The Mexican Academy of Sciences is an independent and not-for-profit association formed by acknowledged scientists working in both Mexican and international organizations. Its main objective is to offer expert advice to address the most pressing issues and challenges confronting Mexicoâs government and civil society.
CIMMYT scientist Matthew Reynolds has been appointed a member of the Mexican Academy of Science.
Reynolds is a Wheat Physiologist at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). His leadership of the Wheat component of the MasAgro project strengthened his nomination to the Academy. In this capacity, he has overseen the publication of 32 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals that account for the progress achieved in the development of new high-yielding and resilient wheat varieties for Mexico and for other wheat-growing regions in the developing world.
Since 2011, MasAgro Trigo has characterized 71 thousand wheat lines in field trials designed to test yield potential under severe stress caused by heat and drought conditions. As a result, Reynolds and his team have formed the Wheat Yield Collaboration Yield Trial and the Stress Adaptive Traits Yield Nursery, two panels of elite lines that yield more grain in high temperatures and under limited water supply. Mexicoâs agricultural research system INIFAP has recently incorporated 42 elite lines from these nurseries into its wheat-breeding program.
Reynolds has also mentored 12 Mexican students who have undertaken postgraduate studies under the supervision of renowned wheat scientists in American, Australian, British, Chilean and Spanish universities. Eight students have already achieved a PhD degree in different areas of wheat research. This new generation of scientists will further contribute to promote science and research in Mexico, one of the Academyâs main objectives.
NAIROBI, Kenya (CIMMYT) â Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa lose up to a third of their grain after harvest because they often use poor grain storage technologies and ineffective drying practices. Staples like maize stored on-farm are exposed to infestation by insects and fungi. These can lead to contamination with mycotoxins, in particular aflatoxins, poisonous food toxins produced by Aspergillus fungi.
At high doses, aflatoxins can kill. Prolonged exposure to aflatoxins can impact consumersâ health, suppressing immune systems, hindering child growth and even causing liver cancer. Kenya is a particular hotspot for aflatoxins, as regular studies show widespread contamination along the food chain, from maize grain to milk and meat.
Preliminary findings of a study by USAID-funded Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Processing and Post-Harvest Handling (FPL) suggest that innovative low-cost grain drying and storage technologies such as hermetic bags and hygrometers could prevent post-harvest crop losses and harmful aflatoxin contamination.
The initial results were shared at a workshop in Nairobi on October 25, 2018, as part of the FPL project, which aims to develop and disseminate affordable and effective post-harvest technologies suited to the African smallholder farmer. This project is a collaboration between the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and Purdue University.
A study conducted between May 2017 and May 2018 in Kiboko, Kenya, compared the performance of various hermetic storage containers and bags by different manufacturers with farmersâ usual storage practices. Researchers measured maize grain quality parameters such as grain damage, weight loss in storage, fungal growth and mycotoxins, food quality and seed germination. The results showed hermetic bags were highly effective in averting grain loss for up to one year.
âIf these bags are sealed properly, oxygen cannot get in or out. This creates an anaerobic environment that suffocates grain-damaging insects and prevents fungi from growingâ says CIMMYT economist Hugo De Groote.
Making hermetic storage more accessible
The Africa Technical Research Center (ATRC) is involved in the development of some of the hermetic bags that were tested during the study. ATRC director Johnson Odera noted that most of the insect infestations start in the field. âWhen the farmer harvests and transports the maize home, the grain is already infested,â Odera explained. âThe damage can be extensive depending on the level of infestation. One of the ways to minimize the losses, while keeping the food safe for consumption is to use hermetic bagsâ.
These bags, however, remain largely unavailable to smallholder farmers, according to the study. This is mainly due to farmersâ low awareness levels and the high cost of hermetic bags. Unlike normal storage bags that cost about $0.7 each, hermetic bags retail for $2 to $2.5.
A second study, conducted with maize producers and traders in Kakamega, western Kenya, suggests that dropping prices by 20 percent had the potential to increase sales by 88 percent.
This study further suggested that farmers can benefit a lot from using low-cost hygrometers to accurately measure moisture content in maize. Grain is quickly spoiled by fungi contamination if it is not dry enough when stored. One or two percent lower moisture levels can make a big difference in reducing aflatoxin contamination.
âFarmers could put maize grain samples in a plastic bag and insert low-cost hygrometers to read moisture content after temperature is stabilized in 15 minutes,â says Purdue University professor Jacob Ricker-Gilbert. âThey then know if their grain is safe enough for storage or not. However, standard hygrometers cost around $100, which is out of reach for many small farmers.â
Purdue University, CIMMYT and KALRO conducted a market survey in 2017 among maize farmers and traders in Kenya to assess their willingness to buy low-cost hygrometers. The survey found that farmers were willing to pay an average price of $1.21 for a hygrometer, while traders said they would buy at $1.16 each. The project was able to get cheap and reliable hygrometers at less than one dollar, opening the door for possible commercialization. One company, Bell Industries, has started to market the devices as a pilot.
Raising farmers and policymakersâ awareness on appropriate storage and drying technologies is now a priority for scientists working on the FPL project, which will hopefully lead to less maize spoiled and better food safety.
