MasAgro develops capacities in Mexican producers through the socialization of scientific knowledge and the use of rural knowledge to increase their yields and conserve natural resources.
Read more here: https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/politica/2020/06/05/reitera-sader-llamado-a-transitar-hacia-agricultura-sustentable-446.html
On June 5, 2020, the world celebrates World Environment Day as COVID-19 continues to cause challenges and restrictions. Existing threats of climate change with the new challenges of a global pandemic adversely affect the agricultural sector, a mainstay of most sub-Saharan African economies. This situation calls for increased attention to how agriculture is practiced and natural resources — such as soil and water — are cared for.
Smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe are custodians of these natural resources, yet climate variability of shifting rainfall seasons, El Niño and droughts threaten successful rain-fed farming. Coupled with conventional farming practices such as tillage and deforestation, the soil structure and chemical quality are gradually degrading. Each passing year has resulted in declining yields, food insecurity and increased household vulnerabilities, particularly in drought-prone, low rainfall areas of southern Zimbabwe.
With support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, led by the World Food Programme (WFP), aims to enable vulnerable, smallholder farmers to increase their food security, income and resilience by managing climate-related risks. Building on R4, WFP has just launched the Zambuko Livelihoods Initiative, focusing on social cohesion of communities, improved crop and livestock production and improved access to finance, with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is a partner to implement the project component on appropriate seeds and agricultural practices.
We discuss the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative with Christian Thierfelder, the Principal Cropping Systems Agronomist and a Strategic Leader for Africa at CIMMYT, and Munaye Makonnen, the Project Lead from WFP in Zimbabwe.
How is the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative responding to climate change challenges in the sites of intervention – Chebvute and Mwenezi?
Thierfelder: The R4 and Zambuko initiatives pursue an integrated approach to increase resilience of smallholder farming communities. Different partner organizations have come together in these projects to pursue different interventions such as building dams and vegetable gardens as community assets, financial education, promotion of improved climate-smart technologies such as drought-tolerant seed in combination with conservation agriculture, insurance, and linking farmers to markets. The combined actions address all needs and shortfalls in the target communities. We see a transformational change from mere subsistence farming to a more commercially oriented farming by targeted smallholders.
Makonnen: Recognizing the need to address livelihoods holistically, R4 offers farmers a set of integrated tools so that communities can better manage climate risks. Farmers participate in activities that enhance the natural resource base at watershed level, helping them adapt to climate change. They also benefit from a weather index insurance cover that protects them against drought and incentivizes them to engage in high-risk high-return investments. In the case of minor shocks, farmers have their savings groups to draw up on and can access small credit for income generating activities. With the aim of increasing productivity and income, conservation agriculture practices are promoted. For their surplus production, participants are also supported in accessing markets. The project also plans to include a component on climate services that will allow communities to mitigate the impacts of disaster risk, increase production and enhance adaptation to climate change.
Since inception, how have the farming communities responded to the technologies and practices introduced in their respective sites?
Thierfelder: Farming communities were very skeptical initially about this new approach. However, the varieties and cropping systems displayed in our 10 mother trials showed dramatically higher yields than farmers observed in their own fields, so it was not difficult to get 200 baby trial farmers to experiment with the technology. During the 2019/2020 cropping season, farmers got even more excited to see maize and legume yields thrive in their baby trials while crops planted under conventional agriculture failed. In the next cropping season, we hope to reach the tipping point of farmers trying and experimenting with these climate-smart agriculture technologies to achieve a transformational change towards more resilience.
Makonnen: Looking at the performance of the trials, farmers can see for themselves that the agricultural practices promoted by the project result in higher yields. They also get practical experience by trying these out on their own fields. Such an approach has worked well in terms of getting farmers to become interested in and eventually adopt conservation agriculture principles because it is not just based on theory — farmers can actually see and experience the change for themselves.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and disturbance to agri-food systems, how is the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative addressing the emerging challenges?
Thierfelder: We have created the base of more resilient farming systems that should positively respond to all external shocks – droughts, floods and maybe a virus as well. In our technology package we do promote self-pollinating legumes such as cowpea and groundnuts which can be grown even when farmers are cut off from supply chains for seed and fertilizer. We therefore hope that this can be a contribution to reducing the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
Makonnen: As COVID-19 is compromising food security, it is now more important than ever to ensure that agricultural production continues to function smoothly. R4 continues to provide all the services in its integrated risk management package despite the pandemic. As farmers face challenges in production, including limited access to labor, we hope that high yielding and less labor-intensive conservation agriculture practices promoted by R4 really come into their own. Ensuring the safety of our beneficiaries, staff and partners is a priority for WFP so we have developed guidelines for R4 implementation in the context of COVID-19. For instance, trainings are taking place in smaller groups, social distancing is observed in all activities, messages on COVID-19 prevention are shared with beneficiaries and we are also looking into digital solutions to continue implementation during these unprecedented times.
Looking ahead, how will the adoption of appropriate agricultural practices and seed varieties strengthen the resilience of the farming communities?
Thierfelder: Our approach has been multi-faceted addressing different areas of concern to the farmers: income generation, credit, improved productivity, insurance and marketing. We believe that with this mix of interventions farming can more effectively withstand external stresses. However, we also realize that adoption does not happen overnight and requires a significant experimentation and learning process with farmers. WFP has seen the need for longer term investments, and this is now beginning to pay off.
