Location: Africa

CIMMYT’s work in Africa helps farmers access new maize and wheat systems-based technologies, information and markets, raising incomes and enhancing crop resilience to drought and climate change. CIMMYT sets priorities in consultation with ministries of agriculture, seed companies, farming communities and other stakeholders in the maize and wheat value chains. Our activities in Africa are wide ranging and include: breeding maize for drought tolerance and low-fertility soils, and for resistance to insect pests, foliar diseases and parasitic weeds; sustainably intensifying production in maize- and wheat-based systems; and investigating opportunities to reduce micronutrient and protein malnutrition among women and young children.

CIMMYT promotes gender awareness in agriculture research and development in Ethiopia

Written by Mike Listman on March 7, 2018. Posted in Features.

CIMMYT research in Ethiopia and other countries has shown that, in communities where women and men work together and women have access to knowledge and resources and share in decision making, everyone benefits. Photo: CIMMYT/Apollo Habtamu

Gender awareness and gender-sensitive approaches are slowly spreading into agricultural research, extension, and policy in Ethiopia, based on recent statements from a cross section of professionals and practitioners in the country.

An initiative led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is helping to drive evidence-based approaches to foster gender equality and include it in mainstream agricultural research.

Moges Bizuneh, deputy head of the agricultural office of Basona District, attended a CIMMYT-organized workshop in which Ethiopia-specific results were presented from GENNOVATE, a large-scale qualitative study involving focus groups and interviews with more than 7,500 rural men and women in 26 developing countries. “I have learned a lot about gender and it’s not just about women, but about both women and men,” said Bizuneh.

The District of Basona has nearly 30,000 households, 98 percent of which depend on agriculture for food and livelihoods but have access to an average of only 1.5 hectares of land. More than 10,000 of those households are headed by females, because many males and youth have left Basona to seek opportunities in large cities or other countries.

Bizuneh and his colleagues are working with a district gender specialist and a women and gender unit to make gender sensitive approaches a regular part of their activities. In this, he concedes that he and other professionals are contending with “deep-rooted social and cultural norms around divisions of labor and a lack of awareness regarding gender issues.”

One surprise for Bizuneh, from group discussions regarding innovation and involvement in CIMMYT’s gender research, was that women said it was important to share experiences with other farmers and obtain new knowledge.

“No men mentioned that,” he remarked. “This shows that, if provided with information and support, women can innovate.”

Kristie Drucza, CIMMYT gender and development specialist, has been studying, publishing on, and presenting widely about people-centered, evidence-based approaches for gender equality that are being taken up by agirculture for development professionals. Photo: CIMMYT/Apollo Habtamu — Kristie Drucza, CIMMYT gender and development specialist, has been studying, publishing on, and presenting widely about people-centered, evidence-based approaches for gender equality that are being taken up by agriculture-for-development professionals. Photo: CIMMYT/Apollo Habtamu

Women and men plan and change together

Another product from the project is a 2017 review of gender-transformative methodologies for Ethiopia’s agriculture sector, co-authored by Kristie Drucza, project lead, and Wondimu Abebe, a research assistant, both from CIMMYT.

Drucza presented on the people-centered methodologies described in the publication at a recent workshop in Addis Ababa, offering diverse lessons of use for research and development professionals.

“The methodologies involve participatory research to help households and communities assess their situation and develop solutions to problems,” said Drucza. “By working with men and boys and allowing communities to set the pace of change, these approaches reduce the likelihood of a backlash against women—something that too frequently accompanies gender-focused programs.”

Annet Abenakyo Mulema, social scientist in gender at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), intends to apply some of the same methods to help rural families understand household and community gender dynamics and their role in managing the families’ goats, sheep, and other livestock.

Annet Abenakyo Mulema, social scientist in gender at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is applying participatory research and gender-sensitive methods to help households and communities assess their situation and develop solutions to problems. Photo: ILRI archives

“A 2015 study we did uncovered gender relationships associated with disease transmission,” Mulema explained. “Women and girls normally clean the animal pens and so are exposed to infections. Social conventions in the community make women feel inferior and not empowered to speak out about animal health, which is considered a man’s domain. We encouraged men and women to share roles and work together, and this made it easier for both to quickly identify disease outbreaks at early stages and prevent infections from spreading throughout the herd or to humans.”

Mulema said Drucza’s workshop helped her to understand and appreciate methodologies such as social analysis and action, community conversations, and gender action learning systems to support a shared, local response to the problem. “As another outcome, we spoke to service providers, such as veterinarians and extension agents, who needed to understand how gender related to animal health and the fact that the relationships between women and men in a community can change.”

Meskerem Mulatu, gender and nutrition specialist in Ethiopia’s Agricultural Growth Program II (AGP II) Capacity Development Support Facility (CDSF), said her group invited Drucza to speak on gender and social norms at a national workshop organized by AGP II CDSF in October 2017.

“Our event was on gender, nutrition, and climate-smart agriculture,” according to Meskerem. “Many technologies are gender-sensitive but research and extension are not giving this adequate attention because there is no common operational definition. Their preconception is ‘technology is technology; it’s the same for men and women.’ Drucza’s evidence-based presentation showed that men and women may have different technology demands.”

Meskerem is going to train district agricultural officers to use a transformative methodology identified by Drucza. “Kristie’s report is really good timing,” she said. “We were thinking of doing something in terms of gender and these methodologies make sense.”

Recording data on changes in social norms

In June 2017, Drucza presented the findings of her meta-analysis of evaluations of gender in Ethiopian agricultural development at a senior staff meeting of the Ethiopia office of CARE, the global humanitarian organization. Among the 26 agricultural program evaluations considered, explained Drucza, only three had strong findings, a heavy inclusion of gender, and evidence of changes in social norms—and all three were CARE projects.

Moges Bizuneh helps lead an agricultural office in Basona District, home to more than 10,000 female-headed households, and is working to support innovation by women. Photo: CIMMYT/Mike Listman

One was the Graduation with Resilience to Achieve Sustainable Development (GRAD) initiative. As an outcome of Drucza’s presentation, CARE is refining the way it records certain social data, according to Elisabeth Farmer, Deputy Chief of Party for the CARE’s Feed the Future Ethiopia–Livelihoods for Resilience Activity project, which emerged from GRAD.

“Our baseline study protocol and questionnaire for the new project hadn’t been finalized yet,” Farmer said. “We were thinking through the difference between using a scale that scores responses along a range, such as a Likert scale, versus asking respondents “yes or no”-type questions, for instance regarding women’s access to information or equitable decision-making in the household.

“As Drucza explained, when it comes to gender norms, you may not get all the way from a “no” to a “yes”, but only from a “2” to “3”, and we want to make sure that we are capturing these smaller shifts, so we incorporated scales with ranges into our baseline and will ensure that these are used in future assessments to track transformations in social norms.”

According to Drucza, who leads the CIMMYT project “Understanding gender in wheat-based livelihoods for enhanced WHEAT R4D impact in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia,” funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, research must be relevant and useful.

“I’m happy to learn that our results are useful to a diverse range of actors, from development partners to policy makers and local agricultural officers,” she said.

New Publications: Storage of maize products results in vitamin loss

Written by on February 15, 2018. Posted in Publications.

New Pubs

Biofortification of crops through traditional breeding techniques has become very common in the fight against malnutrition globally. Biofortified provitamin A maize is bred to produce increased carotenoids (a naturally occurring molecule also found in carrots) to reduce vitamin A deficiency (VAD). VAD affects 190 million children globally and causes an estimated 500,000 cases of preventable blindness per year. A study in 2014 showed that provitamin A maize, was as effective as a high-dose supplement at increasing vitamin A stores in Zambian children.

However, processing and storage can drastically reduce the level of carotenoids in these foods by the time they are consumed. The authors of a new study explain that processing of maize grains makes vitamins more bioavailable, but that exposure to heat, light and air can oxidize carotenoids, reducing the amount remaining in food.