Agricultural research for development has tremendous potential for widespread impact in poverty alleviation and food security. However, achieving real benefits for farmers is challenging and many well-intentioned projects fail to achieve large-scale impact. According to Brendan Brown, a postdoctoral research fellow with CIMMYTâs socioeconomics program in Nepal, this is where his work can help.
âThere have been decades of work trying to improve agricultural livelihoods, but many of these interventions are yet to have tangible impacts for farmers,â Brown said. âMy research seeks to help address this gap, using novel frameworks and applying participatory methods.â
Socioeconomic research at CIMMYT plays a key role at the nexus of agricultural innovations, helping to enhance interventions and initiatives for greater impact. Knowledge from such studies helps to prioritize and target resources, optimizing research capacity and accelerating the uptake of innovations.
âI attempt to understand constraints and opportunities at various scales from farms all the way up to institutional levels,â Brown explained. âI then seek to find pathways to catalyze change that lead to improved farmer livelihoods. Such research is integral to getting agronomic research into farmersâ fields.â
This area of research calls for a mixture of qualitative and quantitative tools and expertise, for which Brown is well suited. He has a bachelorâs degree in Agricultural Science with a major in Soil Science. âHowever, after working in agricultural research and development for a few years, I saw a gap in linking agronomy to the contextual realities of smallholder farming, so I opted to pursue a career that bridges the gap between the physical and social sciences.â
A desire to help
Brown grew up in Australia, between Sydney and a family farm on the south coast of New South Wales. He enjoyed being outdoors, âpreferably barefoot,â participated in hobby farming, and from an early age showed an interest in social justice issues. A career aptitude test taken towards the end of high school revealed he was suited to be one of three things: a ship captain, a nurse or an agricultural scientist. He opted for the latter.
It was at university that Brown gained the insight of applying his agricultural knowledge to helping smallholder farmers. During a backpacking trip from Cape Town to Cairo, which incorporated some agricultural volunteering, he witnessed first-hand the difficulties farmers face in sub-Saharan Africa. Upon returning to his studies, he resolved to pursue a career that would enable him to help smallholders and, at the same time, address some of the worldâs biggest ethical dilemmas.
Research with impact
Newly graduated, Brown worked with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), based in Canberra, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), based in Ghana, where he gained hands-on experience working in agricultural systems in developing countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It also inspired his PhD, which explored the disconnect between development work at research stations and the reality experienced by African farmers.
âDuring my PhD, I collaborated with CIMMYT through the Sustainable Intensification of Maize Legume Systems in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) initiative. I developed a more nuanced approach to what âadoptionâ actually means in terms of uptake and impact assessments. I also studied communitiesâ attitudes to conservation agriculture practices and diagnosed key institutional bottlenecks within research and extension systems.â
Brownâs studies allowed him to develop novel mixed methods and participatory impact pathways to promote new farming practices, such as conservation agriculture, to smallholder farmers in Africa. âMy work with CIMMYT allows me to contribute to solving some of the worldâs biggest issues. Through interacting with smallholders, facilitating conversations and creating new understanding, I hope to contribute to real change.â
Brendan Brown (left) during a field visit.
Moving to Asia
After spending nearly a decade in and out of Africa, he joined the CIMMYT team in Nepal earlier this year and is relishing the opportunity to explore new contexts in South Asia.
âSo much potential exists within the food systems of South Asia given the existence of multiple cropping seasons and diverse markets, as well as exciting developments in the use of mechanization and irrigation that have potential for delivering large-scale benefits, driving improved food security and profits.â However, he points out the integration of such innovations in this part of the world can be challenging due to inherent complex social hierarchies and caste systems. âI still have much to learn within such complex systems.â
Brownâs work in South Asia focusses on understanding the adoption, scaling and impact of sustainable intensification technologies and practices. He is primarily working with the Sustainable and Resilient Farming Systems Intensification (SRFSI) initiative, which aims to reduce poverty by making smallholder agriculture more productive, profitable and sustainable while safeguarding the environment and involving women in agriculture.
By studying the portfolio of CIMMYT-led initiatives in the region, he is also developing his understanding of prevailing sustainable intensification practices and the issues farmers face when implementing them. In addition to his work with SRFSI, Brown is soon to embark on a new ACIAR-funded research project aiming to enhance sustainable mechanization of farming systems in two provinces of Nepal by mobilizing strategic planning and collaboration.
âI look forward to sitting down with local agricultural service providers to understand how they run their businesses and how they structure their livelihoods,â Brown expressed. âThis will then be paired with the perspectives of farmers, as well as extension officers, researchers and policymakers to build theories of change and pathways to maximize the uptake and impact of sustainable intensification practices.â
He highlights how local ownership of change can be fostered by implementing participatory methods during this process. This can result in transformative change, felt from the institutional level all the way to the smallholder farmer. Brown hopes his work in South Asia will deliver widespread impact for smallholder farmers and he welcomes collaboration and sharing of ideas and approaches with others working towards similar objectives.
Over the last two decades, a significant number of rural Bangladeshis â especially youth â have migrated to urban centers, looking for higher paying jobs and an escape from agricultural labor. Conor Riggs is the Global Director of Markets and Entrepreneurship at iDE. He says smallholder farmers in Southern Bangladesh are increasingly struggling to find and afford farm labor to help harvest crops and perform a variety of other on-farm activities.
