research: Inclusive value chains

Explore our coverage of International Women’s Day 2020.

Moving out of poverty or staying poor

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on March 4, 2020. Posted in Blogs. 1 Comment on Moving out of poverty or staying poor

Farmer Dhansa Bhandari (left) sows maize seed while Bikram Daugi (right) ploughs with his oxen in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: P. Lowe/CIMMYT)

Although the conventional wisdom in South Asian rural villages is that men are principally responsible for pulling their families out of poverty, our recent study showed the truth to be more subtle, and more female.

In our new paper we dig into focus groups and individual life stories in a sample of 32 farming villages from five countries of South Asia. Although we asked about both men’s and women’s roles, focus groups of both sexes emphasized men in their responses — whether explaining how families escaped poverty or why they remained poor.

“Women usually cannot bring a big change, but they can assist their men in climbing up,” explains a member of the poor men’s focus group from Ismashal village (a pseudonym) of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The focus group testimonies presented rich examples of the strong influence of gender norms: the social rules that dictate differential roles and conducts for men and women in their society. These norms significantly influenced how local people conceived of movements in and out of poverty in their village and in their own lives.

According to the women’s focus group from Rangpur district in Bangladesh, women “cannot work outside the home for fear of losing their reputation and respect.”

However, in these same communities, men’s and women’s productive roles proved far more variable in the mobility processes of their families than conveyed by the focus groups. We encountered many households with men making irregular or very limited contributions to family maintenance. This happens for a number of reasons, including men’s labor migration, disability, family conflict and separations, aging and death.

What’s more, when sharing their life stories in individual interviews, nearly every woman testified to her own persistent efforts to make a living, cover household expenses, deal with debts, and, when conditions allowed, provide a better life for their families. In fact, our life story sample captured 12 women who testified to making substantial contributions to moving their families out of poverty.

Movers and shakers

We were especially struck by how many of these women “movers” were employing innovative agricultural technologies and practices to expand their production and earnings.

“In 2015, using zero tillage machines I started maize farming, for which I had a great yield and large profit,” reports a 30-year-old woman and mother of two from Matipur, Bangladesh who brought her family out of poverty.

Another 30-year-old mover, a farmer and mother of two from the village of Thool in Nepal, attests to diversification and adoption of improved cultivation practices: “I got training on vegetable farming. In the beginning the agriculture office provided some vegetable seeds as well. And I began to grow vegetables along with cereal crops like wheat, paddy, maize, oats. […] I learnt how to make soil rows.”

Among the women who got ahead, a large majority credited an important man in their life with flouting local customs and directly supporting them to innovate in their agricultural livelihoods and bring their families out of poverty.

Across the “mover” stories, women gained access to family resources which enabled them to step up their livelihood activities. For example, three quarters of the women “movers” spoke of husbands or brothers supporting them to pursue important goals in their lives.

Women’s most important relationship helping them to pursue goals in life: women "movers" (on left) versus "chronic poor" (right). — Women’s most important relationship helping them to pursue goals in life: women “movers” (on left) versus “chronic poor” (right).

Sufia, from a village in the Rajshahi district of Bangladesh, describes how she overcame great resistance from her husband to access a farm plot provided by her brother. The plot enabled Sufia to cultivate betel leaves and paddy rice, and with those profits and additional earnings from livestock activities, she purchased more land and diversified into eggplant, chilies and bitter gourd. Sufia’s husband had struggled to maintain the family and shortly after Sufia began to prosper, he suffered a stroke and required years of medical treatments before passing away.

When Sufia reflects on her life, she considers the most important relationship in her life to be with her brother. “Because of him I can now stand on my two feet.”

We also studied women and their families who did not move out of poverty. These “chronic poor” women rarely mentioned accessing innovations or garnering significant benefits from their livelihoods. In these life stories, we find far fewer testimonies about men who financially supported a wife or sister to help her pursue an important goal.

The restrictive normative climate in much of South Asia means that women’s capacity to enable change in their livelihoods is rarely recognized or encouraged by the wider community as a way for a poor family to prosper. Still, the life stories of these “movers” open a window onto the possibilities unlocked when women have opportunities to take on more equitable household roles and are able to access agricultural innovations.

The women movers, and the men who support them, provide insights into pathways of more equitable agricultural change. What we can learn from these experiences holds great potential for programs aiming to relax gender norms, catalyze agricultural innovation, and unlock faster transitions to gender equality and poverty reduction in the region. Nevertheless, challenging social norms can be risky and can result in backlash from family or other community members. To address this, collaborative research models offer promise. These approaches engage researchers and local women and men in action learning to build understanding of and support for inclusive agricultural change. Our research suggests that such interventions, which combine social, institutional and technical dimensions of agricultural innovation, can help diverse types of families to leave poverty behind.