The study shows that when stored for six months in traditional conditions, up to 65 percent of provitamin A may be lost, but it differs among maize varieties, with some varieties losing 40 percent of their carotenoid content in the first two weeks.

The study also examined processing and cooking methods of biofortified maize and eggs from hens who ate this maize to find the best and worst conditions for carotenoid retention. They found that boiling whole grain maize into porridge had the best retention rates of any tested processing methods, with retention rates over 100 percent, and deep frying maize and scrambling eggs had the lowest retention rates of around 70 and 80 percent, respectively.

Overall, the authors say cooking allowed both maize and eggs to retain upwards of 80 percent of effects carotenoid content, but storage at or above room temperature quickly degraded the carotenoid content. They suggest that whole grain and courser ground maize may be a good way to retain more provitamin A while sitting on a shelf, but say more research is necessary.

Read the full study “Retention of Carotenoids in Biofortified Maize Flour and β-Cryptoxanthin-Enhanced Eggs after Household Cooking” and check out other publications by CIMMYT staff below:

A white paper on global wheat health based on scenario development and analysis. Savary, S., Djurle, A., Yuen, J., Ficke, A., Rossi, V., Esker, P.D., Fernandes, J.M.C., Del Ponte, E.M., Kumar, J., Madden, L.V., Paul, P., McRoberts, N., Singh, P.K., Huber, L., Pope de Vallavielle, C., Saint-Jea, S., Willocquet, L. In: Phytopathology v. 107, no. 10, p. 1109-1122.
Characterization of leaf rust and stripe rust resistance in spring wheat ‘Chilero’. Ponce-Molina, L.J., Huerta-Espino, J., Singh, R.P., Basnet, B.R., Alvarado Beltrán, G., Randhawa, M.S., Caixia Lan, Aguilar Rincón, V.H., Lobato-Ortiz, R., García Zavala, J.J. In: Plant disease v. 102, no. 2, p. 421-427.
Evaluation of grain yield of heat stress resilient maize hybrids in Nepal. Koirala, K.B., Giri, Y.P., Rijal, T.R., Zaidi, P.H., Ajanahalli, R.S., Shrestha, J. In: International Journal of Applied Sciences and Biotechnology v. 5, no. 4, p. 511-522.
Genetic analysis of heat adaptive traits in tropical maize (Zea mays L.). Krishnaji Jodage., Kuchanur, P.H., Zaidi, P.H., Patil, A., Seetharam, K., Vinayan, M.T., Arunkumar, B. In: International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences v. 7, no. 1, p. 3237-3246.
Genetic analysis of morpho-physiological traits and yield components in F2 partial diallel crosses of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Abidine Fellah, Z.E., Hannach, A., Bouzerzour, H., Dreisigacker, S., Yahyaoui, A.H., Sehgal, D. In: Revista Facultad Nacional de Agronomía v. 70, no. 3, p. 8237-8250.
Genomics selection in plant breeding : methods, models, and perspectives. Crossa, J., Pérez-Rodríguez, P., Cuevas, J., Montesinos-Lopez, O.A., Jarquín, D., De los Campos, G., Burgueño, J., Camacho-González, J. M., Perez-Elizalde, S., Beyene, Y., Dreisigacker, S., Ravi Gopal Singh, Zhang, X., Gowda, M., Roorkiwal, M., Rutkoski, J., Varshney, R. K. In: Trends in Plant Science v. 20, no. 11, p. 961-975.
Grain yield and stability of white early maize hybrids in the highland valleys of Mexico. Torres Flores, J. L., Mendoza García, B., Prasanna, B.M., Alvarado Beltrán, G., San Vicente, F.M., Crossa, J. In: Crop Science v. 57, no. 6, p. 3002-3015.
High-throughput measurement methodologies for developing nutrient-dense crops. Guild, G., Parkes, E., Nutti, M., Palacios-Rojas, N., Stangoulis, J. In: African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development v. 17, no. 2, p. 11941-11954.
Retention of carotenoids in biofortified maize flour and β-Cryptoxanthin-Enhanced eggs after household cooking. Sowa, M., Jiaoying Yu, Palacios-Rojas, N., Goltz, S. R., Howe, J. A., Davis, C.R., Rocheford, T., Tanumihardjo, S. A. In: ACS Omega no. 2, p. 7320-7328.
Risk assessment and spread of the potentially invasive Ceratitis rosa Karsch and Ceratitis quilicii De Meyer, Mwatawala and Virgilio sp. Nov. using life-cycle simulation models : implications for phytosanitary measures and management. Tanga, C. M., Khamis, F. M., Tonnang, H., Rwomushana, I., Mosomtai, G., Mohamed, S. A., Ekesi, S. In: PLoS One v. 13, no. 1:e0189138

Screening cycle for deadly MLN virus set to begin in Kenya during April 2018

Written by on February 12, 2018. Posted in News.

The maize lethal necrosis (MLN) artificial inoculation screening site in Naivasha, Kenya will begin its phenotyping (screening/ indexing) cycle of 2018 at the begining of January 2018 and in four other intervals. Interested organizations from both the private and public sectors are invited to send maize germplasm for screening.

In 2013, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) jointly established the MLN screening facility at the KALRO Naivasha research station in Kenya’s Rift Valley with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

MLN was first discovered in Kenya in 2011 and quickly spread to other parts of eastern Africa; the disease causes premature plant death and unfilled, poorly formed maize cobs, and can lead to up to 100 percent yield loss in farmers’ fields.

CIMMYT and partners are dedicated to stopping the spread of this deadly maize disease by effectively managing the risk of MLN on maize production through screening and identifying MLN-resistant germplasm. The MLN screening facility supports countries in sub-Saharan Africa to screen maize germplasm (for hybrid, inbred and open pollinated varieties) against MLN in a quarantined environment.

This is the largest dedicated MLN screening facility in East Africa. Since its inception in 2013, the facility has evaluated more than 120,000 accessions (more than 210,000 rows of maize) from more than 15 multinational and national seed companies and national research programs.

Partners can now plan for annual MLN Phenotyping (screening/ indexing) during 2018 with the schedule listed below. The improved and streamlined approach for MLN phenotyping should enable our partners to accelerate breeding programs to improve resistance for Maize MLN for sub-Saharan Africa.

2018 annual phenotyping (screening/ indexing) schedule:

When the seeds are available	Planting Period – Planned	MLN Screening / Indexing
December	Second Week of January	MLN Indexing
March	Second week of April	MLN Screening
June	Second Week of July	MLN Indexing
August	Second Week of September	MLN Screening
October	Second week of November	MLN Indexing

More information about the disease and resources for farmers can be found on CIMMYT’s MLN portal.

Please note that it can take up to six weeks to process imports and clear shipments.

For assistance in obtaining import permits and necessary logistics for the upcoming screening, please contact:

Dr. L.M. Suresh
Tel: +254 20 7224600 (direct)

Email: l.m.suresh@cgiar.org

CIMMYT–Kenya, ICRAF House
United Nations Avenue, Gigiri
P.O. Box 1041–00621
Nairobi, Kenya.

“Bazooka” maize makes a bang in Uganda

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on February 1, 2018. Posted in News.

Unprecedented droughts have hit Uganda’s farmers hard in recent years, affecting household income and food security by drastically cutting maize yields, a staple crop in the country. In 2016, at least 1.3 million people in Uganda faced hunger and urgently needed food aid after a dry spell decimated harvests, leaving some with less than one meal per day. When MLN, a maize disease with the ability to cause extreme or complete crop loss in maize, arrived in Uganda in 2013, farmers needed a variety that could cope.

Enter, “bazooka,” a new maize variety that is giving hope to Ugandan farmers facing climate change-related drought and MLN.

Developed by Uganda’s National Crops Research Resources Institute (NaCRRI) and National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO) using traditional breeding methods and materials from the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), bazooka maize has natural resistance to drought and MLN. Produced and distributed by the Naseco seed company, bazooka is gaining immense popularity in Uganda.