Makonnen: Adoption of appropriate agricultural practices and seeds is just one of the components of R4. We know resilience requires a holistic approach which is why we have a set of interventions within R4 involving multiple partners. R4 will continue to work across the entire value chain bringing together natural resource management, access to financial services, access to inputs and markets and promotion of appropriate agricultural practices so that the farmers we work with are well equipped to manage risks and become resilient to the changing climate and risks to their food security.
Cover photo: Kiyasi Gwalale stands on her baby trial plot.
Watch here (in Amharic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVsVsxAKybI&feature=youtu.be
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to transform the way the world operates, and agricultural production systems are not exempt.
Even in countries that have identified the agricultural sector as an essential one, ongoing restrictions on transport and freedom of movement are causing disruptions across the value chain — with potentially devastating impact on already fragile food systems in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
With this in mind, systems agronomists and mechanization specialists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), discuss the impact of restrictions on agricultural labor and production, and the role farm mechanization can play in addressing new challenges.
What are the implications of the agricultural labor shortages that are emerging in Africa and Latin America as a result of COVID-19 restrictions?
Frédéric Baudron: The pandemic has demonstrated that food production systems around the world — even in countries where agriculture is thought to be highly mechanized — are highly dependent on farm labor.
Africa is often presented as being dominated by farms which rely mainly on the labor of family members. Therefore, one could expect that Africa would be spared from the consequences of unavailability and/or unaffordability of hired labor. However, a recent CIMMYT study shows that farming systems in Africa are far more dependent on hired labor than commonly thought, and that the quasi total dependence of smallholder farming on family labor is a myth. Depending on the farming system, a complete loss of hired labor could lead to a productivity decrease of up to 20% in Eastern and Southern Africa. Hired labor is also likely to be replaced by child labor.
Because most production on the continent is rainfed during a single season, most farmers only plant and harvest once per year, making the timing of each task critical. A delay in planting because of labor shortages — as will soon occur Ethiopia — could lead to dramatically reduced yields. A delay in harvesting — as is currently experienced in Zimbabwe — means a large fraction of the crop is likely to be spoilt in the field.
Jelle Van Loon: The situation is similar for Mexico and the general Central American corridor, although the main production cycle is only just starting. Proper land preparation and timely sowing are critical, not only in terms of food production and achieving proper yields, but also to ensure that farmers have a stable income at the end of the year. This is especially important now, as financial and food reserves are shrinking at a faster pace due to COVID-19 restrictions that heavily affect demand on informal markets.
Are you seeing a similar situation in South Asia?
Timothy Krupnik: Depending on the country, we’ve seen either abrupt interruptions in the movement of agricultural laborers — for example in India where millions of migrant laborers have not been able to travel home during lockdown — or an influx of people from urban areas who fled to their villages when lockdown began.
In the latter case, one might expect this to increase labor availability for farming, but we tended to observe the reverse. People remain largely frightened of coming out of their homes, so even in rural areas which saw an influx of people, labor availability has not necessarily increased. Where laborers are willing to work, our initial scan of the evidence indicates that daily wage labor costs have also increased considerably due to risks of infection spreading. In either situation, smallholder farmers who need to hire labor to assure crucial crop management activities like planting or harvesting are suffering. There are reports emerging also of increased child labor in the region as schools are closed and resource-poor farmers are allocating family members and children to work where they can’t afford to hire labor.
M.L. Jat: I would like to cite the specific example of intensive rice-wheat rotation in India’s breadbasket and the Green Revolution corridors in the western Indo-Gangetic plains, which provide the bulk of cereals to the national food basket. An ex-ante analysis on the consequences of the reverse migration of the agricultural workforce and social distancing due to COVID-19 revealed that a delay in the transplanting of rice seedlings by two weeks is likely, which will delay rice harvesting and consequently delay the planting of wheat. This will potentially lead to rice and wheat production losses of 10-25%, worth up to $1.5 billion.
In addition, the shorter turn around between harvesting rice and planting wheat may further increase the incidence of rice residue burning. This is a major problem which creates significant health issues and may exacerbate the threat of COVID-19 by increasing both infection rates and disease severity.
Krupnik: The situation has increased interest and policy to support use of scale-appropriate machinery for operations like harvesting. In Bangladesh, for example, there was a recent and very serious risk of losing much of the rice harvest as the monsoon has started early and flash flooding has been a concern. Without manual laborers to harvest the crop, CIMMYT-led projects like the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization and Extension Activity (CSISA-MEA) have played a key role in assisting the movement of combine harvesters and crop reapers to areas at risk of crop losses and helping to assure the rice crop is harvested on time.
It sounds like these machines were instrumental in avoiding crop losses. Does this mean that mechanization has a key role to play in lessening the impact of these labor shortages?
Krupnik: During the COVID-19 crisis, scale-appropriate machinery has become even more important for mitigating labor shortages. We work to facilitate the availability of scale-appropriate machinery not only so that farmers can buy and use equipment, but also by encouraging those who own machineries to become entrepreneurial service providers who offer efficient and mechanized land preparation, planting, irrigation, harvesting and post-harvesting to other farmers on an affordable fee-for-service basis.
This is a win-win situation for farmers who can’t access or afford the escalating costs of labor. In the COVID-19 crisis, these arrangements assist in responding to the labor crunch in locations where resource-poor farmers are most in need, and also allow farmers to get crucial work done while maintaining and encouraging social distancing.
Baudron: Over the past seven years, CIMMYT and its partners have fine-tuned technologies and developed delivery models — based on rural service providers supported by private sector companies — to scale the use of small machines in East and Southern Africa. These are profitable for both farmers and service providers and reduce labor requirements tremendously.