Read the full study:
Gender Norms and Poverty Dynamics in 32 Villages of South Asia

Breaking Ground: Lara Roeven delves into complex gender dynamics

Written by Emma Orchardson on January 15, 2020. Posted in Features.

Lara Roeven completed her undergraduate degree in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where she focused primarily on political science in a program that combined this with the study of psychology, law and economics. “I liked it a lot because it gave me an interdisciplinary look at how social injustice manifests itself.”

Having worked on gender and social inclusion issues in the past, she had already heard of CGIAR and its research portfolio, but it was the interdisciplinarity of CIMMYT’s approach that prompted her to apply to the organization at the end of a study abroad program in Mexico. “I had a strong interest in agriculture and I’d always wanted to look at how gender and social inclusion issues affect women and marginalized groups within the context of rural, environmental or climate change, so this role seemed like a good fit.”

Since joining CIMMYT’s Gender and Social Inclusion research unit in January 2019, Roeven has been part of a team of researchers analyzing the ways in which gender norms and agency influence the ability of men, women and young people to learn about, access and adopt innovations in agriculture and natural resource management.

So far, Roeven has mainly been supporting data analysis and helping to produce literature reviews. She has contributed to a number of studies simultaneously over the past year, from the feminization of agriculture in India to changing gender norms in Tanzania. “It’s very interesting because you learn the particularities of many different countries, and the extent to which gender norms can differ and really influence people’s opportunities.”

Searching for nuance

A lot of research follows a similar pattern in highlighting the relationship between women’s work and empowerment, but realities on the ground are often more nuanced. In India, for example, well-established social structures add another layer of complexity to gender dynamics. “What I found interesting when we started looking into the ways in which gender and caste interrelate was that nothing is straightforward.”

Women from higher castes can actually be more isolated than women from lower ones, she explains, for whom it can be more accepted to pursue paid work outside of the home. However, lower-caste women also frequently experience high levels of poverty and vulnerability and face social exclusion in other realms of life.

“These dynamics are actually a lot more complicated than we usually think. And that’s why it’s so interesting to do this kind of comparative research where you can see how these issues manifest themselves in different areas, and what researchers or development practitioners working at ground level have to take into account in order to address the issues these women face.”

Eventually, Roeven hopes to pursue a PhD and a career in academia, but for the time being she’s enjoying working on research that has so much potential for impact. “There are many studies showing that gender gaps need to be closed in order to increase food security and eliminate hunger,” she says. “I feel like many interventions, extension services or trainings don’t always have the desired effect because they do not effectively reach women farmers or young people. Certain people are continuously left out.”

Conducting this kind of research is a crucial step in working towards empowering women across the world, and Roeven would like to see more researchers incorporating this into their work, and really taking on gender as a relational concept. “We can keep on conducting research within the Gender and Social Inclusion research unit, but it would be interesting if our approaches could be mainstreamed in other disciplinary areas as well.”

Though it might not be easy, Roeven emphasizes that it is necessary in order to have an impact and prevent innovations from exacerbating gender and social inequality. “Besides,” she adds, “I think it’s great when research has a social relevance.”

Some of the participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop held on December 2, 2019, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Making seed systems work for men and women

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on January 10, 2020. Posted in News.

One important pillar of Africa’s food security is ensuring that quality seeds are developed and delivered to the millions of smallholder farmers that feed the continent. Reaching the last mile with climate-resilient and disease-resistant seeds remains a challenge in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. “In countries where we invested in seed systems initiatives, we have seen an upsurge in smallholder farm productivity,” said Joseph DeVries, the President of Seed Systems Group. “A story that is not adequately told is that of the important role of women along the seed value chain. In Kenya, 40% of owners of agrodealer shops are women. The farming sector would gain a lot with a stronger role for women in developing a gender-sensitive seed sector,” he noted.

DeVries was one of the keynote speakers at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop organized by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) on December 2, 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting brought together researchers, development practitioners, donors, farmers’ representatives, farmers, seed companies and other private actors.

CIMMYT’s Gender and Development Specialist, Rahma Adam, observed that with the African seed sector being male-dominated, the patriarchal nature of the family and community systems make it harder for women to penetrate the sector easily. For instance, many women employed in the sector mostly dominate the low-paying jobs. Workshop participants agreed that while there are many opportunities for women in the sector, the barriers to entry are many.

Joseph DeVries, President of Seed Systems Group, addresses participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Acknowledging the gender gap in agriculture

“Decades of gender research have shown that where there is gender inequality, there is food insecurity,” remarked Jemimah Njuki, senior program specialist from the International Development Research Center (IDRC). The gender gap in agricultural productivity observed in sub-Saharan Africa — up to 30% in countries like Nigeria and Malawi — is often explained by unequal access to inputs and male labor for heavy operations such as land preparation, access to knowledge and capital.