Riggs says small-scale mechanization, such as two-wheeled tractors fitted with intensification machinery and surface irrigation pumps, can help farmers make up for this labor gap and increase productivity, while boosting the local economy by supporting micro- and small enterprises.
But as Riggs discussed at the recent Scale Up Conference at Purdue University, designing the perfect machine or technology is not enough to create sustainable, far-reaching impact. On the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, weâre following up with him to learn more about the role of markets and partnerships in bringing small-scale mechanization to rural Bangladesh.
Q: Five years ago, CIMMYT and iDE co-designed and began implementing the USAID Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia â Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MI) project. What were the goals when you began?
Our goal was to establish a new industry for attachments in two-wheel tractors in agricultural mechanization, technologies like seeders, reapers and high-volume irrigation pumps for surface water. We wanted to help farmers access services through a fee-for-service model â small entrepreneurs buy machines and rent out those machines to farmers or directly provide that service themselves. There wasn’t really a market naturally growing for these machines in ways that included smallholders while being commercially viable, so we aimed to build it as best we could.
The results of this effort to date have been strong: 191,000 farmers can now access machinery services from a growing network of nearly 3,000 local microenterprise service providers, representing improved cultivation across 92,000 hectares in Southern Bangladesh. And we see abundant evidence that this market is scaling organically now that itâs established a model that works for both firms and farms.
Q: How did you create a market?
We incentivized several large conglomerates in the agri-business space to co-invest with us on several container-loads of these machines, which we imported from Thailand and China. We helped them find some early adopter dealers and local service providers who would actually buy them. Then we developed short-term smart subsidies to drive down the costs of supply chain development, accelerated customer adoption of the machines, and overall market growth.
An important aspect of our strategy is that we did not present these accelerating investments as typical subsidies; rather, we worked with our private partners to offer commercial discounts so that service providers and farmers would recognize the true value of the product and the short-term opportunity to adopt the technology in its initial commercialization phase.
We first implemented this strategy with two leading firms in the market who concurrently launched a very proactive marketing campaign. Then we started pulling back those discounts overtime, year by year, as the initial partner firms found the market opportunity, and redirected this acceleration process with an additional group of interested companies that also wanted to enter the market in an inclusive manner.
Q: So the companies were benefiting from the discount?
Yes, but we created a lot of conditions. Essentially, the more project investment that was committed by the project to discount the cost of the machinery, the more we expected to see both cash and in-kind investment from those companies. In the end, about a dozen companies come into the game with about five that have really driven a lot of heavy investment.
Partnerships have been key throughout this project. What were the different strengths iDE and CIMMYT brought to the table?
iDE is a market development organization. We focus on market-based solutions, technology commercialization, last mile distribution, and market access. Fundamentally, we see our job as de-risking the market for companies to invest in lower income areas and empower the farmer and their family as both consumers and suppliers in the formal economy. To do this, we employ a lot of supply chain development, product re-design and most importantly, we develop networks of micro-entrepreneurs to serve the âmissing middleâ between the formal and informal economies.
CIMMYT brings leading capabilities in linking science and practice, with an un-paralleled strength in understanding the agronomic rationale and the agronomic and economic combinations of the technologies as they’re applied on the ground.
CIMMYT knew what technologies were needed on the ground in Southern Bangladesh to genuinely improve productivity and efficiency in the face of changing economic circumstances, and understood how to apply them to real world conditions in alignment with market-based diffusion mechanisms. CIMMYT was also instrumental in working closely with the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) and extension services, key government partners that helped us ensure market development was in alignment with public and social policy.
It can be difficult finding a synergy between two different organizations. Did you run into any challenges? Â
CIMMYT and iDE have different specializations, and at the beginning, we had natural, friendly debates about how to best integrate them and achieve highly ambitious project objectives. But relatively quickly, we figured out how to learn from each other and synthesize our approaches for the best results. Both CIMMYT and iDE approached the partnership with a mission driven focus and a sense of constant, mutual respect for the value each partner brought to the table.
What do you see for the future?Â
As for iDE, weâre excited to expand this successful partnership with CIMMYT to figure out how we can further replicate this success in other countries where we both work. While some of the market conditions in Bangladesh have provided us with unique opportunities for technology scaling in mechanization, weâre highly optimistic that the underlying partnership principles and management systems of CSISA-MI can be replicated in other programs and country contexts â even in ostensibly more challenging market environments.
The Aral Sea was once the worldâs fourth largest inland body of water. But in 1959, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev unfurled a plan for industrialized agriculture across Central Asia. The government constructed irrigation canals to divert water from the Amu Syr and Amu Darya rivers, the two primary feeders for the Aral Sea, to thirsty cotton fields in Uzbekistan. Today, only about two-fifths of the sea remain. Evaporation exasperated by climate change and pesticide runoff have left the remaining body of water salty and polluted.
MSI’s founder and president Larry Cooley presents at the Purdue Scale Up Conference 2018. (Photo: Rachel Cramer/CIMMYT)
The disappearance of the Aral Sea is a tragic story about scaling gone wrong. Larry Cooley, one of the top scaling experts in the world, describes scaling as the attempt to overcome a gap between the need for something and the extent to which that need is being met. In the case of the Aral Sea, the Soviet Union saw a need for more robust cotton production and decided to overcome the gap through large-scale irrigation.