In Zimbabwe, we found that labor requirements were 15 times lower when establishing a maize field with a direct seeder pulled by a two-wheel tractor, and 23 times lower using a similar technology for establishing wheat in Rwanda, compared to the conventional method based on labor and draft power. A ton of maize that would take 12 people a full day to shell manually, can be shelled in one hour using a small double-cob sheller that costs about $300.
Jat: Rapid policy decisions by sub-national and national governments on facilitating more mechanized operations in labor intensive rice-wheat production regions will address labor availability issues while contributing to productivity enhancement of succeeding wheat crop in rotation, as well as overall system sustainability. Our ex-ante analysis on the implications of labor shortages in rice-wheat rotation in the western Indo-Gangetic plains due to COVID-19 indicates that adoption of scale-appropriate farm mechanization has the potential to stabilize the food production as well as reducing the income losses and air pollution surges in northwest India.
The situation in the regions each of you have mentioned is unique, but are there any global trends that you’ve noticed? And if so, can other regions learn from these localized experiences?
Krupnik: A huge part of what we do as a research and training institute is facilitate exchanges of information across continents and countries. Different types and designs of machinery that can be used in similar circumstances can be shared, as can business models supporting service providers.
Importantly, part of the concept of ‘scale-appropriate mechanization’ is also learning when and where machinery makes sense — where labor is not scarce and rural communities are highly dependent on income from labor to sustain their communities, some forms of mechanization may not be appropriate. We work to understand these dynamics and target the right machines in the right time and right places.
Van Loon: In addition to reducing pressure on available labor and alleviating drudgery, modern farm equipment tailored to the needs of smallholders can also increase competitiveness, as it allows for higher precision and efficiency.
In this sense, scale-appropriate mechanization can stimulate rural transformation incentivizing short and efficient value chains while ensuring stable food provision — aspects that have become essential to navigating the present crisis.
Has the current pandemic brought up any new perspectives in terms of how you consider labor and mechanization?
Baudron: We often look at yield and area planted in staple crops to assess the food security situation of a country during a particular year. This pandemic has shown us that we need to pay more attention to labor productivity. In many countries, policy-makers and development agents fear that mechanization will displace labor, but the dependency of staple crops on labor is a threat to food security, as we currently see in Africa and South Asia.
If the production of fruit, vegetables, cash crops, and so on will continue to depend on manual labor, it is essential in my view for critical tasks in the production of staples to be mechanized — particularly planting and harvesting. This will ensure the resilience of national food systems in the case of a future disruption similar to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cover photo: Establishment of demo trial in Nyanga, Zimbabwe. (Photo: CIMMYT/ZRBF)
Narayan Prasad Khanal is a Business Development Manager with CIMMYT’s Socioeconomics Program, based in Nepal.
Mexico has always been there for CIMMYT.
Not only is it the origin of maize – one of CIMMYT’s focus crops – it also inspired the birth of its headquarters, which has served as the institute’s mothership since its establishment in 1966.
CIMMYT’s crop-breeding research begins with its genebank, a remarkable living catalog of genetic diversity comprising over 28,000 unique seed collections of maize and over 150,000 of wheat. The genebank was established at CIMMYT’s headquarters in 1986 and to date is the world’s largest and most diverse collection of maize and wheat. Like clockwork, every year, more than 1,500 maize and wheat seed shipments leave Mexico to reach as many as 800 recipients in over 100 countries.
In one way or another, the world’s maize and wheat have a link back to Mexico: be it through pest-resistance trials in the Agua Fria or Tlaltizapan hub or heat-resilient wheat trials in the scorching fields of Obregon. The country’s diverse ecosystems which allowed for Norman Borlaug’s shuttle breeding in the 1940s remain instrumental for today’s researchers’ work to develop innovative crops and sustainable farming systems worldwide.
CIMMYT has been working hand in hand with Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) on MasAgro, a project that promotes the sustainable production of maize and wheat in Mexico.
In the conversation below, Martin Kropff, Director General of CIMMYT, and Bram Govaerts, CIMMYT Representative for the Americas and Director of the Integrated Development Program, explore topics such as Mexico’s food security and agriculture while COVID-19 disrupts the nation’s status quo.
Has the COVID-19 pandemic exposed any vulnerabilities in Mexican food security?
Kropff: Albeit Mexico produces a lot of food – in fact, I believe that it currently ranks 11th in food production globally – it still imports food from other countries, particularly staples such as maize, wheat and rice from the U.S. The current pandemic poses a threat to open trade, and Mexico could also be affected by trade restrictions that other countries impose to protect their people and internal markets from food shortages.
Govaerts: At the same time, the pandemic is reducing economic activities everywhere to minimum levels. This poses a threat to food production given that farmers and agricultural workers in Mexico, and most of the northern hemisphere, are just about to begin the growing spring/summer season. Mexico’s fields need to be prepared for sowing and farmers need certainty as they take risks by investing today for a harvest that will come within several months.
How is CIMMYT helping to reduce these vulnerabilities?
Govaerts: CIMMYT is working with Mexico’s Agriculture Department (SADER) and the private and social sector to address these threats.
Kropff: In fact, we see that Mexico is already answering to a CIMMYT-endorsed Call to Action For World Leaders, which was published on the Food and Land Use Coalition website. This call to action urges countries to implement three key measures to avert a global food crisis that could increase the number of people suffering from chronic hunger by millions: keep the supply of food flowing across the world; scale support to the most vulnerable; and invest in sustainable, resilient food systems.