Addressing such unequal access is not enough, according to Njuki. To switch to a truly gender-sensitive food system, “you need to address social norms and women’s agency and what they can do on their own.” Taking the example of financial services, women often find difficulties obtaining loans because banks ask for collateral like title deeds, which are typically in the name of the husband or a male in-law. Yet, women are very good at repaying their loans on time. Making finance institutions “womanable” as Njuki put it, would be good for the welfare of women and their family, hence good for business.

Jemimah Njuki, senior program officer at the International Development Research Center (IDRC), speaks at the workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Is there such a thing as seed for women farmers?

Within a household, who has a say in buying new seeds? Do men and women farmers look for the same traits and attributes?

A study conducted in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda by Paswel Marenya, a senior agricultural economist at CIMMYT, revealed that in many cases, the man has a greater say in selecting new seed varieties. Other research shows that beyond grain yield, the characteristics of “a good variety” differ between men and women farmers. In the study, both genders mention what they were willing to pay as trade-off against yield. Women would favor a variety with a longer grain shelf-life (ability to store 3-4 months). Men preferred a variety that performs well with low fertilizer requirements. Equally, women farmers engaged in participatory varietal selections tended to provide more nuanced evaluation of varieties than men. Despite this evidence, seed companies do not often adapt their seed marketing strategy according to gender.

Making institutions and seed systems gender-sensitive

CIMMYT’s gender and development specialist Rahma Adam addresses participants at the “Gender dynamics in seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa” workshop. (Photo: Kipenz Films/CIMMYT)

Are there missed opportunities for the seed sector by being “gender-blind”? Rahma Adam believes “the current one-size-fits-all model does not work for many women farmers”. She advises seed companies to be more gender-sensitive when organizing seed marketing operations. Women tend to have less time to attend field demos, the major marketing tool for seed companies. Packaging may not be adapted to suit their more limited purchasing power.

There are good examples of women seed entrepreneurs that have established their niche and reach out to women farmers. Janey Leakey, Director of Leldet Seed Company in Nakuru, Kenya, is one such example. She markets small seed packs called Leldet bouquet, a mix of improved maize and legume seeds at the cost of a cup of tea, to enable women farmers test new varieties.

For the more informal sweet potato seed systems, many women farmers have been successfully engaged in lucrative vine multiplication, thanks to the use of women extensionists and women groups to teach appropriate storage techniques in drought-prone regions. “Such seed business can empower women within the household,” noted Jan Low, co-leader of the Sweetpotato for Profit and Health Initiative (SPHI) at the International Potato Center (CIP) and 2016 World Food Prize Laureate. A woman vine multiplier was able to negotiate with the husband for more land and water access to increase production.

Many other important actors in the public, private and development sectors have also been more deliberate in structuring some of their project or business implementation plans to include or benefit more women in the seed value chain. Among the players are CARE International, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI), the Seed Trade Association of Kenya (STAK), SeedCo, the Agricultural Market Development Trust (AGMARK), World Vision, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which attended and participated very actively in this workshop.

Some of the plans entail helping more women to access information on climate change to understand their cropping seasons, contracting women farmers as seed out-growers, encouraging and supporting them to join forces to produce seed in group settings. Some of these actors also train women to enhance their entrepreneurial acumen, help them to access finance, obtain the appropriate labor and time-saving machinery, and acquire small seed packs.

Ultimately, designing a seed system that works for men and women requires a holistic approach, from building women’s agency, addressing norms and unequal access to resources. It requires time, dedication, financial and human resources, as well as capabilities and multi-stakeholder collaboration. “The main take-home message is that building a gender-sensitive seed system starts with us,” said Amanda Lanzarone, program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Rose Aufi shows some of her maize grain reserves. (Photo: Shiela Chikulo/CIMMYT)

Rural women of eastern and southern Africa gain ground

Written by Shiela Chikulo on October 14, 2019. Posted in Photos.

Join us on this visual journey across Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe, where you will meet farmers who demonstrate every day what it means to be RURAL: Resilient, United, Reaping benefits, Adopter and Learner.

These women have adopted climate-smart practices in their production systems to ensure optimal yields while learning about drought-tolerant varieties of maize to counter the harsh effects of dry spells, heat stress, pests and diseases. These rural women are exemplary leaders in their communities, as evidenced by their successful farming practices and the food and income they secure for their families.

R is for Resilient

Lughano Mwangonde (center) holds her granddaughter and stands for a portrait with her daughters. (Photo: Shiela Chikulo/CIMMYT)

Farming families in southern Africa are confronted with the adverse effects of climate change, particularly in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A report by FEWS NET indicates negative impacts like declining yields, increase in grain prices during peak lean seasons and widespread food insecurity. However, Lughano Mwangonde from Malula, southern Malawi, has been practicing climate-smart agriculture since 2004 through a CIMMYT project, which has improved the food security of her family. In the midst of increasing climate variability, Lughano is cushioned against the harsh effects of droughts and heavy downpours through the practices she adopted. For example, she uses crop rotation of maize and legumes, like cowpea and pigeon pea.