300 million people depend on maize as their main food source in sub-Saharan Africa, where many smallholder farmers do not have access to irrigation systems, and extended drought can be a death sentence for their crops. Now, with new drought tolerant varieties such as bazooka, they can expect better harvests.

To read the full story, please click here to view the original article from Seed World and CS Monitor.

A fall armyworm on a damaged leaf in Nigeria, 2017. (Photo: G. Goergen/IITA)

New technical guide to help farmers protect against fall armyworm

Written by on January 30, 2018. Posted in News.

Nairobi, Kenya (CIMMYT) – A new comprehensive integrated pest management (IPM)-based technical guide produced by international experts will help scientists, extension agents and farmers to tackle the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), which has rapidly spread across the African continent in the last two years, decimating maize crops in its path.

“Fall Armyworm in Africa: A Guide for Integrated Pest Management,” jointly produced by Feed the Future, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE), provides tips on fall armyworm identification as well as technologies and practices for effective control.

Native to North America, the fall armyworm has recently emerged as a major threat in Africa, where it has been identified in over 30 countries since it was first confirmed on the continent in January 2016. The pest can potentially feed on 80 different crop species but has a preference for maize, which poses a significant threat to the food security, income and livelihoods of over 300 million African smallholder farm families that consume maize as a staple crop.

“The potential impact of the fall armyworm as a major food security and economic risk for African nations cannot be overstated,” said Martin Kropff, director general at CIMMYT.

If proper control measures are not implemented, the fall armyworm could cause extensive maize yield losses of up to $6.2 billion per year in just 12 countries in Africa where its presence has been confirmed, according to the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI).

“The fall armyworm poses an enormous and wide-scale risk to the livelihoods of several million African smallholders, and requires urgent deployment of an IPM strategy and quick response from all stakeholders,” said B.M. Prasanna, director of MAIZE and the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT. “The Fall Armyworm Integrated Pest Management Guide provides comprehensive details on the best management practices to help smallholder farmers effectively and safely control the pest while simultaneously protecting people, animals and the environment.”

To read “Fall Armyworm in Africa: A Guide for Integrated Pest Management,” please click here.

Emergency seed fuels quick farm recovery in drought-affected Ethiopia

Written by Mike Listman on January 11, 2018. Posted in Features.

Worker rogueing a wheat seed production plot. Photo: CIMMYT/A.Habtamu.

In response to Ethiopia’s worst drought in 50 years and the country’s critical shortage of maize and wheat seed for sowing in 2016, Ethiopian organizations, seed producers, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) partnered to deliver to farmers over 3,400 tons of high quality seed that was sown on more than 100,300 hectares.

“We went three years without rain,” says farmer Usman Kadir, whose 1.5-hectare homestead in Wanjo Bebele village, Halaba Special Woreda, supports a household of 11 persons. “We were able to eat thanks to emergency food programs.” In 2017, Kadir used emergency maize seed to sow half a hectare and harvested 3 tons, getting his farm back on its feet. “If more new improved varieties come, we want to work with you and expand our farming operation.”

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) of the U.S. Ethiopia mission, seed relief complemented international and national food aid, helping farm families to quickly grow crops after several seasons of erratic or failed rains in Ethiopia and the catastrophic 2015-16 El Niño droughts. At that time, more than 10 million people struggled to find food, as eastern Ethiopia faced crop losses from 50 to 90 percent of expected yields.

“This effort helped rescue the food security and livelihoods of more than 271,000 rural households and 1.6 million individuals in Ethiopia’s Amhara, Oromia, Tigray, and SNNP regions, and strengthened seed systems to address future climate, disease, and pest crises,” said Bekele Abeyo, CIMMYT wheat scientist who led the seed relief initiative.

Farmers are using maize and wheat varieties suitable for drought-affected areas and resistant to prevalent crop diseases. Photo: CIMMYT/A.Habtamu — Farmers are growing maize and wheat varieties suitable for drought- and disease-affected areas. Photo: CIMMYT/ A. Habtamu

Wheat and maize: Mainstays of food security

Agriculture provides 42 percent of Ethiopia’s GDP, 77 percent of employment, and 84 percent of exports. Subsistence, smallholder farmers predominate, making their living from less than two hectares of land. Wheat and maize are the most important crops for food security; they are also at the center of Ethiopia’s increasingly vibrant agricultural output markets and have been the focus in recent years of public investment to raise national production.

Maize and wheat production in Ethiopia depends on rainfall, making the unpredictable weather patterns caused by climate change exceptionally detrimental here. Various studies predict an average 30 percent reduction in farm incomes due to climate change impacts, including greater extremes in temperatures and rainfall (floods, droughts) and the emergence of new pest and disease strains. Research shows that reduced precipitation is already holding back wheat yields.

To address this, experts identified maize and wheat varieties suitable for drought-affected areas and highly resistant to prevalent crop diseases. Of the maize varieties, some 10 percent were quality protein maize, which carries enhanced levels of key amino acids for protein synthesis in humans.

“This effort also provided training for district and zonal development agents in crop protection, agronomy, drought mitigation practices, and seed systems,” said Abeyo. “Finally, five women seed producer associations received wheat seed threshers and a large union of farmer seed producer cooperatives received a maize sheller through the initiative. This equipment will greatly expedite their operations and contribute to the expanded and more reliable access of farmers to affordable, quality seed in the future.”

Partners and contributors

Emergency relief seed was sourced through diverse CIMMYT partnerships, including producers in the USAID-funded “Drought Tolerant Maize for Seed Scaling Project” (DTMASS) and “Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative.” Stakeholders included the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MoANR), the Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BoANR), public and private seed companies/enterprises, farmer cooperative unions, federal and regional research institutes, and non-government organizations working in target areas. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) helped deliver seed to drought-affected districts and jointly organized training and workshops.

Click here to read a full report on the emergency seed relief initiative.

Women are the foundation for change in rural Ethiopia

Written by on January 9, 2018. Posted in Features.

The idea that “Educating women/girls is nothing but a loss,” used to be a common sentiment amongst members of rural Ethiopian communities where the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia (NuME) project works. Now one is more likely to hear “Women are the foundation for change.”

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)-led NuME project is reducing food insecurity in Ethiopia by increasing the country’s capacity to feed itself. The project is improving household food and nutritional security, especially for young children and women, through shifting gender norms and the adoption of Quality Protein Maize (QPM).

QPM refers to a type of maize biofortified with two essential amino acids through traditional breeding to improve the inadequacy of protein quality of the conventional maize grown widely by farmers. Consumption of QPM instead of conventional maize leads to increase in the rate of growth in infants and young children with mild to moderate undernutrition from populations in which maize is the major staple food.

According to the World Bank, women contribute 40-60 percent of the labor in agricultural production in Ethiopia and play an important role in income generation, as well as unpaid household tasks. However, many women face severely restricted access to resources and services and lack control over income, greatly hindering their participation in and benefit from new innovations.

A community conversation session in Shebedino, Ethiopia. Photo: Tsegaye, M./SNNPR.

Few programs have specifically considered gender relations when implementing new initiatives in communities, however, when NuME found lower participation of women in the community-based promotion and dissemination of QPM, adapted community conversations were launched in two selected project woredas, or districts – Shebedino and Meskan – for a nine-month pilot in an attempt to raise women’s role in the project.

Community conversation (CC) is a facilitated approach based on the principle that communities have the capacity to identify their societal, economic and political challenges; set priorities; mobilize human, physical and financial resources; plan for action and address their challenges sustainably. It focuses on people’s strengths, resources and how they relate to challenges or problems communities face.

The people benefiting from a CC-driven project set priorities and create a plan of action to mobilize resources to address their challenges sustainably. This helps communities develop a sense of ownership, use local resources and take responsibility to bring about sustainable changes.