They were successful in reaching their scaling ambition but at a high and unsustainable cost. Would Kruschev still go ahead with his development scheme if he knew it would cause irreversible ecological damage in the future? Would he still prioritize high cotton yields if he knew it would decimate the local fishing industry and leave thousands unemployed?
At the recent Scale Up Conference at Purdue University, over 200 researchers and practitioners gathered to discuss effective approaches to scaling up agricultural technologies and innovations in the developing world. The tagline read âInnovations in agriculture: Scaling up to reach millions.â Several of the presenters, however, argued development organizations should think about potential tradeoffs before trying to reach the biggest impact.
Finding the optimal scale
CIMMYTâs scaling advisor Lennart Woltering (left) and mechanization specialist Jelle van Loon led a session. (Photo: Rachel Cramer/CIMMYT)
CIMMYTâs scaling advisor Lennart Woltering and mechanization specialist Jelle van Loon led a session on the opportunities and challenges to scaling two-wheeled tractors in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Van Loon explained how mechanization can decrease labor costs, improve livelihoods and help farmers stay locally and internationally competitive, but he acknowledged a few potential downsides. Small tractors of this kind require fossil fuels and maintenance, and introducing mechanization to a rural community has the potential to displace jobs and shift gender roles.
Woltering explained a new tool can help researchers and development organizations think through these tradeoffs in a systematic way. The Scaling Scan, which he developed in a collaboration with The PPPLab, guides users through a series of questions and prompts them to reflect on what scaling means, what it takes to take a project to scale and what the unintended consequences could be in a particular context.
Lennart Woltering (second from left) presents the “ingredients” of the Scaling Scan tools during one of the sessions of the Purdue Scale Up Conference. (Photo: Rachel Cramer/CIMMYT)
The first step of the Scaling Scan is âDefining a realistic scaling ambition.â It contains a responsibility check, prompting users to consider how an intervention could affect power equity and natural resources if that scaling ambition is indeed reached. âWe tried to make this check as simple as possible, but still have people anticipate what unintended consequences their scaling effort might have ten years down the line,â said Woltering.
The responsibility check includes questions like: Who are the winners and who are the losers when the innovation is adopted at a large scale? Will the scaling of the innovation affect the availability of important natural resources, such as water and land?
Woltering emphasized that development organizations should try to identify the scale that optimizes tradeoffs. âWe want people to be aware that bigger is not always better,â he said.
âYou might think youâre benefitting the irrigation farmers, but at the same time, the fishermen or other people might be paying the price for that,â Woltering explained. âIf youâre only focused on those irrigation farmers and not the whole system, itâs easy to think, âOh, weâre doing a fantastic job,â when youâre not.â
The reasons to scale up responsibly
At the conference, Tricia Wind and Robert McLean of the International Development Research Center (IDRC) presented some of their lessons learned about responsible scaling.
âIf youâre working on the problem at different scales, you need to think about the problem differently and think about the solutions differently,â said Wind. âThe first principle is thinking about what scale you are starting with and what the optimal scale would be for the problems that youâre focused on solving.â
The second principle is the justification for scaling. âSo stepping back from the how and thinking about the why,â she explained. âWhat difference would this make?â Similar to the responsibility check in the Scaling Scan, the second principle explores the issue of equity. Who would be reached by this solution, and who would be left out or even negatively affected by it?
The third principle is about coordination. McLean said, âThis is about accepting that all scaling happens in a system. Are the alternative solutions? How do you displace solutions that might already exist if you try to scale something? What about the cultural norms and the institutions that exist in the area where youâre scaling, and how do you coordinate to scale responsibly?â
The fourth principle is dynamic evaluation. Maclean said an organization should learn as it scales. âItâs never going to be a 1-2-3 step process thatâs going to get you from innovation to impact at scale,â he explained. âScaling itself is also an intervention. So you have your intervention youâre trying to scale, and as you scale, systems change.â
Participants and panelists of the Scale Up Conference pose for a group photograph. (Photo: Courtesy of Purdue University)
Johannes Linn, Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institute and another one of the worldâs top scaling experts, emphasized, âScaling is not a linear process. It is iterative with feedback loops to learn and adapt.â
During the opening reception, Woltering and van Loon congratulated Seerp Wigboldus, a senior advisor and researcher with Wageningen University, on his recently completed PhD thesis, published as a book: To scale, or not to scale â that is not the only question.
Someone asked, âWhat do you do if 40 people are going to be harmed by an intervention while 50 people benefit?â Wigboldus replied, âWell, unfortunately, thereâs no formula for this kind of thing. There will always be tradeoffs, but hopefully we can get people to slow down a bit. We need to be transparent and justify our decisions.â
Nearly all of humanityâs greatest challenges originate from the scaling of innovations. The depletion of the Aral Sea in order to scale cotton production is just one example. Climate change and industrialization is another. By adopting a responsible scaling approach, the agricultural development sector can minimize negative impacts and side effects and seek optimal solutions.
The full version of the Scaling Scan contains detailed practical information on how and when to use this tool. A condensed, two-page version is also available. We also recommend the companion Excel sheet, which generates average scores and results automatically.
Big Data is transforming the way scientists conduct agricultural research and helping smallholder farmers receive useful information in real time. Experts and partners of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture are meeting on October 3-5, 2018, in Nairobi, Kenya, to share their views on how to harness this data revolution for greater food and nutrition security.