Sequare Regassa sorts maize grain. (Photo: Simret Yasabu/CIMMYT)

Climate change affects men and women differently. Rural women farmers tend to be more susceptible to drought and the additional labor associated with household tasks. As such, building resilience against climate change is critical. For Sequare Regassa, in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, this means shifting to drought-tolerant maize varieties such as BH661, which have better performance and increased yield, even under heat and other stress conditions.

U is for United

Sequare Regassa (wearing green) and her family stand for a group photo at their farm. (Photo: Simret Yasabu/CIMMYT)

Sequare Regassa is the family’s breadwinner, looking after her four children and working closely with her extended family on their 8-hectare farm in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. “Getting a good maize harvest every year, even when it does not rain much, is important for my family’s welfare,” she says. Although her children are now grown and living with their own families, the family farm unites them all in producing adequate grain to feed themselves. Read more about how Regassa and other farmers are weatherproofing their livelihoods.

R is for Reaping benefits

Tabitha Kamau examines drought-tolerant KDV4 maize in her plot in the village of Kavilinguni, Machakos County, Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Rural women farmers are taking up improved drought-tolerant and high yielding varieties with early maturity thanks to participatory maize varietal selection. “If I am able to harvest in three and a half months or less, compared to four months or more for other varieties, I can sell some grain to neighbors still awaiting their harvest who want to feed their families,” says Tabitha Kamau. She is a smallholder farmer in Machakos County, Kenya, who plants drought-tolerant maize on her plot. Read about how farmers in her area are choosing the varieties that work best for them.

Rose Aufi explains how her family of seven children and three grandchildren are food-secure thanks to the climate-smart agriculture techniques she practices on her farm in Matandika, southern Malawi. She and her husband have obtained a good harvest since they started participating in a CIMMYT project and adopted climate-smart agricultural practices. Aufi says technologies such as mulching and crop rotation are there to simplify the workload in the field.

A is for Adopter

Alice Nasiyimu holds four large cobs of maize harvested at her family farm in Bungoma County, in western Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Dolly Muatha shows maize from her farm in Makueni County, eastern Kenya. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Dolly Muatha, a 49-year-old farmer with four children in Kenya’s Makueni County, has been growing SAWA drought-tolerant maize for three years. She has witnessed the performance of this variety in her demo plot. “It matures early and yields two to three beautiful cobs per plant” she says.

L is for Learner

Ruth Kanini Somba (left) stands for a portrait with her husband Alex and their 8-year-old son. (Photo: Jerome Bossuet/CIMMYT)

Ruth Kanini Somba adopted SAWA maize in 2017 after seeing a demonstration plot at Dolly Muatha’s farm. She points out that SAWA performs better than other varieties because of its early maturity and resistance to grey leaf spot and weevils. The drought-tolerant attribute of the SAWA maize also makes the maize crop cope well when rainfall is erratic.

Agnes Nthambi (left) and other farmers evaluate maize varieties developed through CIMMYT’s Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) project. (Photo: Joshua Masinde/CIMMYT)

Improved agricultural techniques, such as optimum spacing, enables farmers such as Agnes Nthambi to get better crops. This farmer from Kenya’s Machakos County hosted a demonstration plot she and other farmers in her area were able to learn new growing techniques. “On this trial, I learned that spacing was about two times shorter than we are generally used to. Even with the more constricted spacing, the maize has performed much better than what we are used to seeing,” Nthambi explained.

Maize ears and seed of the Mexican "Jala" landrace, native to the town of Jala, in the state of Nayarit. It is dent in type and white in color. This landrace is famous for producing the longest maize ears in the world. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Saving the giant

Written by Carolyn Cowan on October 4, 2019. Posted in Features.

Mexican and international researchers have joined with farmers and specialists from Jala, a scenic valley near the Pacific Coast of Mexico’s state of Nayarit, in a critical strategy to save and study an endangered, legendary maize race whose ears once grew longer than a man’s forearm.

Specialists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are analyzing the race’s genetic diversity, in hopes of preserving its qualities and, in concert with Jala farmers, safeguarding its future and merits.

Efforts include a new maize festival that reprises a yearly contest begun in 1981 to honor the community’s largest maize ear, but the outsize Jala maize race faces myriad hurdles to survive, according to Carolina Camacho, CIMMYT socioeconomics researcher and festival collaborator.

“The Jala maize landrace is unsuited to mechanization due to its size and agronomic requirements,” said Camacho. “It must be sown by hand and, because the plant can grow to several meters or taller, the ears must be harvested on horseback.”