Because this approach involves the entire community, it also includes traditionally marginalized groups like women and youth.

When NuME first started community conversations, seating was very rigid due to cultural and religious traditions, but as the sessions continue paving the way for more community awareness on issues around gender norms and stereotypes, the seating has become much more mixed.

A facilitator from Shebedino woreda said, “Participants can’t wait for the bi-monthly conversations and they never want to miss them. These exchanges have helped men and women to get together and discuss their concerns, which was not a common practice before.”

“Women have begun raising their voices during community conversation meetings, while they used to be too shy and afraid to speak and very much reserved about sharing their ideas in public,” a female participant from Meskan woreda reported.

Community conversation participants have started changing the traditional gender stereotypes.

Through debate and the sharing of opinions, and more active participation from women, community conversations have educated participants on gender inequality, its prevalence and harm and have allowed men and women community members to exchange ideas about nutrition more effectively.

The NuME project will continue into 2019. Read more about how CIMMYT is working to equally boost the livelihoods of women, youth and men here.

The NuME Project is funded by Global Affairs Canada with major implementing partners the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MoANR), the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA)/Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG2000) and Farm Radio International (FRI).

Ethiopian farmers profit from scaled-up, fast-track production of disease resistant wheat seed

Written by Mike Listman on December 7, 2017. Posted in Features.

A sunny November day brings hundreds of farmer seed producers to Doyogena, a scenic highland village in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNP). The visitors form a bustling line to collect more than $90 each – on average – in profits from representatives of the Zereta Kembata Seed Multiplication and Marketing Union.

Farmers in line at Doyogena. Photo: CIMMYT/A. Habtamu — Ethiopian farmer seed producers collect payment at the Zereta Kembata Seed Multiplication and Marketing Union facility, in Doyogena. Photo: CIMMYT/A. Habtamu

“The union receives seed grown by more than 1,100 farmers, several hundred of whom are women, belonging to 8 farmer cooperatives,” said Yosief Balewold, general manager of the union.

With help from Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, Zereta Kembata began in 2016 to collect, clean, pack, and sell seed of wheat, potato, sorghum, and faba bean. “This year we marketed nearly 27 tons of the new, disease resistant wheat seed; that’s enough to sow around 270 hectares of the crop.”

Pitted against a yearly onslaught of fast-evolving fungal diseases that can infect as much as $200 million worth of the crops they are growing, more than 75,000 small-scale wheat farmers in Ethiopia’s 4 major wheat-growing regions will have gained access by late 2017 to a vital asset—over 400 tons of new, disease resistant wheat varieties of wheat seed, much of it produced by other farmers.

Marketed in tandem with science-based recommendations for growing wheat, the annual seed supply has steadily increased since 2014 through the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We’re energizing and diversifying Ethiopia’s wheat seed sector, partly by involving and benefitting both formal and farmer seed producers, including women and men,” said Bekele Abeyo, a CIMMYT scientist who leads the project.

With money from union shares purchased by farmer cooperatives and a regulatory 30 percent reinvestment of earnings, the union is building a large warehouse to store seed. In a smaller shack nearby sits a 0.75 ton steel seed cleaner donated by the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative, which has been working with Zereta Kembata and other seed producers identified as outstanding by SNNP policymakers.

Abebe Abora, farmer in the Doyogena District of Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNP), has been a member of a seed production cooperative for four years. “Because of modern technology such as improved wheat varieties, farming is better for me than it was for my father,” he said. Photo: CIMMYT/A. Habtamu — Abebe Abora, farmer in the Doyogena District of Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNP), has been a member of a seed production cooperative for four years. “Modern technology such as improved wheat varieties has made farming better for me than it was for my father,” he said. Photo: CIMMYT/A. Habtamu

“Ethiopia has seen a rapid rise in recent years of new and deadly strains of stem rust and yellow rust, wheat adversaries since biblical times that have lately mutated to overcome resistance genes bred into many modern wheat varieties,” said Ayele Badebo, a CIMMYT wheat pathologist based in Ethiopia. “Farmers must swiftly begin to sow a range of varieties bearing new resistance genes, but limited access to the seed has been a bottleneck.”

In addition to assisting government-managed seed producers and 4 seed companies, through the initiative CIMMYT supports 10 farmer unions that purchase, pack, and sell the seed grown by numerous farmer cooperatives, as well as 12 farmer seed production associations, including 5 women’s groups, who profit from growing and selling quality seed of the new varieties.

“The Seed Scaling Initiative gives wheat farmers 25-50 kilograms of wheat seed, based on land availability, to kick-start their seed production operation,” explained Terefe Fitta, manager of the Seed Scaling Initiative. “The farmers pay back the ‘loan’ at harvest with the same amount of seed, which is given to other prospective farmer seed producers, and so on.”

A critical innovation of the initiative has been to link farmer seed producers directly with sources of “early-generation” seed, principally state and federal researchers. “The project has also brought on board laboratories that monitor seed production and test harvested seed, certifying it for marketing,” said Badebo, citing those accomplishments as lasting legacies of the Initiative.

Women seize chance to advance

Recognizing the critical role of women in Ethiopian agriculture and rural communities, the Seed Scaling Initiative is supporting several women’s seed producer groups. An example is the Tembo Awtena Women’s Seed Producers Association, in Angacha District, SNNP.

Established in 2014, Tembo Awtena is the first women’s cooperative in the district. The group first tried to bake and sell bread but reformed in 2015 to produce seed, having heard that it was profitable from other farmer cooperatives.

Through the Seed Scaling Initiative, CIMMYT gave the association around two tons of seed to start and Ethiopia’s Southern Seed Enterprise purchased the entire first year of seed production at a 20 percent premium over market price because the quality was so good, according to Amarech Desta, Tembo Awtena chairwoman.

Amarech Desta, Tembo Awtena chairwoman. Photo: CIMMYT/A. Habtamu — Amarech Desta (left), Tembo Awtena chairwoman, with fellow farmer and association member Desalech Ashamo. Photo: CIMMYT/A. Habtamu

“In 2016, with support from CIMMYT, we sold more than $7,400 worth of seed,” said Desta, adding that word of the association’s success had attracted 30 additional women farmers in 2017, bringing the total membership to 133.

Desalech Ashamo, an association member who is a single head of household, received nearly $300 for the seed she grew in 2017 and used the earnings to paint her house. “A big advantage is that all our seed is sold in one lot, rather than piecemeal, so we receive a lump sum that can be used for a significant household project.”

Desta explained that, despite Angacha being a very traditional community, men support women’s seed production activities. “My husband knows the benefits are for all and the men even help us with field activities.”

Tembo Awtena members are especially pleased at being one of the three women’s seed production groups in the Oromia and SNNP regions to receive seed threshers recently through the Seed Scaling Initiative. Association members had been threshing the wheat seed manually, a long and laborious process, according to Desta. “With the new machine we will be able thresh in one hour what would take us three days by hand,” she said.

The chairwoman also has plans for an office, a storage area, a milling machine, opening a shop to sell farm supplies, and gaining recognition and publicity to share their story with others who may benefit.

Power from valued partnerships

The success of the Wheat Seed Scaling Initiative depends on the commitment and contributions of diverse national and global partners, among them the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) and state and district level officials in the Amhara, Oromia, SNNP, and Tigray regions, which are home to 90 percent of Ethiopia’s nearly 5 million wheat farmers. Most of the varieties come from breeding lines of CIMMYT and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA); a number were developed through the Delivering Genetic Gain in Wheat (formerly Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat) project, led by Cornell University and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) under their UKAid project.

Breaking Ground: Leonard Rusinamhodzi on innovating farming systems for climate change

Written by on November 30, 2017. Posted in Features.