What is the role of CIMMYT’s collaboration with Mexican government bodies in this process?
Govaerts: In the fields there is potential to respond and avoid that today’s health crisis becomes tomorrow’s food crisis. CIMMYT is working with SADER and Mexico’s National Research System (INIFAP) to contribute to a stable supply of basic grains grown sustainably in Mexico by offering technical advice to the more than 300,000 farmers that participate in MasAgro, CIMMYT’s bilateral collaboration project with Mexico for sustainable maize and wheat production.
Currently, MasAgro technicians and extension agents are working with smallholder farmers in the center and south of the country to prepare soils for sowing, advising on optimal sowing densities and use of high-yielding improved varieties, agro-ecological pest management, fertilization, irrigation, among other activities that are essential to begin the crop production cycle in time.
Mexico and CIMMYT are also working with the agri-food sector to build farmers’ capacities to increase grain production sustainably and to sell the surplus to local and multi-national agri-food companies in Mexico. This is part of wider country plans which are called Maize for Mexico and Wheat for Mexico.
Kropff: These plans are very much in line with the call for governments to work with the philanthropic and private sectors to strengthen and scale out targeted food programs by linking them to foods that promote health and sustainable production. Currently we work with Nestlé, The Kellogg Company, Grupo Bimbo, and Walmart Foundation, among others, to create a pull from the market for sustainable agriculture for smallholder farmers. We call this sustainable sourcing.
How can we strengthen Mexico as a country of agricultural crops research and design activities?
Kropff: CIMMYT has been instrumental to public policy formulation in Mexico and has been positioned as one of Mexico’s most trusted partners over the past 10 years.
Govaerts: Exactly, and the numbers speak for themselves. As a result of the collaboration with more than 150 collaborators from the public, private and social sector, MasAgro has had a positive impact in the lives of more than 300 thousand farmers who have adopted conservation agriculture, improved seeds and sustainable farming technologies on more than 1 million hectares across Mexico.
Kropff: It would be great if Mexico continued investing in integrated development projects like MasAgro, and scaled out sustainable farming practices and technologies with innovative approaches like responsible local sourcing, which I mentioned just before while it promotes the replication of the MasAgro model in other countries.
How can we strengthen farmer’s access to better crops and better farming techniques?
Kropff: It is imperative to CIMMYT to improve farmers’ economic opportunity. This cannot be done without essential ingredients such as access to markets, capacity development, technology, and inputs like seeds and fertilizer. And most importantly, better crops and farming technologies are worthless without the national agricultural research systems’ buy in and trust.
Govaerts: This is very much at the heart of what we do together with maize farmers in Mexico in MasAgro. CIMMYT breeds maize hybrids with conventional technologies and improves native maize seed in collaborative projects with farmers. Then this improved maize seed is tested in collaboration with the local seed sector that, in turn, commercializes the best adapted materials in Mexico’s growing regions. These seed companies are small and medium enterprises that generate economic development in the center and south of the country.
Kropff: Similarly, in a project that started in 2019 in eastern and southern Africa, we reach farmers in Malawi, and soon in Rwanda and Tanzania, with our improved seeds through small seed companies which play the key role of ‘connector’ in intricate and complicated markets which often are ignored by large seed companies. Then, CIMMYT researchers undertake varietal trials and track genetic gains in farmers’ fields and share the findings with the broader agricultural community.
What changes can we expect in the nation’s food supply chain management after COVID-19?
Kropff: All crises bring challenges and opportunities. I believe that Mexico could take this opportunity to make its supply and value chains more integrated, resilient and flexible.
Govaerts: Mexico can become the leader of innovation that integrates traditional and scientific knowledge.
What role does CIMMYT want to play in the future?
Kropff: I see CIMMYT working even closer to the farming communities but especially along the whole value chain with science and data towards improved decision-making.
Govaerts: CIMMYT can be a catalyst of integrated programs. We want to keep discovering and helping to implement new solutions for the world’s poor and food insecure and work toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Kropff: We have a lot of work to do.
“Agricultural research for development is increasingly being held accountable to demonstrate that research goes beyond successful pilots,” said Iain Wright, deputy director general of research and development at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).
In a bid to scale impact of its research outputs, ILRI has recently undertaken a systematic review of the scaling tools and processes available to help guide and improve the organization’s efforts.
The Scaling Scan has been incorporated into a new scaling framework for ILRI projects and for the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock (Livestock CRP). The Scaling scan, developed in 2017 by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in collaboration with PPPLab at SNV, is one of three tools that have been identified as most suitable for the ILRI and CGIAR operational contexts.
“ILRI’s scaling framework applies the Scaling Scan and the USAID Scaling Pathway methodology before diving deep using the RTB/Wageningen Scaling Readiness methodology,” explained CIMMYT Scaling Coordinator Maria Boa. “It’s exciting because it aligns some of the best available tools to scale impact with a systems view.”
Designed for use by anyone involved in pro-poor and sustainable development programs looking to scale impact, the CIMMYT Scaling scan is found to be user-friendly and quick to help project implementation teams understand and define their scaling ambitions and asses their scaling environment. Though it is often applied as part of annual project review meetings, the tool can in fact be used at any stage of a project’s lifecycle. This helps stakeholders understand the multiple dimensions of scaling and the significant role nontechnical factors play in a scaling mindset.