Jala maize is also losing out to more competitive and profitable improved varieties, Camacho added. It is prized locally for its floury texture, but many farmers favor varieties more suited to milling and which yield more husks — in high demand as tamale wraps — as well as fodder and feed. The floury texture also means the grain is less dense and so fetches a lower price on external markets, where grain is sold by weight.

Youth panel discussion at the Feria de la Mazorca del Maize Nativo with Carolina Camacho, CIMMYT (third from right). (Photo: Denise Costich/CIMMYT)

A fair fight for preservation

The most recent “Feria de la Mazorca del Maíz Nativo,” or Landrace Maize Ear Festival, was held in December 2018. Under the boughs of a giant guanacaste tree in the town square of Coapan, Jala Valley, children, elders, cooks and dancers celebrated maize and its associated traditions. The festival culminated in the contest for the largest maize ear, with the winning farmer’s submission measuring nearly 38 centimeters in length.

The competition typically takes place in August as part of Jala’s two-week “Feria del Elote,” or green ear festival, first established to foster the appreciation and preservation of the native maize.

CIMMYT scientists helped the community set up a local genebank to store Jala landrace seed, according to Denise Costich, head of the CIMMYT maize germplasm bank and festival collaborator.

“This enhances the community’s role as custodians of landrace diversity and their access to the seed,” said Costich, adding that Jala seed from as far back as the early 1980s forms part of CIMMYT’s maize collections, which comprise 28,000 unique samples.

Under CIMMYT’s Seeds of Discovery project, scientists are analyzing the remaining genetic potential in the Jala maize population, particularly to understand the extent and effects of both inbreeding and outcrossing.

On the one hand, Costich said, Jala’s unique genetic pedigree appears to be diluted from mixing with other varieties in the valley whose pollen lands on Jala silks. At the same time, she worries about possible inbreeding in some small and isolated valley pockets where Jala is grown.

Finally, the yearly contest, for which maize ears are harvested in the green stage before maturity, precludes use of the grain as seed and so may also remove inheritable potential for large ears from the local maize gene pool.

Farewell to small-scale farmers?

Setting up the contest entries in Coapan: (l-r) Cristian Zavala of the CIMMYT maize genebank recording data; Rafael Mier from Fundacion Tortillas de Maiz Mexicana; Victor Vidal, INIFAP collaborator and judge of the contest; and Alfredo Segundo of the CIMMYT maize genebank. (Photo: Denise Costich/CIMMYT)

Whatever the causes, Jala maize isn’t what it used to be. In 1924, a visiting scientist observed maize plants over 6 meters in height and with ears more than 60 centimeters long — far longer than today’s samples.

One grave challenge to the landrace’s continued existence is the steady disappearance of older farmers who grow it. As throughout rural Mexico, many youths are leaving farm communities like Jala in search of better opportunities and livelihoods in cities.

Camacho believes the festival and contest encourage farmers to continue growing Jala maize but cannot alone ensure the landrace’s preservation.

“The solutions need to encompass all aspects of Jala maize and be supported by the entire community, particularly young people,” said Camacho.

The festival in Coapan included a panel discussion with local youths, among them graduate students from the Autonomous University of Nayarit.

“The panelists highlighted the lack of opportunities in rural areas and the need for an economically secure future; things that Jala maize doesn’t offer,” Camacho said.

The festival is a collaboration among Costich, Camacho, Victor Vidal of INIFAP-Nayarit, and local partners including Gilberto González, Ricardo Cambero, Alondra Maldonado, Ismael Elías, Renato Olmedo (CIMMYT), and Miguel González Lomelí.

A customer chooses bread in a small shop in Dinajpur, Bangladesh. (Photo: S. Mojumder/Drik/CIMMYT)

New publications: Do market shocks generate gender-differentiated impacts?

Written by Emma Orchardson on September 24, 2019. Posted in Publications.

Female-headed households are likely to experience higher welfare losses due to commodity price hikes than their male-headed counterparts, as they tend to spend a larger percentage of their income on food items. However, the full extent of this impact of market has not been widely examined in the empirical literature.

Applying the difference-in-difference estimation procedure to data collected from more than 22,000 households in Bangladesh in 2005 and 2010, researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) set out to examine the gender-differentiated impacts of the commodity price hikes during the food price crisis of 2008 on food and non-food consumption behavior based on the sex of the household head.

They found that, in general, the commodity price hikes had more adversely affected female-headed households, which reduced their expenditure on food and non-food items such as cereals and education at a greater rate than their male-headed counterparts did.

However, their study also reveals that the welfare impacts on these households varied greatly depending on socio-economic conditions. Results showed that households headed by women who were relatively better educated, who owned larger pieces of land and received remittances were buffered to a certain extent and their expenditure was affected less.

