of the drip-kits also enables elderly farmers and the sick to engage in garden activities, with direct benefits for the nutrition and incomes of these vulnerable groups.
Scaling for sustained productivity
Since the introduction of the drip-kits in Nyanga, more farmers like Duri are migrating from flood and sprinkler irrigation and investing in drip irrigation technology. From the 30 farmers who had drip-kits installed, three have now scaled up after witnessing the cost-effective, labor-saving and water conservation advantages of drip irrigation.
Dorcas Matangi, an assistant research associate at CIMMYT, explains that use of drip irrigation ensures precise irrigation, reduces disease incidence, and maximal utilization of pesticides compared to sprinklers thereby increasing profitability of the farmer. “Although we are still to evaluate quantitatively, profit margin indicators on the ground are already promising,” she says.
Thomas Chikwiramadara and Christopher Chinhimbiti are producing cabbages on their shared plot, pumping water out of a nearby river. One of the advantages for them is the labor-saving component, particularly with weed management. Because water is applied efficiently near the crop, less water is available for the weeds in-between crop plants and plots with drip irrigation are thus far less infested with weeds than plots irrigated with buckets or with flood irrigation.
“This drip system works well especially with weed management,” explains Chinhimbiti. “Now we don’t have to employ any casual labor to help on our plot because the weeds can be managed easily.”
For a number of reasons, including limited interdisciplinary collaboration and a dearth of funding, revolutionary new plant research findings are not being used to improve crops.
“Translational research” — efforts to convert basic research knowledge about plants into practical applications in crop improvement — represents a necessary link between the world of fundamental discovery and farmers’ fields. This kind of research is often seen as more complicated and time consuming than basic research and less sexy than working at the “cutting edge” where research is typically divorced from agricultural realities in order to achieve faster and cleaner results; however, modern tools — such as genomics, marker-assisted breeding, high throughput phenotyping of crop traits using drones, and speed breeding techniques — are making it both faster and cost-effective.
In a new article in Crop Breeding, Genetics, and Genomics, wheat physiologist Matthew Reynolds of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and co-authors make the case for increasing not only funding for translational research, but the underlying prerequisites: international and interdisciplinary collaboration towards focused objectives and a visionary approach by funding organizations.
“It’s ironic,” said Reynolds. “Many breeding programs have invested in the exact technologies — such as phenomics, genomics and informatics — that can be powerful tools for translational research to make real improvements in yield and adaptation to climate, disease and pest stresses. But funding to integrate these tools in front-line breeding is quite scarce, so they aren’t reaching their potential value for crop improvement.”
Many research findings are tested for their implications for wheat improvement by the International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) at the IWYP Hub, a centralized technical platform for evaluating innovations and building them into elite wheat varieties, co-managed by CIMMYT at its experimental station in Obregon, Mexico.
IWYP has its roots with the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT), which in 2010 formalized the need to boost both wheat yield potential as well as its adaptation to heat and drought stress. The network specializes in translational research, harnessing scientific findings from around the world to boost genetic gains in wheat, and capitalizing on the research and pre-breeding outputs of WHEAT and the testing networks of the International Wheat Improvement Network (IWIN). These efforts also led to the establishment of the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC).
“We’ve made extraordinary advances in understanding the genetic basis of important traits,“ said IWYP’s Richard Flavell, a co-author of the article. “But if they aren’t translated into crop production, their societal value is lost.”
The authors, all of whom have proven track records in both science and practical crop improvement, offer examples where exactly this combination of factors led to the impactful application of innovative research findings.
Other successes include new approaches for improving the yield potential of spring wheat and the discovery of traits that increase the climate resilience of maize and sorghum.
One way researchers apply academic research to field impact is through phenotyping. Involving the use of cutting edge technologies and tools to measure detailed and hard to recognize plant traits, this area of research has undergone a revolution in the past decade, thanks to more affordable digital measuring tools such as cameras and sensors and more powerful and accessible computing power and accessibility.
Scientists are now able to identify at a detailed scale plant traits that show how efficiently a plant is using the sun’s radiation for growth, how deep its roots are growing to collect water, and more — helping breeders select the best lines to cross and develop.
Phenotyping is key to understanding the physiological and genetic bases of plant growth and adaptation and has wide application in crop improvement programs. Recording trait data through sophisticated non-invasive imaging, spectroscopy, image analysis, robotics, high-performance computing facilities and phenomics databases allows scientists to collect information about traits such as plant development, architecture, plant photosynthesis, growth or biomass productivity from hundreds to thousands of plants in a single day. This revolution was the subject of discussion at a 2016 gathering of more than 200 participants at the International Plant Phenotyping Symposium hosted by CIMMYT in Mexico and documented in a special issue of Plant Science.