TwitterBGLernard Food security is at the heart of Africa’s development agenda. However, climate change is threatening the Malabo Commitment to end hunger in the region by 2025, said Leonard Rusinamhodzi, a systems agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

Erratic rainfall and increasing temperatures are already causing crops to fail, threatening African farmers’ ability to ensure household food security, he said. Africa is the region most vulnerable to climate variability and change, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Small-scale family farmers, who provide the majority of food production in Africa, are set to be among the worst affected. Rusinamhodzi’s work includes educating African farmers about the impacts of climate change and working with them to tailor sustainable agriculture solutions to increase their food production in the face of increasingly variable weather.

The world’s population is projected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, with 2.1 billion people set to live in sub-Saharan Africa alone. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates farmers will need to increase production by at least 70 percent to meet demand. However, climate change is bringing numerous risks to traditional farming systems challenging the ability to increase production, said Rusinamhodzi.

Graphic created by Gerardo Mejia. Data sourced form the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. — Graphic created by Gerardo Mejia. Data sourced from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Rusinamhodzi believes increasing farmers’ awareness of climate risks and working with them to implement sustainable solutions is key to ensuring they can buffer climate shocks, such as drought and erratic rainfall.

“The onset of rainfall is starting late and the seasonal dry spells or outright droughts are becoming commonplace,” said Rusinamhodzi. “Farmers need more knowledge and resources on altering planting dates and densities, crop varieties and species, fertilizer regimes and crop rotations to sustainably intensify food production.”

Growing up in Zimbabwe – a country that is now experiencing the impacts of climate change first hand – Rusinamhodzi understands the importance of small-scale agriculture and the damage erratic weather can have on household food security.

He studied soil science and agronomy and began his career as a research associate at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Zimbabwe learning how to use conservation agriculture as a sustainable entry point to increase food production.

Conservation agriculture is based on the principles of minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and the use of crop rotation to simultaneously maintain and boost yields, increase profits and protect the environment. It improves soil function and quality, which can improve resilience to climate variability.

It is a sustainable intensification practice, which is aimed at enhancing the productivity of labor, land and capital. Sustainable intensification practices offer the potential to simultaneously address a number of pressing development objectives, unlocking agriculture’s potential to adapt farming systems to climate change and sustainable manage land, soil, nutrient and water resources, while improving food and nutrition.

Tailoring sustainable agriculture to farmers

Smallholder farming systems in Africa are diverse in character and content, although maize is usually the major crop. Within each system, farmers are also diverse in terms of resources and production processes. Biophysically, conditions – such as soil and rainfall – change significantly within short distances.

Given the varying circumstances, conservation agriculture cannot be promoted as rigid or one-size fits all solution as defined by the three principles, said Rusinamhodzi.

The systems agronomist studied for his doctoral at Wageningen University with a special focus on targeting appropriate crop intensification options to selected farming systems in southern Africa. Now, with CIMMYT he works with African farming communities to adapt conservation agriculture to farmers’ specific circumstances to boost their food production.

Rusinamhodzi’s focus in the region is to design cropping systems around maize-legume intercropping and conservation agriculture. Intercropping has the added advantage of producing two crops from the same piece of land in a single season; different species such as maize and legumes can increase facilitation and help overcome the negative effects of prolonged dry spells and poor soil quality.

Farmer Elphas Chinyanga inspecting his conservation agriculture plots in Zimbabwe. Photo: Peter Lowe/ CIMMYT

“The key is to understand the farmers, their resources including the biophysical circumstances and their production systems, and assist in adapting conservation agriculture to local needs,” he said.

Working with CIMMYT’s Sustainable Intensification Program, Rusinamhodzi seeks to understand production constraints and opportunities for increased productivity starting with locally available resources.

Using crop simulation modeling and experimentation, he estimates how the farming system will perform under different conditions and works to formulate a set of options to help farmers. The options can include agroforestry, intercropping, improved varieties resistant to heat and drought, fertilizers and manures along with the principles of conservation agriculture to obtain the best results.

The models are an innovative way assess the success or trade-off farmers could have when adding new processes to their farming system. However, the application of these tools are still limited due to the large amounts of data needed for calibration and the complexity, he added.

Information gathered is shared with farmers in order to offer researched options on how to sustainably boost their food production under their conditions, Rusinamhodzi said.

“My ultimate goal is to increase farmers’ decision space so that they make choices from an informed position,” he said.

Rusinamhodzi also trains farmers, national governments, non-profit organizations, seed companies and graduate students on the concepts and application of sustainable intensification including advanced analysis to understand system productivity, soil quality, water and nutrient use efficiency and crop pest and disease dynamics.

Leonard Rusinamhodzi works with the SIMLESA project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research and the CGIAR MAIZE program.

New publications: How climate-smart is conservation agriculture?

Written by on November 23, 2017. Posted in Publications.

Wheat surrounds the border of the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Photo: F. Baudron/CIMMYT

Africa is facing increasing complications in farming as climate change makes weather more unpredictable and leads to mass desertification of previously farmable land. Conservation agriculture (CA) has been touted for decades as the solution, not only to farming in climate change, but as a way to sequester Carbon in soil and actively combat climate change through agriculture.

A new study shows that while CA is well suited to helping farmers adapt to, and even increase profits in changing climates, there is considerable uncertainty about how much CA contributes to the mitigation aspect.

Overall the authors emphasized that the main benefit of CA is the adaptation potential, which helps farmers markedly improve productivity, achieve stable yields and decrease labor inputs, but further research is needed to determine effects on climate change.

Read the full study “How climate-smart is conservation agriculture (CA)? Its potential to deliver on adaptation mitigation and productivity on smallholder farms in southern Africa” and check out other recent publications by CIMMYT staff below:

How climate-smart is conservation agriculture (CA)? – its potential to deliver on adaptation, mitigation and productivity on smallholder farms in southern Africa. 2017. Thierfelder, C., Chivenge, P., Mupangwa, W., Rosenstock, T.S., Lamanna, C., Eyre, J.X. In: Food Security, vol 9, p 537–560.

Nitrogen assimilation system in maize is regulated by developmental and tissue-specific mechanisms. 2016. Plett, D., Holtham, L., Baumann, U., Kalashyan, E., Francis, K., Enju, A., Toubia, J., Roessner, U., Bacic, A., Rafalski, A., Tester, M., Garnett, T., Kaiser, B.N., Dhugga, K. In: Plant Molecular Biology, vol. 92, p. 293-312.

Nitrogen management under conservation agriculture in Cereal-based Systems. 2016. Jat, H.S., Jat, R.K., Parihar, C.M., Jat, S.L., Tetarwal, J.P., Sidhu, H.S., Jat, M.L. In: Indian Journal of Fertilizers, vol.15, no.4, p.76-91.

Novel structural and functional motifs in cellulose synthase (CesA) genes of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum, L.). 2016. Kaur, S., Gill, K.S., Singh, J., Dhugga, K. In: PLoS One, vol.11, no.1, 1-18 p.

Ocurrence and identification of cereal cyst nematode, heterodera filipjevi (nemata: heteroderidae), in Bolu province of Turkey. 2016. Imren, M., Toktay, H., Kutuk, H., Dababat, A.A. In: Nematropica, vol. 44, no. 2, p. 154-161.

On-farm evaluation of hermetic technology against maize storage pests in Kenya. 2016. Likhayo, P., Bruce, A.Y., Mutambuki, K., Tadele Tefera Mueke, J. In: Journal of Economic Entomology, vol.109, no.4, p. 1-8.

Stay-green and associated vegetative indices to breed maize adapted to heat and combined Heat-Drought Stresses. 2017. Cerrudo, D., Gonzalez-Perez, L., Mendoza, A., Trachsel, S. In: Remote sensing, vol. 9, no. 3, p. 1-13.

The research and implementation continuum of biofortified sweet potato and maize in Africa. 2017. Tanumihardjo, S.A., Ball, A.M., Kaliwile, C., Pixley, K.V. In: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, v. 1390, p. 88-103.

Transgenic strategies for enhancement of nematode resistance in plants. 2017. Muhammad Amjad Ali, Azeem, F., Amjab Abbas Joyia, F.A., Hongjie Li, Dababat, A.A. In: Frontiers in Plant Science, v. 8, no. 750.