CIMMYT shared lessons on how the methodology can be applied in a workshop setting and the Livestock CRP team has already used these to organize two workshops around improving productivity and incomes in Uganda’s pig value chain. The workshops, held in November 2019 and February 2020, brought together value chain actors, CRP researchers and project staff to better understand the multiple dimensions of scaling, develop realistic scaling goals, and identify key bottlenecks and opportunities using the Scaling Scan.
Read more on ILRI’s website:
ILRI adopts new framework for scaling up livestock research for development
While technology and data analysis have revolutionized farming in high-income countries, farmers in low-income nations have often been left out. New tools developed by CGIAR centers are narrowing the digital divide for smallholder farmers. These tools are increasingly gaining international notice beyond the field of agriculture, as a recent international award attests.
The 2020 Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (IAAA) was awarded to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Their tools, which help farmers to increase productivity, use more sustainable practices and access markets, topped bids from international technology companies and universities with projects applied to various fields.
“The award from this collaboration highlights the strengths of bringing together our research centers under One CGIAR,” said Daniel Jiménez, an Alliance scientist who was part of the winning team. “It shows that we can collaborate and compete at the highest level when it comes to applying science to global challenges.”
CIMMYT, CIAT and the IIASA won with their ‘Integrated Analytics for Sustainable Agriculture in Latin America’ projects. Finalists included projects focused on a wide range of analytics tools used in pricing, optimizing gas transmission, taxi guidance and management of hospital discharges.
“The IAAA award emphasizes novelty and creativity in analytics applications along with real-world impact,” said Pallav Chhaochhria, Director of Equities Trading at Citigroup and co-chair of the IAAA selection committee, during the virtual award ceremony.
The winning submission recognizes groundbreaking data systems and tools by publicly funded researches and field technicians who advise more than 150,000 farmers who participate in MasAgro, CIMMYT’s bilateral collaboration project with Mexico for sustainable maize and wheat production.
The multi-disciplinary team developed a system to track over 500 variables during the growing cycle at each plot monitored. These variables are subsequently analyzed in combination with geographic, weather and market data obtained from open sources of information. Data analysts and researchers mine these databases to find correlations or patterns that help identify limiting factors and the best management practices for each plot.
The resulting analytics feed an application called AgroTutor — available on Android and iOS — which offers free information to farmers, including historic yield potential, local benchmarks, windows of opportunity, recommended agricultural practices and commodity price forecasting.
“Although sophisticated data analyses have been used in agriculture before, small and medium-sized farmers have seldom benefited from a combination of systems and tools that offer predictive and prescriptive site-specific analytics,” said Andrea Gardeazabal, Information and Communication Technology for Agriculture, Monitoring & Evaluation Manager for CIMMYT’s Integrated Development program. “MasAgro and AgroTutor have proven that resource-constrained farmers can benefit from high-end innovative analyses.”
A major farmer survey is gathering data to understand how smallholders in Laos are responding to fall armyworm invasion and develop agroecological management options to control its spread.
The study, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in partnership with the Lao Farmer Network (LFN) and the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI), is CIMMYT’s first official research initiative in the country.
Farmer surveys are being conducted in some of the country’s key maize farming areas, recording attempts to manage the pest and laying the groundwork to raise awareness on sustainable best-bet agroecological strategies that promote a healthy system approach to maize farming, says Horst Weyerhaeuser, a scientific program consultant working with CIMMYT.
“Currently, researchers, policy makers and extension officers possess little information on fall armyworm pest management and control in Laos,” he explains. “The survey is working to build a knowledge-base.”
In June 2019, CIMMYT and national research scientists confirmed that fall armyworm, a global pest that affects the food security of millions of maize farmers, was present in the country.
Working with CIMMYT, LFN trained lead farmers to conduct surveys and collect data from farmers in their local areas. The network has also been distributing a series of infographics and videos in local languages, developed by CIMMYT and translated with major support from HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation and the Lao Farmer Rural Advisory Project, to describe appropriate pesticide use and sustainable farming practices to limit impact on harvests.
“The survey data explores how farmers respond to the armyworm in their maize fields, so that integrated pest management strategies can be promoted for successful pest control and especially to limit excessive use of harmful pesticides,” says Phoutthasinh Phimmachanh, who leads the LFN secretariat. “The survey also asks about farmers’ plans for the upcoming rainy season and if they experienced a fall armyworm infestation in 2019 will it change their crop selection and planting schemes.”
The initiative is part of a larger strategy to work with government and farmers in southeast Asia to build a knowledge base on sustainable maize farming through the CGIAR program on MAIZE. Due to the impact of COVID-19, researchers are currently exploring options to continue these and additional surveys digitally and via telephone.
As maize farming increases, so does the risk fall armyworm poses to farmer livelihoods
Maize is becoming an increasingly important cash crop in southeast Asia as diets change and consumer preferences for white meat and pork drive a transition from subsistence to commercial maize feed production. Farmer focus groups in northern Laos suggest that maize sales deliver more than 60% of smallholders’ annual cash income.
“Maize is the only cash crop for thousands of smallholder farmers in Laos. Fall armyworm poses a credible threat to their livelihoods and could push them to a vicious circle of poverty and damage to the environment,” explains CIMMYT economist Amjath Babu.
“We want to confirm anecdotal accounts suggesting uninformed farmers are buying whatever pesticides they can get their hands on in a bid to control the pest’s impact on harvests. This reaction mimics that of initial farmer responses in sub-Saharan Africa when the pest first broke out there in 2016.” In this sense, he adds, CIMMYT’s partnership with LFN helps to measure the implications of fall armyworm and the potential for this pest to reduce farmers’ profit margins while encouraging unsustainable pesticide use.