Understanding these buffering factors, the authors argue, is crucial when designing policy interventions in developing countries. The study provides a number of recommendations for government and international donor agencies to help female-headed households better cope with market shocks. For example, they could improve the reach of general education, increase women’s access to land and agricultural assets and remove barriers to the in-flow of remittances for female-headed households. Extending the reach of social protection and microcredit programs could further complement market shock buffering capacity, as could providing targeted capital.

Read more results and recommendations in the study, “Do market shocks generate gender-differentiated impacts? Policy implications from a quasi-natural experiment in Bangladesh” in Women’s Studies International Forum, Volume 76, September–October 2019.

This study was made possible through the support provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MI) project, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the CSISA Phase II project.

See more recent publications by CIMMYT researchers:

Elucidating the genetic basis of biomass accumulation and radiation use efficiency in spring wheat and its role in yield potential. 2019. Molero, G., Joynson, R. , Piñera Chavez, F.J. , Gardiner, L.J. , Rivera Amado, A.C. , Hall, A.J.W. , Reynolds, M.P. In: Plant Biotechnology Journal v. 17, no. 7, p. 1276-1288.
Identification of recombinants carrying stripe rust resistance gene Yr57 and adult plant stem rust resistance gene Sr2 through marker‐assisted selection. 2019. Lodhi, S., Bariana, H.S., Randhawa, M.S., Gul Kazi, A., Peter John., Bansal, U. In: Plant Breeding v. 138, no. 2, p. 148-152.
Effect of different tillage and residue management practices on crop and water productivity and economics in maize (Zea mays) based rotations. 2019. Parihar M.D., Parihar, C.M., Nanwal, R.K., Singh, A.K., Jat, S.L., Hari S. Nayak, Prakash Chand Ghasal, Jewlia, H.R., Choudhary, M. , Jat, M.L. In: Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences v. 89, no. 2.
A multi-scale and multi-model gridded framework for forecasting crop production, risk analysis, and climate change impact studies. 2019. Shelia, V., Hansen, J., Sharda, V., Porter, C., Aggarwal, P.K., Wilkerson, C.J., Hoogenboom, G. In: Environmental Modelling and Software v. 115, no. 144-154.
Averting wheat blast by implementing a ‘wheat holiday’: in search of alternative crops in West Bengal, India. 2019. Mottaleb, K.A., Singh, P.K., Sonder, K., Kruseman, G., Erenstein, O. In: PLoS One v. 114, no. 2, art. E0211410.
Estimating soil evaporation in dry seeded rice and wheat crops after wetting events. 2019. Gupta, N., Eberbach, P.L., Humphreys, E., Singh, B., Sudhir-Yadav, Kukal, S.S. In: Agricultural Water Management v. 217, p. 98-106.
Dependence of temperature sensitivity of soil organic carbon decomposition on nutrient management options under conservation agriculture in a sub-tropical Inceptisol. 2019. Parihar, C.M., Singh, A.K., Jat, S.L., Ghosh, A., Dey, A., Hari S. Nayak, Parihar M.D., Mahala, D.M., Yadav, R.K., Rai, V., Satayanaryana, T., Jat, M.L. In: Soil and Tillage Research v. 190, p. 50-60.
Biogas adoption and elucidating its impacts in India: implications for policy. 2019. Mottaleb, K.A., Rahut, D.B. In: Biomass and Bioenergy v. 123, p. 166-174.
Reaction of Australian durum, common wheat and triticale genotypes to Karnal bunt (Tilletia indica) infection under artificial inoculation in the field. 2019. Emebiri, L. C., Singh, P.K. , Tan, M. K. , Fuentes Dávila, G., Xinyao He, Singh, R.P. In: Crop and Pasture Science v. 70, no. 2, p. 107-112.
A farm-level assessment of labor and mechanization in Eastern and Southern Africa. 2019. Baudron, F., Misiko, M.T., Getnet, B., Nazare, R., Sariah, J., Kaumbutho, P. In: Agronomy for Sustainable Development v. 39, no. 2, art. 17.

New publications: Exploring how women seize control of wheat–maize technologies in Bangladesh

Written by Matthew O'Leary on September 4, 2019. Posted in Publications.

A new study published in the Canadian Journal of Development Studies shows how some of Bangladesh’s indigenous women are overcoming social norms and institutional biases to gain direct access to maize and wheat agricultural innovations through developing women-led agricultural organizations, which benefit low-income Muslim women members as well.

Agriculture is important to Bangladesh’s economy and employs a large percentage of the male and female population as farmers, hired labor, and decision-makers. Bangladesh also has a positive policy commitment to gender equality. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are embedded into the country’s national growth plans, including a strong commitment to Goal 5, Gender Equality, and Goal 10, Reduced Inequalities.

However, this new study shows that agricultural innovation programs are primarily directed at middle-income male farmers. Institutional biases in agricultural partners — extension officers, research organizations, policymakers, private sector partners and others — can hamper indigenous peoples and women from participating in wheat–maize innovation processes, as they rarely meet the requisite criteria: sufficient land and social capital. In addition, their participation in markets varies according to their socioeconomic location in society.