Understanding the determinants of alternate energy options for cooking in the Himalayas: Empirical evidence from the Himalayan region of Pakistan. 2017. Dil Bahadur Rahut, Ali, A. Mottaleb, K.A. In: Journal of Cleaner Production v. 149, p. 528-539.

Utilizing high-throughput phenotypic data for improved phenotypic selection of stress-adaptive traits in wheat. 2017. Cairns, J.L., Reynolds, M.P., Poland, J. In: Crop Science, v. 57, p. 648-659.

Investigating Conservation Agriculture (CA) Systems in Zambia and Zimbabwe to Mitigate Future Effects of Climate Change. 2010. Thierfelder, C., Wall, P. C. In: Journal of Crop Improvement, v.24(2), p. 113-121.

New Publications: Conservation agriculture increases the adaptive capacity of cropping systems

Written by on November 9, 2017. Posted in Publications.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is widely promoted in sub-Saharan Africa as an adaptable and sustainable way to farm in changing climates. CA has three major principles: the minimal disturbance of soil via zero till planting, crop diversification and soil cover by either residues or cover crops.

A new study examined over 700 independent studies to find out if CA works in a variety of environmental conditions in tropical areas.

The authors found that in drought and high-temperature conditions, maize yields under CA improved relative to conventional farming. This relative improvement, they said, is because CA helps water infiltrate better into the soil than conventional farming.

These same moisture-retaining attributes that make CA effective in drought-like conditions can worsen the impact of flooding. However, droughts are expected to worsen in coming years, making these water-retaining qualities likely more advantageous in the long term.

Overall, the study found that CA systems have more stable yields across different stress levels, outperform their conventional counterpart in many cases even without the addition of nitrogen fertilizers and increase the adaptive capacity of maize-based cropping systems.

Read the full study “The adaptive capacity of maize-based conservation agriculture systems to climate stress in tropical and subtropical environments: A meta-regression of yields” and check out other recent publications by CIMMYT staff below:

Markers linked to wheat stem rust resistance gene Sr11 effective to puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici Race TKTTF. 2016. Nirmala, J., Shiaoman Chao, Olivera, P., Babiker, E.M., Abeyo Bekele Geleta, Tadesse, Z., Imtiaz, M., Talbert, L., Blake, N.K., Akhunov, E., Pumphrey, M., Yue Jin, Rouse, M.N. In: Phytopathology, v. 106, no. 11, p. 1352-1358.

Modeling the risk of invasion and spread of Tuta absoluta in Africa. 2016. Guimapi, R.Y.A., Mohamed, S.F., Okeyo, G.O., Ndjomatchoua, F.T., Ekesi, S., Tonnang, H. In: Ecological complexity, vol. 28, p. 77-93.

Modelling and genetic dissection of staygreen under heat stress. 2016. Suzuky Pinto, R., Lopes, M.S., Collins, N.C., Reynolds, M.P. In: Theoretical and Applied Genetics, vol. 129, p. 2055-2074.

Multidimensional impact assessment of zero tillage technology on wheat productivity in Haryana. 2016. Kumar, A. , Singh, R., Shahnawaz Rasool Dar, Singh, S., Gathala, M.K., Kanchan Pathania In: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment. 2016, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 85-90.

Nested association mapping of stem rust resistance in wheat using genotyping by sequencing. 2016. Bajgain, P., Rouse, M.N., Tsilo, T.J., Macharia, G., Bhavani, S., Yue Jin, Anderson, J.A. In: PLoS One, vol. 11, no. 5: e0155760.

Occurrence, identification and phylogenetic analyses of cereal cyst nematodes (Heterodera spp.) in Turkey. 2017. Jiang-Kuan Cui, Huan Peng, Shi-ming Liu, Erginbas-Orakci, G., Imren, M., Dababat, A.A., De-Liang Peng In: Journal of integrative agriculture, vol. 16, no. 0, p. 1-10.

On-farm yield gains with Stress-Tolerant Maize in Eastern and Southern Africa. 2017. Setimela, P.S., Magorokosho, C., Lunduka, R., Gasura, E., Makumbi, D., Amsal Tesfaye Tarekegne, Cairns, J.E., Thokozile Ndhlela, Erenstein, O., Mwangi, W.M. In: Agronomy Journal, v. 109, no. 2, p. 406-417.

Pedigree-based prediction models with genotype × environment interaction in multi-environment trials of CIMMYT wheat. 2017. Sukumaran, S., Crossa, J., Jarquín, D., Reynolds, M.P. In: Crop Science, vol. 57, p. 1-16.

Predicting grain yield using canopy hyperspectral reflectance in wheat breeding data. 2017. Montesinos-Lopez, O.A., Montesinos-López, A., Crossa, J., De los Campos, G., Alvarado, G., Mondal, S., Rutkoski, J., Gonzalez-Perez, L., Burgueño, J. In: Plant methods, v. 13, no.4.

Soil organic carbon changes after seven years of conservation agriculture in a rice–wheat system of the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains. 2017. Sapkota, T.B., Jat, R.K., Ravi Gopal Singh, Jat, M.L., Stirling, C., Jat, M.K., Bijarniya, D., Kumar, M., Singh, Y., Saharawat, Y.S., Gupta, R.K. In: Soil Use and Management, v. 33, p. 81-89.

The adaptive capacity of maize-based conservation agriculture systems to climate stress in tropical and subtropical environments: A meta-regression of yields. 2018. Steward, P.R., Dougill, A.J., Thierfelder, C. Pittelkow, C.M., Stringer, L.C., Kudzala, M., Shackelford, G.E. In: Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, v. 251, p. 194-202.

Climate insurance for farmers: a shield that boosts innovation

Written by on November 7, 2017. Posted in Features.

Index insurance is one of the top 10 innovations for climate-proof farming. Photo: P. Lowe/ CIMMYT

What stands between a smallholder farmer and a bag of climate-adapted seeds? In many cases, it’s the hesitation to take a risk. Farmers may want to use improved varieties, invest in new tools, or diversify what they grow, but they need reassurance that their investments and hard work will not be squandered.

Climate change already threatens crops and livestock; one unfortunately-timed dry spell or flash flood can mean losing everything. Today, innovative insurance products are tipping the balance in farmers’ favor. That’s why insurance is featured as one of 10 innovations for climate action in agriculture, in a new report released ahead of next week’s UN Climate Talks. These innovations are drawn from decades of agricultural research for development by CGIAR and its partners and showcase an array of integrated solutions that can transform the food system.

Index insurance is making a difference to farmers at the frontlines of climate change. It is an essential building block for adapting our global food system and helping farmers thrive in a changing climate. Taken together with other innovations like stress-tolerant crop varieties, climate-informed advisories for farmers, and creative business and financial models, index insurance shows tremendous promise.

The concept is simple. To start with, farmers who are covered can recoup their losses if (for example) rainfall or average yield falls above or below a pre-specified threshold or ‘index’. This is a leap forward compared to the costly and slow process of manually verifying the damage and loss in each farmer’s field. In India, scientists from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), have worked out the water level thresholds that could spell disaster for rice farmers if exceeded. Combining 35 years of observed rainfall and other data, with high-resolution satellite images of actual flooding, scientists and insurers can accurately gauge the extent of flooding and crop loss to quickly determine who gets payouts.

The core feature of index insurance is to offer a lifeline to farmers, so they can shield themselves from the very worst effects of climate change. But that’s not all. Together with my team, we’re investigating how insurance can help farmers adopt new and improved varieties. Scientists are very good at developing technologies but farmers are not always willing to make the leap. This is one of the most important challenges that we grapple with. What we’ve found has amazed us: buying insurance can help farmers overcome uncertainty and give them the confidence to invest in new innovations and approaches. This is critical for climate change adaptation. We’re also finding that creditors are more willing to lend to insured farmers and that insurance can stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation. Ultimately, insurance can help break poverty traps, by encouraging a transformation in farming.