Pesticides must be used with extreme caution and only appropriately if they are to be a part of any fall armyworm management regime, warns CIMMYT Senior Scientist Tim Krupnik.
“The pest has particular habits — like living under leaves, hiding in hard to reach places of the plant, and feeding mainly at night,” he explains. “This makes indiscriminate application of insecticides relatively less useful.” It could also inadvertently contribute to the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services through overuse of pesticides that cause mortality for natural enemies and parasitoids.
Scientists want to explore whether the higher production costs farmers may incur through additional insecticide purchase is encouraging a shift from maize cash crop monocultures to a more diverse production including replacement or rotations with cassava, fodder crops, and rotational grazing, where feasible.
“By building an evidence base we can work with the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute,the agricultural department and farmers to build sustainable, resilient maize farming systems that ensure farmers continue to cash in on maize while diversifying production into sensible alternative crops, with emphasis on protecting their health and the environment,” Babu adds.
Fall armyworm survey part of a larger increase in maize research in southeast Asia
The expansion of maize in Laos has been accompanied by a progressive decrease in landscape and agricultural biodiversity, as farmers respond to opportunities to export maize at relatively profitable prices, largely to neighboring Vietnam and China, by resorting to an expansion of slash-and-burn agriculture with shortened fallows. The rapidly growing demand for maize has resulted in unsustainable farming systems intensification, explains Krupnik, with many farmers clearing forests to plant, and using excessive amounts of herbicides to keep weeds at bay.
“Combined with the fall armyworm invasion, potentially dangerous pesticides have been added to this scenario, with quite concerning potential consequences for further biodiversity loss and contamination of mountain streams by agrochemicals,” he says.
“Projects run by Helvetas, which has helped support our research through coordination and convening efforts, have measured dangerous levels of pesticides in the blood of samples taken from farmers and their families and government officials.”
Maize is important for income generation, but more sustainable and diverse cropping systems are needed to reduce the impact on biodiversity, while avoiding the worst pesticides that comprise human health. The data generated from this research will help design strategies to respond to these problems with more appropriate agricultural practices.
The ministry of agriculture has welcomed support from CIMMYT’s maize systems experts to aid in building a base of knowledge to inform the development of agricultural policy, says Chay Bounphanousay, director general of the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute. “With the rise of maize farming and the associated challenges and opportunities it brings, an increase in research will inform agricultural policy to improve farmer livelihoods while protecting the environment.”
Cover photo: Traditional mixed maize farming system in northern Laos. (Photo: H. Weyerhaeuser/CIMMYT)
Highland maize production systems in Southeast Asia are crucial in that they generate considerable income for otherwise impoverished farmers in remote upland areas. However, they are largely unsustainable, involving destructive slash and burn agriculture, with increasingly short fallow times between crops. Additionally, and in response to historically favorable maize markets, many farmers now plan to expand maize cultivation areas, which is anticipated to have serious consequences for biodiversity loss and ecosystem services.
The arrival of fall armyworm adds additional pressures that could lead to intensification of management practices and over-use of insecticides; a partial transition away from maize as farmers respond to the pest by growing other crops and initiating new land use practices; and increased use of sustainable intensification practices that employ agroecological options for fall armyworm management.
Responding to fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda J.E. Smith) with data, evidence and agroecological management options in Lao PDR is a research project funded through the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE). It sees CIMMYT partner with the Laos Farmer Network (LFN) and the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI) to understand how smallholders in the country are responding to fall armyworm invasion and develop agroecological management options to control its spread.
Working with CIMMYT, LFN will train lead farmers to conduct surveys and collect data from farmers in their local areas. The network will also distribute a series of infographics and videos in local languages, developed by CIMMYT and translated with major support from HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation and the Lao Farmer Rural Advisory Project, to outline appropriate pesticide use and sustainable farming practices to limit impact on harvests. An estimated 2,000 farmers will receive information on research results and fall armyworm management advice.
The results will offer evidence-based insights allowing LFN and the Lao Upland Rural Advisory Service (LURAS) project to plan future extension and development activities more effectively, while also identifying crucial additional research needs given these urgent issues and circumstances.
This research will yield actionable lessons and position LFN and the LURAS project to provide farmers with context-specific and agroecological fall armyworm management advice that responds to insights derived from farmer surveys that characterize pest incidence and severity, and relates them to farmers’ management practices, farm- and landscape-biodiversity, and location.
T.S. Amjath Babu is an agricultural economist based in Bangladesh. He specializes in modeling and targeting.
A new testing and learning platform for digital trust and transparency technologies — such as blockchain — in agri-food systems was launched at the Strike Two Summit in late February.
AgriFoodTrust debuted at the summit which brought together key agri-food system players to discuss how blockchain and related technologies can contribute to food safety, quality and sustainability, said Gideon Kruseman, an economist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), who co-founded the platform.
“Blockchain is often associated with the digital security that led to cryptocurrencies. However, growing research is providing evidence on its unique potential to bring greater efficiency, transparency and traceability to the exchange of value and information in the agriculture sector,” said Kruseman.
“Many of the wicked problems and seemingly insuperable challenges facing dynamic, complex agri-food system value chains, especially in low and middle-income countries, boil down to a lack of trust, transparency and reliable governance structures,” said the researcher who also leads the Socio-Economic Data Community of Practice of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture.