NAIROBI (Kenya) â Agronomic researchers face several challenges and limitations related to data. To provide accurate predictions and useful advice to smallholder farmers, scientists need to collect many types of on-farm data; for example, field size, area devoted to each crop, inputs used, agronomic practices followed, incidence of pests and diseases, and yield.
These pieces of data are expensive to obtain by traditional survey methods, such as sending out enumerators to ask farmers a long list of questions. Available data is often restricted to a particular geographical area and may not capture key factors of production variability, like local soil characteristics, fertilizer timing or crop rotations.
As a result, such datasets cannot deliver yield predictions at scale, one of the main expectations of Big Data. Digital advisory apps may be part of the solution, as they use crowdsourcing to routinize data collection on key agronomic variables.
The Taking Maize Agronomy to Scale in Africa (TAMASA) project has been researching the use of mobile apps to provide site-specific agronomic advice to farmers through agro-dealers, extension workers and other service providers.
At CIMMYT, one of the research questions we were interested in was âWhy are plant population densities in farmers fields usually well below recommended rates?â From surveys and yield estimates based on crop-cut samples at harvest in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania, we observed that yields were correlated with plant density.
What was making some farmers not use enough seeds for their fields? One possible reason could be that farmers may not know the size of their maize field. In other cases, farmers and agro-dealers may not know how many seeds are in one packet, as companies rarely indicate it and the weight of each seed variety is different. Or perhaps farmers may not know what plant population density is best to use. Seed packets sometimes suggest a sowing rate but this advice is rather generic and assumes that farmers apply recommended fertilizer rates. However, farmersâ field conditions differ, as does their capacity to invest in expensive fertilizers.
To help farmers overcome these challenges, we developed a simple app, Maize-Seed-Area. It enables farmers, agro-dealers and extension workers to measure the size of a maize field and to identify its key characteristics. Then, using that data, the app can generate advice on plant spacing and density, calculate how much seed to buy, and provide information on seed varieties available at markets nearby.
View of the interface of the Maize-Seed-Area app on mobile phones and tablets. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Maize-Seed-Area is developed using the Open Data Kit (ODK) format, which allows to collect data offline and to submit it when internet connection becomes available. In this case, the app is also used to deliver information to the end users.
Advisory apps usually require some input data from farmers, so advice can be tailored to their particular circumstances. For example, they might need to provide data on the slope of their field, previous crops or fertilizer use. Some additional information may be collected through the app, such as previous seed variety use. All this data entered by the user, which should be kept to a minimum, is routinely captured by the app and retrieved later.
Hello, Big Data!
As the app user community grows, datasets on farmer practices and outcomes grow as well. In this case, we can observe trends in real time, for instance on the popularity of different maize varieties.
In a pilot in western Kenya, in collaboration with Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD), some 100 agro-dealers and extension workers used the app to give advice to about 2,900 farmers. Most of the advice was on the amount of seed to buy for a given area and on the characteristics of different varieties.
Data showed that the previous year farmers grew a wide range of varieties, but that three of them were dominant: DK8031, Duma43 and WH505.
Preferred variety of maize for sample farmers in western Kenya (Bungoma, Busia, Kakamega and Siaya counties), February-March 2018.
A phone survey among some 300 of the farmers who received advice found that most of them anticipated to do things differently in the future, ranging from asking for advice again (37 percent), growing a different maize variety (31 percent), buying a different quantity of seed (19 percent), using different plant spacing (18 percent) or using more fertilizer (16 percent).
Most of the agro-dealers and extension workers have kept the app for future use.
The dataset was collected in a short period of time, just two months, and was available as soon as app users got online.
The Maize-Seed-Area pilot shows that advisory apps, when used widely, are a major source of new Big Data on agronomic practices and farmer preferences. They also help to make data collection easier and cheaper.
TAMASA is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is implemented by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) and Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS).
Farmer Eveline Musafari intercrops maize and a variety of legumes on her entire farm. She likes the ability to grow different food crops on the same space, providing her family with more food to eat and sell. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
Honest Musafari, a fifty-year-old farmer from rural Zimbabwe, eagerly picks up a clump of soil from his recently harvested field to show how dark and fertile it is. A farmer all his life, Musafari explains the soil has not always been like this. For years, he and his neighbors had to deal with poor eroding soil that increasingly dampened maize yields.
âMy soil was getting poorer each time I plowed my field, but since I stopped plowing, left the crop residues and planted maize together with legumes the soil is much healthier,â says Musafari. His 1.6-hectare maize-based farm, in the Murehwa district, supports his family of six.
For over two years, Musafari has been one of the ten farmers in this hot and dry area of Zimbabwe to trial intercropping legumes and green manure cover crops alongside their maize, to assess their impact on soil fertility.
The on-farm trials are part of efforts led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in collaboration with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and government extension services to promote climate-resilient cropping systems in sub-Saharan Africa.
Increasing land degradation at the farm and landscape level is the major limitation to food security and livelihoods for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, says CIMMYT senior cropping systems agronomist Christian Thierfelder.