Drawing on GENNOVATE case studies, the authors provide insights into how overlapping layers of disadvantage are being challenged in one community in northern Bangladesh.

Indigenous Santal women in the community are active in agriculture, both in the field and in decision-making, but are often marginalized by agricultural partners. Through mobilizing themselves organizationally into a woman-led agricultural organization, they have provided a forum for the delivery of technical training. This process has encouraged low-income Muslim women — who work in the field but are also marginalized by agricultural partners — to join the organization and benefit from training as well.

The findings provide insights into how agricultural research partners can work to strengthen the contribution and voices of the women who have long experienced differing forms of marginalization and to support their efforts to secure technical training.

The data used in this article is derived from GENNOVATE (Enabling Gender Equality in Agricultural and Environmental Innovation), a global research initiative supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This is a cross-CGIAR initiative examining how interactions between gender norms, agency and other contextual factors shape access to, adoption of and benefits from agricultural innovations in rural communities worldwide.

Read the full paper:
Leaving no one behind: how women seize control of wheat–maize technologies in Bangladesh.

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Study proposes alternative to conventional technology adoption research in smallholder agriculture

Written by Mary Donovan on September 4, 2019. Posted in News.

The development community is introducing increasingly complex and systemic technological designs for sustainable improvements to agriculture. Yet, a systemic perspective is hard to find in “adoption-outcome” focused analyses of technological change processes. In order to improve development interventions, it is necessary not only to analyze both successes and failures, but also the process and impacts of technological change.

Researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) recently published a paper on rethinking technological change in smallholder agriculture, arguing against the conventional approach to studying technology adoption.

The problem with the concept of technology adoption

While the adoption rate of newly introduced technologies is still used in the evaluation of agricultural research and development, the theory of technology adoption is an insufficient framework for understanding technological change. It is too linear, too binary, too focused on individual decisions and gives an inaccurate and misleading picture to researchers.

The theory of adoption treats technology like a “black box” that is transferred smoothly from one setting to another, following a linear progression of old and inferior tools and methods to new improved ones. This theory is too simplistic to align with the complex realities of the capabilities and agency of multiple actors. In addition, in cases of participatory technology development, where intended users are involved in the creation of innovations, adoption rates are often limited due to the relatively small scale of the project.

Using adoption rate as the only indicator of success or failure can lead researchers to ignore wider impacts of the introduction of a new technology. Adoption rates could go up, but use of a new technology could cause harm to social relations, the local environment, or its resilience. Low adoption rates could classify a program as a failure, while farmers benefited substantially in undetected ways, for example forming networks or acquiring new skills and knowledge. A singular focus on adoption rates thus limits our understanding of what happens in processes of technological change.

Farmer Kausila Chanara direct dry seeding rice in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT). — Farmer Kausila Chanara direct dry seeding rice in Ramghat, Surkhet, Nepal. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)

An alternative conceptual framework

In addition to the introduction of a new technology to small-scale farming systems, technological change involves the agency of many social actors. The agency of farmers, scientists, project managers and extension officers is key to understand whether a new technology is perceived to be useful, accessible or realistic, as well as how it is adjusted and changing social relations.

A new framework is needed to capture this reconfiguration of social and technological components that result from the introduction of a new technology to a community.

The authors of this paper propose an alternative conceptual framework with an agent-, practice- and process-oriented approach to better understand technological change. The framework is composed of four key components: propositions, encounters, dispositions and responses.

Propositions are composed of artefacts, methods, techniques and practices and a proposed mode of engagement in agricultural production. Encounters can be deliberately organized, for example a field day, or spontaneous, when a farmer sees a neighbor using a new tool. Intended users of technology may be disposed to respond in a variety of different ways, and dispositions may change over time. Finally, responses are a process or pathway that is likely to involve adjustment or recalibration to make the new technology work for the farmer.

Further work to operationalize this framework is needed. The authors suggest a next step of developing indicators to measure learning, experimentation and behavioral change as part of analyzing technological change processes.

Cobs & Spikes podcast: Interview with Juan Gonzalo Jaramillo Mejia on social inclusion

Written by Mary Donovan on July 31, 2019. Posted in Podcasts.

How can social protection programs be truly inclusive? Taking a social inclusion lens to agricultural development means looking beyond gender to other identity markers and changing the narratives in gender development approaches, which often place a disproportionate burden on women. Social protection programs do not always keep up with the changes of the traditional gender order.

In this episode, we talk to Juan Gonzalo Jaramillo Mejia, Project Manager and Researcher on Inclusion Innovation and Social Protection. He discusses why we must engage men in the fight for gender equality and how using a social inclusion lens to social protection programs is necessary to ensure that no one is left behind.