A blockchain is a ledger that is almost impossible to forge. It can be described as a data structure that holds transactional records and ensures security, transparency and decentralization. Technology may be at the foundation of the solutions, but technology is the easy part; solving the softer side has proven to be a seemingly insuperable challenge over the past decades, Kruseman explained.
Digital trust and transparency technologies can be used to improve governance structures and limit corruption in agri-food systems in low and middle income countries, said Marieke de Ruyter de Wildt, co-founder of AgriFoodTrust.
“This new generation of decentralized technologies is, in essence, improving governance structures. People often think it is about technology, but it’s not. It is about people and how we organize things.”
“These technologies are neutral, immutable and censorship resistant. You can mimic this if you think about rules without a ruler. Just imagine what opportunities arise when a system is incorruptible,” said de Ruyter de Wildt.
It is hoped, accessible via QR codes, for example, that the technology can be used to tackle challenges, such as preventing the sale of counterfeit seeds to smallholder farmers, ensuring the nutritional value of biofortified crop varieties and promoting the uptake of sustainable agricultural principles whilst improving the implementation and monitoring of international agreements related to agriculture.
“This is where the platform comes in as a knowledge base. The AgriFoodTrust platform sees researchers from CGIAR Centers and academia, such as Wageningen University, experiment with these technologies on top of other solutions, business models and partnerships to determine what works, how, when and for whom, in order to share that information,” Kruseman added.
Findings on the new platform will be used to build capacity on all aspects of the technologies and their application to ensure this technology is inclusive and usable.
Along with Kruseman, AgriFoodTrust co-founders include digital agriculture experts de Ruyter de Wildt, the Founder and CEO of The New Fork, and Chris Addison, Senior Coordinator of Data for Agriculture at CTA. Seed funding for the platform has been raised through CTA, the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture and the CGIAR Programs on MAIZE and WHEAT.
“AgriFoodTrust sets out to accelerate understanding about these technologies and fundamentally make food systems more integer and resilient,” explained de Ruyter de Wildt.
By 2050, farmers will need to grow enough diverse and nutritious food to feed 10 billion people on less land using less resources while faced with the challenges of a changing climate. This has led researchers to push for agricultural technologies that engender more inclusive, sustainable food systems. It is hoped that increased trust and transparency technologies can help overcome counterproductive incentives, poor governance structures, prevailing institutional arrangements and market failures.
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The use of small-scale mechanization in smallholder farming systems in South Asia has increased significantly in recent years. This development is a positive step towards agricultural transformation in the region. Small-scale mechanization is now seen as a viable option to address labor scarcity and offset the impact of male outmigration in rural areas, as well as other shortages that undermine agricultural productivity.
However, most existing farm mechanization technologies are either gender blind or gender neutral. This is often to the detriment of women farmers, who are increasingly taking on additional agricultural work in the absence of male laborers. Minimizing this gender disparity among smallholders has been a key concern for policymakers, but there is little empirical literature available on gender and farm mechanization.
A new study by researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) addresses this gap, using data from six districts in the highlands of Nepal to assess the impact of the gender of household heads on the adoption of mini-tillers — small machinery used to prepare and cultivate land before planting.
Their findings reveal that, when it comes to mini-tiller adoption, there is a significant gender gap. Compared to male-headed households, explain the authors, the rate of adoption is significantly lower among female-headed households. Moreover, they add, when male- and female-headed households have similar observed attributes, the mini-tiller adoption rate among the food insecure female-headed households is higher than in the food secure group.
The authors argue that this gender-differentiated mini-tiller adoption rate can be minimized in the first instance by increasing market access. Their findings suggest that farm mechanization policies and programs targeted specifically to female-headed households can also help reduce this adoption gap in Nepal and similar hill production agroecologies in South Asia, which will enhance the farm yield and profitability throughout the region.
Read the full article in Technology in Society:
Gender differentiated small-scale farm mechanization in Nepal hills: An application of exogenous switching treatment regression.
See more recent publications from CIMMYT researchers:
The Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC) program is managed by the UK Met Office, supported by the World Bank and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). The four-year program, which started in 2018, aims to strengthen weather forecasting systems across Asia. The program will deliver new technologies and innovative approaches to help vulnerable communities use weather warnings and forecasts to better prepare for climate-related shocks.
Since 2019, as part of ARRCC, CIMMYT has been working with the Met Office and Cambridge University to pilot an early warning system to deliver wheat rust and blast disease predictions directly to farmers’ phones in Bangladesh and Nepal.
The system was first developed in Ethiopia. It uses weather information from the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service, along with field and mobile phone surveillance data and disease spread modeling from the University of Cambridge, to construct and deploy a near real-time early warning system.
Phase I: 12-Month Pilot Phase
Around 50,000 smallholder farmers are expected to receive improved disease warnings and appropriate management advisories in the first 12 months as part of a proof-of-concept modeling and pilot advisory extension phase focused on three critical diseases:
Phase II: Scaling-out wheat rust early warning advisories, introducing wheat blast forecasting and refinement model refinement
Subject to funding approval the second year of the project will lead to validation of the wheat rust early warnings, in which researchers compare predictions with on-the-ground survey results, increasingly supplemented with farmer response on the usefulness of the warnings facilitated by national research and extension partners. Researchers shall continue to introduce and scale-out improved early warning systems for wheat blast. Concomitantly, increasing the reach of the advice to progressively larger numbers of farmers while refining the models in the light of results. We anticipate that with sufficient funding, Phase II activities could reach up to 300,000 more farmers in Nepal and Bangladesh.