Insurers at the cutting edge are making it easy for farmers to get coverage. In Kenya, insurance is being bundled into bags of maize seeds, in a scheme led by ACRE Africa. Farmers pay a small premium when buying the seeds and each bag contains a scratch card with a code, which farmers text to ACRE at the time of planting. This initiates coverage against drought for the next 21 days; participating farms are monitored using satellite imagery. If there are enough days without rain, a farmer gets paid instantly via their mobile phone.

ACRE makes it easy for Kenyan farmers to get insurance. Source

Farmers everywhere are businesspeople who seek to increase yields and profits while minimizing risk and losses. As such, insurance has widespread appeal. We’ve seen successful initiatives grow rapidly in India, China, Zambia, Kenya and Mexico, which points to significant potential in other countries and contexts. The farmers most likely to benefit from index insurance are emergent and commercial farmers, as they are more likely than subsistence smallholder farmers to purchase insurance on a continual basis.

It’s time for more investment in index insurance and other innovations that can help farmers adapt to climate change. Countries have overwhelmingly prioritized climate actions in the agriculture sector, and sustained support is now needed to help them meet the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Jon Hellin leads the project on weather index-based agricultural insurance as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). This work is done in collaboration with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University, and the CGIAR Research Programs on MAIZE and WHEAT.

Find out more

Report: 10 innovations for climate action in agriculture

Video: Jon Hellin on crop-index insurance for smallholder farmers

Info note: Prospects for scaling up the contribution of index insurance to smallholder adaptation to climate risk

Report: Scaling up index insurance for smallholder farmers: Recent evidence and insights.

Website: Weather-related agricultural insurance products and programs – CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)

Community-based approach to gender research has far-reaching impacts

Written by on November 7, 2017. Posted in Features.

Kristie Drucza leads a gender workshop. Photo courtesy of Kristie Drucza. — Kristie Drucza leads a gender workshop. *Photo courtesy of Kristie Drucza.*

Researchers are changing rural development in Ethiopia by putting local communities in control of initiatives.

A project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development is working to increase gender equality in wheat-based cropping systems in Ethiopia, Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest wheat producer.

Kristie Drucza, a gender and social development research manager at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and project lead, recently co-authored a report detailing how researchers can boost gender equality and reach program goals even faster by applying people-centered research methods in their work.

Traditionally, communities are not involved enough in development processes for researchers to offer permanent solutions. The seven methodologies laid out in the report use participatory methods, such as mapping exercises, to put people in control of the agenda.

“Program managers seem to be looking for ways to improve gender within their programs, these methodologies work and should be used more. Currently, non-government organizations implement these methodologies to change behaviors and gender norms, but the data is not collected. These methodologies generate a rich source of data that reveals how gender norms change and at what pace, this data could advance our understanding of how and why gender norms change.”

Drucza tells us more about these methodologies and where they’ve been successful in the following interview:

Creating a gender balance tree. Photo courtesy of Kristie Drucza. — Creating a gender balance tree. *Photo courtesy of Kristie Drucza.*

Q: What are ‘participatory methodologies’?

Participatory methodologies are a collection of research tools or activities that are designed to get participants to think, learn, analyze and plan for action. They often use visioning exercises and diagram tools to enable participants to see the world in a new way, build empathy for those who are less fortunate and plan to change what they do not like.

One example from the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) methodology is a gender balance tree.

Each participant draws all the members of their household at the trunk, and the tasks family members do at the roots. The branches represent expenses and symbols are placed on the tree to show who owns what property and who makes which decisions.

The participants discuss any imbalances and draw an action plan to make the tree more balanced.

This exercise helps put a focus on gaps that are directly identified and agreed upon by families and helps illiterate people envision a future that they can control.

Q: How do these methodologies boost gender equality?

Participants at a gender workshop. Photo courtesy of Kristie Drucza.

We collected data from four wheat-growing communities, and in one there was a really big difference in gender relations: in how people understood it, explained it and how equal their relations were.

We found out that this community was doing community conversations (CCs), a methodology that we identified as being very effective. This community was part of a health program that was using CCs, but it also had a positive and unintended impact on the agricultural sector by enabling women and men to work as one economic unit.

Usually, men make decisions without consulting their wives on things like household expenditure and which crops to grow. This can leave a wife having to secretly take from the harvest, or sell assets so that she can make ends meet. In the community where CCs were held, households worked better together to make more informed and transparent decisions that benefited the whole family.

Q: How does your project help boost gender equality?

The most important thing we need to realize is that gender equality doesn’t just mean focusing on women, and doing so can actually create more inequality. We need to empower women but not at the expense of male sense of self and happiness.

Moreover, the social norms that underpin gender inequality need to be addressed for lasting change to ensue. Because these methodologies put communities in the driving seat, they deliver empowerment with community cohesion.

Learn more about the Understanding gender in wheat-based livelihoods for enhanced WHEAT R4D impact in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia Project and read the full report “Gender transformative methodologies in Ethiopia’s agricultural sector: a review” here.

New crop varieties that counter climate change: a best bet for farmers

Written by on November 6, 2017. Posted in News.

Stress-tolerant maize varieties are helping farmers produce more food despite climate change. Photo: Johnson Siamachira/CIMMYT.

MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) – As the world’s changing climate makes it more difficult to feed a growing population, smallholder farmers need sustainable solutions to improve food security and livelihoods while adapting to the impacts of climate change. Stress tolerant crop varieties offer much-needed answers, as one of the “10 best bet innovations for adaptation in agriculture” according to a new working paper from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

The paper taps into decades of agricultural research for development conducted by CGIAR research centers to identify the top innovations for climate adaption in agriculture. As world leaders convene for the UN Climate talks in Bonn this week and make a potential decision on agriculture, countries are being encouraged to adopt and advance best practices in their National Adaptation Plans.

Climate change has led to increased incidences of drought, heat and extreme weather events as well as crop pests and diseases, all of which can severely limit the growth of staple crops such as maize, wheat, rice and potato. As the demand for staple crops such as maize is expected to increase by 60 percent by 2050, this poses a grave danger for global food production.

CGIAR Research Centers and Programs have long worked to develop stress tolerant crop varieties that allow smallholder farmers to sustainably increase food security despite climate change. One key example of this work is the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project, implemented through the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE) with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. From 2010-2016, the project released over 200 stress tolerant maize varieties for smallholder farmers in 13 countries in Africa, which has the potential to generate between $362 million to $590 million over a 7 year period through both yield gains and reduced yield variability.

On-farm trials have found that climate resilient maize varieties yielded up to 20 percent more maize under stress prone conditions, and double in severe stress environments, such as the El Niño event of 2015/16. This can significantly increase household income and food security. A recent study on drought-tolerant maize varieties in Zimbabwe found that climate resilient maize could provide farming families with an additional 9 months of food, or $240 per hectare, in drought-prone regions. Based on these results, drought-resilient crops have been dubbed a Tesla-like innovation for agriculture by Dr. Bruce Campbell, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)

The benefits are not limited to Africa alone—in South Asia, 18 pre-commercial heat tolerant maize hybrids from the Heat Tolerant Maize for Asia (HTMA) have been licensed. Of these, 6 have broad adaptation across agro-ecological zones in South Asia (suggesting they likely possess both heat and drought tolerance) and 12 hybrids had good adaptation to specific mega-environments in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

To be successful, crop breeding needs to stay several steps ahead of climate change. The paper argues that strengthened breeding systems, using the latest technologies, together with more open international exchange of germplasm, and rapid change in varieties are fundamental components of this adaptation strategy. In addition, strengthened breeding pipelines for climate resilient maize also offer the co-benefit of faster development of maize with pest and disease resistance or enhanced nutrition in addition to tolerance to other stresses. In Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe maize varieties are now on the market with both drought tolerance and high pro-vitamin A content, which can prevent blindness in children. Research is currently underway to develop drought and heat tolerant, nutritionally enhanced maize rich in pro-vitamin A and zinc.