âOver 65 percent of soils in Africa are degraded. They lack the nutrients needed for productive crops. This is a major part of the reason why the regionâs maize yields are not increasing,â he explains. âThe failure to address poor soil health will have a disastrous effect on feeding the regionâs growing population.â
The area where Musafari lives was chosen to test intercropping, along with others in Malawi and Zambia, for their infamous poor soils.
Mixing it up
When legumes are intercropped with maize they act as a green manure adding nutrients to the soil through nitrogen fixation. Intercropping legumes and cereals along with the principles of conservation agriculture are considered away to sustainable intensify food production in Africa. (Photo: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYT)
Planted in proximity to maize, legumes â like pigeon pea, lablab and jack beans â add nitrogen to the soil, acting as green manure as they grow, says Thierfelder. Essentially, they replace the nutrients being used by the cereal plant and are an accessible form of fertilizer for farmers who cannot afford mineral fertilizers to improve soil fertility.
âOur trials show legumes are a win for resource poor family farmers. Providing potentially 5 to 50 tons per hectare of extra organic matter besides ground cover and fodder,â he notes. âThey leave 50 to 350 kg per hectare of residual nitrogen in the soil and do not need extra fertilizer to grow.â
Added to the principles of conservation agriculture â defined by minimal soil disturbance, crop residue retention and diversification through crop rotation and intercropping â farmers are well on their way to building a resilient farm system, says Geoffrey Heinrich, a senior technical advisor for agriculture with CRS working to promote farmer adoption of green manure cover crops.
For years Musafari, as many other smallholder farmers in Africa, tilled the land to prepare it for planting, using plows to mix weeds and crop residues back into the soil. However, this intensive digging has damaged soil structure, destroyed most of the organic matter, reduced its ability to hold moisture and caused wind and water erosion.
Letting the plants do the work
Growing legumes alongside maize provides immediate benefits, such as reduced weeding labor and legume cash crops farmers can sell for a quick income. The legumes also improve the nitrogen levels in the soil and can save farmers money, as maize needs less fertilizer. (Photo: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYT)
Musafari says the high price of mineral fertilizer puts it out of reach for farmers in his community. They only buy little amounts when they have spare cash, which is never enough to get its full benefit.
He was at first skeptical green manure cover crops could improve the quality of his soil or maize yields, he explains. However, he thought it was worth a try, considering growing different crops on the same plot would provide his family with more food and the opportunity to make some extra cash.
âIâm glad I tried intercropping. Every legume I intercropped with my maize improved the soil structure, its ability to capture rain water and also improved the health of my maize,â he says.
Thierfelder describes how this happens. Nitrogen fixation, which is unique to leguminous crops, is a very important process for improving soil fertility. This process involves bacteria in the soil and nitrogen in the air. The bacteria form small growths on the plant roots, called nodules, and capture the atmospheric nitrogen as it enters the soil. The nodules change the nitrogen into ammonia, a form of nitrogen plants use to produce protein.
In addition, legumes grown as a cover crop keep soil protected from heavy rains and strong winds and their roots hold the soil in place, the agronomist explains. They conserve soil moisture, suppress weeds and provide fodder for animals and new sources of food for consumption or sale.
Farmers embrace intercropping
Extension worker Memory Chipinguzi explains the benefits of intercropping legumes with cereals to farmers at a field day in the Murehwa district, Zimbabwe. (Photo: Christian Thierfelder/CIMMYT)
Working with CIMMYT, Musafari and his wife divided a part of their farm into eight 20 by 10 meter plots. On each plot, they intercropped maize with a different legume: cowpea, jack bean, lablab, pigeon pea, sugar bean and velvet bean. They also tried intercropping with two legumes on one of the plots. Then they compared all those options to growing maize alone.
âSeason by season the soil on each of the trial plots has got darker and my maize healthier,â describes Musafari. âRains used to come and wash away the soil, but now we donât plow or dig holes, so the soil is not being washed away; it holds the water.â
âI really like how the legumes have reduced the weeds. Before we had a major problem with witchweed, which is common in poor soils, but now itâs gone,â he adds.
Since the first season of the trial, Musafariâs maize yields have almost tripled. The first season his maize harvested 11 bags, or half a ton, and two seasons later it has increased to 32 bags, or 1.5 tons.
Musafariâs wife Eveline has also been convinced about the benefits of intercropping, expressing the family now wants to extend it to the whole farm. âIntercropping has more advantages than just growing maize. We get different types of food on the same space. We have more to eat and more to sell,â she says.
The family prefers intercropping with jack bean and lablab. Even though they were among the hardest legumes to sell, they improved the soil the most. They also mature at the same time as their maize, so they save labor as they only have to harvest once.
The benefits gained during intercropping have influenced farmers to adopt it as part of their farming practices at most of our trial sites across southern Africa, CRSâs Heinrich says.
âImmediate benefits, such as reduced weeding labor and legume cash crops that farmers can sell off quick, provide a good incentive for adoption,â he adds.
Honest and Eveline Musafari with extension worker, Memory Chipinguzi. Neighbors have noticed the intercropping trials on the Musafariâs farm and are beginning to adopt the practice to gain similar benefits. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
The majority of African farmers are smallholders who cultivate less than 2 hectares, explains Thierfelder. If they are to meet the food demand of a population set to almost double by 2050, bringing it to over 2 billion people while overcoming multiple challenges, they need much more productive and climate-resilient cropping systems.