You can listen to our podcast here, or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or Google Play.

Seeds of progress

Written by Jennifer Johnson on June 20, 2019. Posted in Videos.

The maize seed sector in east and southern Africa is male-dominated. However, there are women working in this sector who are breaking social barriers and helping to improve household food security, nutrition and livelihoods by providing jobs and improved seed varieties to farmers.

Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) conducted interviews with women owners of seed companies in eastern and southern Africa. They shared information on their background, their motivation to start their businesses, what sets their companies apart from the competition, the innovative approaches they use to ensure smallholder farmers adopt improved seed varieties, the unique challenges they face as women in the seed sector and the potential for growth of their companies.

Jordan Chamberlin

Written by Emma Orchardson on May 8, 2019. Posted in Uncategorized.

Jordan Chamberlin is a CIMMYT Spatial Economist based in Kenya. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University and an MA in Geography from Arizona State University.

He conducts applied research on smallholder farm households, rural development and policies designed to promote welfare and productivity improvements.

MasAgro (Crops for Mexico)

Written by Mary Donovan on April 12, 2019. Posted in Uncategorized.

MasAgro is a research for rural development project supported by Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The project promotes the sustainable intensification of maize and wheat production in Mexico. MasAgro develops capacities and research activities aimed at raising maize and wheat yields stability and profitability in Mexico. The program also seeks to increase farmer income and production systems sustainability by implementing collaborative research initiatives, developing and promoting the use of improved seed, sustainable technologies and farming practices.

OBJECTIVES

Obtain higher and more stable yields, increase farmer income and promote natural resource conservation in agriculture.
Promote collaboration and integration between participants of the maize, wheat and similiar grains value chains to develop, disseminate and adopt sustainable farming solutions in target agricultural zones.
Promote the growth of a Mexican seed sector and contribute to raise maize productivity in Mexico by conducting collaborative research in maize genetic resources and developing yellow and white maize hybrids of high yield potential and stability.
Use the genetic resources CIMMYT conserves and develop cutting-edge technologies and capacities in Mexico to accelerate the development of stable, high-yielding and climate resilient maize and wheat varieties.
Strengthen Mexico’s research capacities to increase yield potential and climate resilience of improved wheat varieties.

COMPONENTS

Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale in Africa (TAMASA)

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on April 2, 2019. Posted in Uncategorized.

Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale in Africa (TAMASA) is a 4-year project seeking to improve productivity and profitability for small-scale maize farmers in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania.

The overall purpose of TAMASA is to use innovative approaches to transform agronomy that:

Use available geospatial and other data and analytics to map maize areas, soil constraints, and actual and yields at different scale.
Work with service providers (i.e. input suppliers, government and private research and extension services, agro-dealers, and others) to identify and co-develop systems and applications that transform this data and information to useable products that support their businesses or programs to reach clients more effectively
Build capacity in national programs to support and sustain these approaches.

The core products and services of this project include:

Annual assessments and digital maps of maize growing areas, actual and attainable yields in core research areas or focal areas.
Decision-support tools for ex-ante spatial analysis, nutrient management, fertilizer formulation and variety selection.
Open-access databases of agronomic data.
Increased capacity in national programs and partners through in-country data science and software application training and mentoring.

GENNOVATE

Written by Rodrigo Ordóñez on March 29, 2019. Posted in Uncategorized.

GENNOVATE is a global comparative research initiative which addresses the question of how gender norms influence men, women and youth to adopt innovation in agriculture and natural resource management.

Carried out in conjunction with 11 CGIAR research programs worldwide and across 125 rural communities in 26 countries, this qualitative comparative study aims to provide authoritative research to advance gender-transformative approaches and catalyze change in international agricultural and natural resource management research for development.

In discussion groups and individual interviews, roughly 6,000 rural study participants of different socioeconomic backgrounds and age groups are reflecting on and comparing local women’s and men’s expected roles and behaviors — or gender norms— and how these social rules affect their ability to access, adopt, adapt and benefit from innovations in agricultural and natural resource management.

The initiative’s research process strives to give rural women and men a voice by providing authoritative, contextually grounded evidence on how gender interacts with agricultural innovations. It also aims to strengthen CGIAR research program capacities to know the target beneficiaries, design for them, and be accountable to them.

Central to the qualitative field study is an exploration of women’s and men’s agency at the core of which is the capacity to make important decisions pertaining to one’s life. For rural women and men, these decisions relate to agriculture and natural resource management, as well as to other significant events in the private (household) and public (community) spheres.

OBJECTIVES

What are the most important new agricultural practices and technologies for the men and for the women in a given village?
What qualities make a woman or a man a good farmer?
Do young people in this village follow local customs of women doing certain agricultural activities and men others?
Are there differences between a woman who is innovative and a man who is innovative?