CIMMYT, MAIZE and other CGIAR research centers and programs are dedicated to supporting smallholder farmers in climate change adaptation by delivering stress tolerant crop varieties through strengthened breeding systems, cutting-edge technologies and the open exchange of international germplasm. The adaption innovations outlined in this working paper must be considered and supported in the search for a food secure, climate resilient future for all.

For more information on the 10 innovations highlighted in this paper, please click here.

At this year’s UN Climate Talks at COP23 in Bonn, Germany, CIMMYT is highlighting innovations in wheat and maize that can help farmers overcome climate change. Click here to read more stories in this series and follow @CIMMYT on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

Borlaug Dialogue delegates widen net to curb threat from fall armyworm

Written by on November 5, 2017. Posted in Features.

2002 World Food Prize laureate, Pedro Sanchez, a professor at the University of Florida and Akinwumi Adesina, 2017 World Food Prize laureate and president of the African Development Bank speak about fall armyworm at a press conference on the sidelines of the 2017 Borlaug Dialogue conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit: World Food Prize — The 2002 World Food Prize laureate, Pedro Sanchez, a professor at the University of Florida and Akinwumi Adesina, 2017 World Food Prize laureate and president of the African Development Bank speak about the fall armyworm at a press conference on the sidelines of the 2017 Borlaug Dialogue conference in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit: World Food Prize

DES MOINES, Iowa (CIMMYT) – World Food Prize laureates have joined forces with an international alliance battling the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), an aggressive pest indigenous to the Americas with a voracious appetite, now widespread throughout Africa.

The 2002 World Food Prize laureate, Pedro Sanchez, currently a research professor at the University of Florida, addressed delegates at the Borlaug Dialogue conference in Des Moines, Iowa, which is timed each year to coincide with annual World Food Prize celebrations.

Sanchez described the severity of the challenge posed by the pest, which has a host range of more than 80 plant species, including maize, a staple food on which millions of people throughout sub-Saharan Africa depend for their food and income security.

Fall armyworm activities not only put food security, livelihoods and national economies at risk, but also threaten to undo recent hard-earned crop production gains on the continent, Sanchez said.

“Hopefully, it will be controlled; it will never be eradicated,” Sanchez said. “I think the fate of African food security really hinges now on this clear and present danger. It threatens to reverse the gains achieved in the last 10 years. It’s the epitome of an invasive species.”

The pest, which has no known natural predators, can cause total crop losses, and at advanced larval development stages can be difficult to control even with synthetic pesticides. The female fall armyworm can lay up to a thousand eggs at a time and can produce multiple generations very quickly without pause in tropical environments. The moth can fly 100 km (62 miles) a night, and some moth populations have even been reported to fly distances of up to 1,600 kilometers in 30 hours, according to experts.

Sanchez said that Akinwumi Adesina, 2017 World Food Prize laureate and president of the African Development Bank, and Rob Fraley, 2013 World Food Prize laureate and chief technology officer at Monsanto, had united with him to urgently “raise the alarm” about the threat from the pest.

By joining forces as laureates, we aim to really bring attention to this issue to avoid a food crisis, Adesina said. Mobile phones should be effectively used in the fight against the pest, he said.

“There’s just no better way in which farmers can detect, recognize and send information very fast to extension agents or universities that can allow them to identify it and get the information they need to deal with it,” he said, adding that the new African Development Bank initiative Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), will play a key role in fighting the fall armyworm.

Projections by the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, (CABI), indicate that if left unchecked, the fall armyworm could lead to maize yield losses of around $2.5 to $6.2 billion a year in just 12 of the 28 African countries where the pest has been confirmed.

Joint force

In April, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) hosted an international joint stakeholders meeting in Nairobi, committing to an integrated pest management strategy to tackle the pest.

CIMMYT, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and experts from several national and international research organizations, are currently developing a detailed field manual on Fall Armyworm management in Africa, said B.M. Prasanna, director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, who spoke at a Borlaug Dialogue side event with a panel of scientific experts.

Scientist B.M. Prasanna, director of the Global Maize Program at CIMMYT and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, speaks at a Borlaug Dialogue side event about the fall armyworm with a panel of scientific experts. CIMMYT/Julie Mollins

“The manual will offer protocols and best management practices related to fall armyworm scouting, monitoring and surveillance; biological control; pesticides and pesticide risk management; host plant resistance; pheromones and sustainable agro-ecological management of fall armyworm, especially in the African context,” Prasanna said, adding that the pest has so far devastated at least 1.5 million hectares of maize in just six countries.

A Southern Africa Regional Training-of-Trainers and Awareness Raising Workshop on Fall Armyworm management was conducted in Harare, Zimbabwe, from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, while a similar workshop for Eastern Africa is scheduled for Nov. 13 to 15 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and for West Africa in early 2018.

The workshops are aimed at supporting pest control and extension actors to effectively scout, determine the need for intervention, and apply specific practices to control the pest in maize and other crops, Prasanna said.

Fall armyworm toolbox

Prasanna announced that the CIMMYT team in Africa is intensively evaluating maize germplasm for resistance to fall armyworm. Initial experiments have indicated some promising breeding materials, which need to be validated further and utilized in product development and deployment pipelines, he said.

“The crisis is quickly escalating due to the loss of quality maize seed in production fields, and the extensive and indiscriminate use of low cost highly toxic pesticides,” Prasanna said.

“We need to quickly bring awareness among the farming communities in Africa about environmentally safer approaches of Fall Armyworm management,” he said, adding that the international community can learn from the experiences of Brazil and the United States, where the pest has been endemic for several decades.

“Sustainable agro-ecological management at the field and landscape levels is key,” Prasanna said. “We must make our solutions affordable to smallholder farmers.”

Panelist Mark Edge, director of collaborations for developing countries at agrochemical and biotechnology company Monsanto, said that integrated pest management, collaboration and public-private sector partnerships would be key to fighting the pest.

“First and foremost, it really is about an integrated pest management system – we’re not trying to propose that biotechnology is a silver bullet for this,” he said. “We need to continue to use many different technologies and biotechnology is one very powerful tool that we have in the toolbox.”

Over the past 10 years, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) a Monsanto-CIMMYT partnership project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID has led to the development of almost 100 hybrid varieties effective against drought and a Bt – or biological pesticide – trait effective against the maize stem borers (Chilo partellus and Busseola fusca). The varieties will be available royalty-free to smallholder farmers.

“Insect resistance together with drought is our target; we’ve made tremendous progress over the past 10 years,” Edge said. “In the Americas, we still have challenges with fall armyworm, but we’re certainly able to control it to where farmers are actually able to get very good yields and manage the pests very effectively.”

Smallholder farmers need access to these varieties as soon as possible, so the focus should be on getting regulatory approvals in place by encouraging governments to support the technology, Edge said. The Bt trait varieties will need to be managed carefully so they do not develop resistance to the pest, he added.

“Scientists alone are not going to carry the day on this,” Edge said. “We need to bring together the science on this, but we also need the political will to help make that happen.”

Panelist Segenet Kelemu, director general of the International Institute of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), said that techniques used to fight the stem borer have proven effective against the fall armyworm, although experiments are ongoing to craft an integrated pest management strategy to control various stages of the pest from egg to moth. The continent will face deepening challenges from insects due to climate change, she said.

“If there were capacity on the ground, fall armyworm would have been identified sooner,” Kelemu said. “We need a more comprehensive way and a global partnership to tackle this.”

Panelist Gregg Nuessly, a pest management researcher and the director of the Everglades Research and Education Center at the University of Florida, said that the fall armyworm could be effectively controlled through an integrated pest management approach.

“Success in control is not only possible, it’s quite common in the Western Hemisphere,” Nuessly said.

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