New research identifies that the defining principles of conservation agriculture alone are not enough to shield farmers from the impacts of climate change. Complementary practices are required to make climate-resilient farming systems more functional for smallholder farmers in the short and long term, he warns.
âIntercropping with legumes is one complementary practice which can help building healthy soils that stand up to erratic weather,â says Thierfelder. âCIMMYT promotes climate-resilient cropping systems that are tailored to farmersâ needs,â he emphasizes.
âTo sustainably intensify farms, growers need to implement a variety of options including intercropping, using improved crop varieties resistant to heat and drought and efficient planting using mechanization along with the principles of conservation agriculture to obtain the best results.â
A farm landscape in Ethiopia. (Photo: Apollo Habtamu/ILRI)
Despite her unassuming nature, the literary character Miss Marple solves murder mysteries with her keen sense of perception and attention to detail. But thereâs another sleuth that goes by the same name. MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase) is a portable testing lab which could help speed-up the identification of devastating wheat rust diseases in Africa.
Rust diseases are one of the greatest threats to wheat production around the world. Over the last decade, more aggressive variants that are adapted to warmer temperatures have emerged. By quickly being able to identify the strain of rust disease, researchers and farmers can figure out the best course of action before it is too late.
The Saunders lab of the John Innes Centre created MARPLE. In collaboration with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), researchers are testing the mobile diagnostic kit in Holeta, central Ethiopia.
âThese new pathogen diagnostic technologies ⊠offer the potential to revolutionize the speed at which new wheat rust strains can be identified,â says Dave Hodson, a CIMMYT rust pathologist in Ethiopia. âThis is critical information that can be incorporated into early warning systems and result in more effective control of disease outbreaks in farmersâ fields.â
New technologies are at the core of sustainable agricultural growth and rural poverty alleviation, says Khondoker Mottaleb, an Agricultural Economist working within CIMMYTâs Socioeconomic Program. However, he explains, despite the visible benefits of using new agricultural machinery or farm management practices, overall uptake remains low as a range of factors continue to limit farmersâ ability to invest.
In a bid to enhance irrigation efficiency, Bangladesh has tried to introduce and popularize the use of axial-flow pumps (AFPs) for surface water irrigation. These pumps can lift up to 55 percent more water than a conventional centrifugal pump, but despite the obvious benefits, there has been limited uptake in targeted areas of the country. From 2012-13, a CIMMYT initiative made AFPs available for purchase for farmers in the southern regions of Bangladesh, but as of September 2017 only 888 had been purchased by lead farmers and irrigation service providers.
A recent study by CIMMYT in Bangladesh used primary data collected from 70 irrigation service providers â each of whom was given a free AFP for one season under a demonstration program â to examine user perception of AFPs and the major constraints to their adoption. It found that even though the use of AFPs can significantly reduce irrigation and overall crop production costs, more demonstrations and awareness-raising programs are needed if uptake is to be increased in target areas.
The study also highlighted the need for continuous modification of new technologies based on farmersâ requirements, with Mottaleb emphasizing that these must be adapted to local demand specifications, and that prices must be competitive with those of alternative technologies in order to ensure rapid uptake.
This study was supported by USAID through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia â Mechanization and Irrigation (CSISA-MI) project. It was also supported by USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) Phase II project.Â
A farmer in Bangladesh irrigates his land using an axial-flow pump. (Photo: Ranak Martin)
Check out other recent publications by CIMMYT researchers below:
Bayesian functional regression as an alternative statistical analysis of high-throughput phenotyping data of modern agriculture. 2018. Montesinos-López, A., Montesinos-Lopez, O.A., De los Campos, G., Crossa, J., Burgueño, J., Luna-Vazquez, F.J. In: Plant Methods v. 14, art. 46.
Exploring the physiological information of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence through radiative transfer model inversion. 2018. Celesti, M., van derâ Tol, C., Cogliati, S., Panigada, C., Peiqi Yang, Pinto Espinosa, F., Rascher | Miglietta, F., Colombo, R., Rossini, M. In: Remote Sensing of Environment v. 215, p. 97-108.
Genome-wide association mapping for resistance to leaf rust, stripe rust and tan spot in wheat reveals potential candidate genes. 2018. Juliana, P., Singh, R.P., Singh, P.K., Poland, J.A., Bergstrom, G.C., Huerta-Espino, J., Bhavani, S., Crossa, J., Sorrells, M.E. In: Theoretical and Applied Genetics v. 131, no. 7, p. 1405-1422.
High-throughput method for ear phenotyping and kernel weight estimation in maize using ear digital imaging. 2018. Makanza, R., Zaman-Allah, M., Cairns, J.E., Eyre, J., Burgueño, J., Pacheco Gil, R. A., Diepenbrock, C., Magorokosho, C., Amsal Tesfaye Tarekegne, Olsen, M., Prasanna, B.M. In: Plant Methods v. 14, art. 49.
Long-term impact of conservation agriculture and diversified maize rotations on carbon pools and stocks, mineral nitrogen fractions and nitrous oxide fluxes in inceptisol of India. 2018. Parihar, C.M., Parihar M.D., Sapkota, T.B., Nanwal, R.K., Singh, A.K., Jat, S.L., Nayak, H.S., Mahala, D.M., Singh, L.K., Kakraliya, S.K., Stirling, C., Jat, M.L. In: Science of the Total Environment v. 640-641, p. 1382-1392.