There is currently an explosion in plant science. Scientists have uncovered the genetic basis of many traits, identified genetic markers to track them and developed ways to measure them in breeding programs. But most of these new findings and ideas have yet to be tested and used in breeding programs, wasting their potentially enormous societal value.
Establishing systems for generating and testing new hypotheses in agriculturally relevant systems must become a priority, Reynolds states in the article. However, for success, this will require interdisciplinary, and often international, collaboration to enable established breeding programs to retool. Most importantly, scientists and funding organizations alike must factor in the long-term benefits as well as the risks of not taking timely action. Translating a research finding into an improved crop that can save lives takes time and commitment. With these two prerequisites, basic plant research can and should positively impact food security.
Authors would like to acknowledge the following funding organizations for their commitment to translational research.
The International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP) is supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK; the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the USA; and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) in Switzerland.
The Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC) is supported by the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) Project by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) of the Government of Mexico; previous projects that underpinned HeDWIC were supported by Australia’s Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC).
The Queensland Government’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries in collaboration with The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) have provided long-term investment for the public sector sorghum pre-breeding program in Australia, including research on the stay-green trait. More recently, this translational research has been led by the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) within The University of Queensland.
ASI validation work and ASI translation and extension components with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, respectively.
Financial support for the maize proVA work was partially provided by HarvestPlus (www.HarvestPlus.org), a global alliance of agriculture and nutrition research institutions working to increase the micronutrient density of staple food crops through biofortification. The CGIAR Research Program MAIZE (CRP-MAIZE) also supported this research.
The CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT) is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) as a primary research partner. Funding comes from CGIAR, national governments, foundations, development banks and other agencies, including the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Got a question about wheat? Whether you are a scientist, a researcher or simply interested in learning more about the vital staple crop that provides 20 percent of the world’s calories, the Wheat Atlas can help.
The online resource developed by the Global Wheat Program (GWP) at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) provides statistics on wheat production and trade, wheat varieties, production challenges and international wheat nurseries, which evaluate the suitability of wheat to diverse environments.
“Although the primary users are wheat scientists, we know from anecdotal evidence that donors and policymakers are also using it,” said Petr Kosina, who led the development and recent revamp of the interactive website.
The Wheat Atlas was the brainchild of Hans Braun, GWP director, he explained, adding that the project evolved into a collaboration involving Kosina, web master Paul Moncada, senior scientist David Hodson and Tom Payne, head of the Wheat Germplasm Bank, which stores seeds. CIMMYT’s Geographic Information Services team created maps.
Improvements include a redesign of site structure and navigation based on user trends observed in data provided by Google Analytics and a 2013 survey. The website now features daily wheat news on the homepage.
“The work is ongoing,” Kosina said. “We’re in continuous ‘beta mode’, improving the functionality of the site and user experience. For example, we’re developing an online submission form for users to input data on newly released wheat varieties and a wheat scientists’ ‘hall of fame’. Before the end of the year we’ll also improve data visualizations.”
The website provides up-to-date information on new wheat varieties being released worldwide, as well as data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the World Bank and the U.N. Development Programme.
Since the official launch of the Wheat Atlas in 2009, web traffic has increased to an average of 2,200 unique visitors a month, said Kosina, who works closely with webmaster Moncada.
“We’re very happy with recent access statistics, which have improved since the Search Engine Optimization we did earlier this year, but we need secure funding for bigger plans and development,” he said. “We need a new source of funding.”
The Wheat Atlas was supported until 2013 by the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, which aims to reduce the devastating impact of stem rust disease on wheat, led by Cornell University.
The CIMMYT library has a large historic database of scientific publications with descriptions of new wheat varieties compiled over a 15-year time span, Kosina said.
“My dream is to consolidate this database with the Wheat Atlas and GRIS, the world’s largest database of wheat germplasm, with more than 160,000 accessions, and make it available online in the Wheat Atlas – this would be absolutely unique and smashing,” he added.
Every two years, the site managers gather information to provide a snapshot of the most important wheat varieties grown by farmers in developing countries, including acreage estimates. Mina Lantican in CIMMYT’s socio-economics program is conducting the 2014 review as part of an impact assessment study.