Phase III: Demonstrating that climate services can increase farmers’ resilience to crop diseases
As experience is gained and more data is accumulated from validation and scaling-out, researchers will refine and improve the precision of model predictions. They will also place emphasis on efforts to train partners and operationalize efficient communication and advisory dissemination channels using information communication technologies (ICTs) for extension agents and smallholders. Experience from Ethiopia indicates that these activities are essential in achieving ongoing sustainability of early warning systems at scale. Where sufficient investment can be garnered to support the third phase of activities, it is expected that an additional 350,000 farmers will receive disease management warnings and advisories in Nepal and Bangladesh, totaling 1 million farmers over a three-year period.
Objectives
The pursuit for higher and more stable yields, alongside better stress tolerance, has dominated maize breeding in Africa for a long time. Such attributes have been, and still are, essential in safeguarding the food security and livelihoods of smallholder farmers. However, other essential traits have not been the main priority of breeding strategies: how a variety tastes when cooked, its smell, its texture or its appearance.
They are now gradually coming into the mainstream of maize breeding. Researchers are exploring the sensory characteristics consumers prefer and identifying the varieties under development which have the desired qualities. Breeders may then choose to incorporate specific traits that farmers or consumers value in future breeding work. This research is also helping to accelerate varietal turnover in the last mile, as farmers have additional reasons to adopt newer varieties.
In the last five years, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has been conducting participatory variety evaluations across East Africa. First, researchers invited farmers and purchasers of improved seed in specific agro-ecologies to visit demonstration plots and share their preferences for plant traits they would like to grow in their own farms.
In 2019 and 2020, researchers also started to facilitate evaluations of the sensory aspects of varieties.
Fresh samples of green maize, from early- to late-maturing maize varieties, were boiled and roasted. Then, people assessed their taste and other qualities. The first evaluations of this kind were conducted in Kenya and Uganda in August and September 2019, and another exercise in Kenya’s Machakos County took place in January 2020.
Similar evaluations have looked at the sensory qualities of maize flour. In March 2020, up to 300 farmers in Kenya’s Kakamega County participated in an evaluation of ugali, or maize flour porridge. Participants assessed a wider range of factors, including the aroma, appearance, taste, texture on the hand, texture in the mouth and overall impression. After tasting each variety, they indicated how likely they would be to buy it.
Tastes differ
“Farmers not only consume maize in various forms but also sell the maize either at green or dry grain markets. What we initially found is green maize consumers prefer varieties that are sweet when roasted. We also noted that seed companies were including the sensory characteristics in the maize varieties’ product profiles,” explained Bernard Munyua, Research Associate with the Socioeconomics program at CIMMYT. “As breeders and socioeconomists engage more and more with farmers, consumers or end-users, it is apparent that varietal profiles for both plant and sensory aspects have become more significant than ever before, and have a role to play in the successful turnover of new varieties.”
For researchers, this is very useful information, to help determine if it is viable to bring a certain variety to market. The varieties shared in these evaluations include those that have passed through CIMMYT’s breeding pipeline and are allocated to partners for potential release after national performance trials, as well as CIMMYT varieties marketed by various seed companies. Popular commercial varieties regions were also included in the evaluations, for comparison.
A total of 819 people participated in the evaluation exercises in Kenya and Uganda, 54% of them female.
“Currently, there is increasing demand by breeders, donors, and other agricultural scientists to understand the modalities of trait preferences of crops by women and men farmers,” said Rahma Adam, Gender and Development Specialist at CIMMYT.
That’s the way I like it
For Gentrix Ligare, from Kakamega County, maize has always been a staple food in her family. They eat ugali almost daily. The one-acre farm that she and her husband own was one of the sites used to plant the varieties ahead of the evaluation exercise. Just like her husband, Fred Ligare, she prefers ugali that is soft but absorbs more water during preparation. “I also prefer ugali that is neither very sticky nor very sweet. Such ugali would be appropriate to eat with any type of vegetable or sauce,” she said.
Fernandes Ambani prefers ugali that emits a distinct aroma while being cooked and should neither be very sweet nor plain tasting. For him, ugali should not be too soft or too hard. While it should not be very sticky, it should also not have dark spots in it. “When I like the taste, smell, texture and appearance of a particular variety when cooked, I would definitely purchase it if I found it on the market,” he said.
While the task of incorporating all the desired or multiple traits in the breeding pipeline could prove complex and costly, giving consumers what they like is one of the essential steps in enhancing a variety’s commercial success in the market, argues Ludovicus Okitoi, Director of Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Organization’s (KALRO) Kakamega Center.
“Despite continuously breeding and releasing varieties every year, some farmers still buy some older varieties, possibly because they have a preference for a particular taste in some of the varieties they keep buying,” Okitoi said. “It is a good thing that socioeconomists and breeders are talking more and more with the farmers.”
Advancements in breeding techniques may help accelerate the integration of multiple traits, which could eventually contribute to quicker varietal turnover.
“Previously, we did not conduct this type of varietal evaluations at the consumer level. A breeder would, for instance, just breed on-station and conduct national performance trials at specific sites. The relevant authorities would then grant their approval and a variety would be released. Things are different now, as you have to go back to the farmer as an essential part of incorporating end-user feedback in a variety’s breeding process,” explained Hugo de Groote, Agricultural Economist at CIMMYT.