Major biotic maize production stresses in Ethiopia and their management through host resistance. 2018. Keno, T., Azmach, G., Dagne Wegary Gissa, Regasa, M.W., Tadesse, B., Wolde, L., Deressa, T., Abebe, B., Chibsa, T., Mahabaleswara, S. In: African Journal of Agricultural Research v. 13, no. 21, p. 1042-1052.
Detection of aflatoxigenic and atoxigenic mexican aspergillus strains by the dichlorvosâammonia (DVâAM) method. 2018. Masayo Kushiro, Hidemi Hatabayashi, Kimiko Yabe, Loladze, A. In: Toxins v. 10, no. 7, art. 263.
Excessive pruning and limited regeneration: Are Faidherbia albida parklands heading for extinction in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia? 2018. Tesfaye Shiferaw Sida, Baudron, F., Dejene Adugna Deme, Motuma Tolera, Giller, K.E. In: Land Degradation and Development v. 29, no. 6, p. 1623-1633.
Multi-temporal and spectral analysis of high-resolution hyperspectral airborne imagery for precision agriculture: Assessment of wheat grain yield and grain protein content. 2018. Rodrigues, F., Blasch, G., Defourny, P., Ortiz-Monasterio, I., Schulthess, U., Zarco-Tejada, P.J., Taylor, J.A., Gerard, B. In: Remote Sensing v. 10, no. 6, art 930.
Screening and validation of fertility restoration genes (Rf) in wild abortive CMS system of rice (Oryza sativa L.) using microsatellite markers. 2018. Bhati, P.K., Singh, S.K., Kumar, U. In: Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding v. 78, no. 2, p. 270-274.
Time-series multispectral indices from unmanned aerial vehicle imagery reveal senescence rate in bread wheat. 2018. Hassan, M.A., Mengjiao Yang, Rasheed, A., Xiuliang Jin, Xianchun Xia, Yonggui Xiao, He Zhonghu. In: Remote Sensing v. 10, no. 6, art. 809.
Natural variation in elicitation of defense-signaling associates to field resistance against the spot blotch disease in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). 2018. Sharma, S., Ranabir Sahu, Sudhir Navathe, Vinod Kumar Mishra, Chand, R., Singh, P.K., Joshi, A.K., Pandey, S.P. In: Frontiers in Plant Science v. 9, art. 636.
Population structure of leaf pathogens of common spring wheat in the West Asian regions of Russia and North Kazakhstan in 2017. 2018. Gultyaeva, E.I., Kovalenko, N.M., Shamanin, V.P., Tyunin, V.A., Shreyder, E.R., Shaydayuk, E.L., Morgunov, A.I. In: Vavilovskii Zhurnal Genetiki i Selektsii v. 22, no. 3, p. 363-369.
The ADRA2A rs553668 variant is associated with type 2 diabetes and five variants were associated at nominal significance levels in a population-based caseâcontrol study from Mexico City. 2018. Totomoch-Serra, A., Muñoz, M. de L., Burgueño, J., Revilla-Monsalve, M.C., Perez-Muñoz, A., Diaz-Badillo, A. In: Gene v. 669, p. 28-34.
After receiving training from CIMMYT, this group of young men started a small business offering mechanized agricultural services to smallholder farmers near their town in rural Zimbabwe. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
The sound of an engine roars as Gift Chawara, a 28-year-old from rural Zimbabwe, carefully removes a mesh bag bulging with maize grain hooked to his mechanized sheller. Fed with dried maize cobs, the sheller separates the grain from the shaft before shooting the kernels out the side into the awaiting bag. Chawara swiftly replaces the full bag with an empty one as the kernels continue to spill out.
It is eleven in the morning and the sun beats down over the small farm. Chawara and his friends have only been working a few hours and have already shelled 7 tons for their neighbor and customer Loveness Karimuno; thirteen more tons to go.
The widowed farmer watches as the bags of grain line up, ready for her to take to market. It used to take Karimuno two to three weeks to shell her maize harvest by hand, even with the help of hired labor. This grueling task saw her rub each maize ear on a rough surface to remove the grain from the shaft. Now, these young men and their mechanized sheller will do it in just a few hours for a small fee.
âWhen my neighbor told me the boys were shelling small amounts of maize at reasonable prices, I got in contact with them,â said Karimuno. âItâs cheaper than hiring people to help me do it manually and the speed means I can sell it faster.â
It used to take widowed farmer Loveness Karimuno (left) two or three weeks to shell her 20-ton maize harvest manually, even with the help of hired labor. Using mechanization services, all of her maize is shelled within a day, meaning she can take her grain to market faster. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
The group of young entrepreneurs is serving almost 150 family farms around the village of Mwanga, located about two hours northwest of the capital Harare. They offer services such as shelling and planting, powered by special machinery. Since Chawara and his partners started the business three years ago, word has spread and now they are struggling to keep up with demand, he expressed.
The five young men are among the increasing number of youth across eastern and southern Africa creating a stable living as entrepreneurs in agricultural mechanization service provision, Baudron said.
Tired of the lack of profitable work in their rural community, the group of youths jumped on the opportunity to join a training on agricultural mechanization, run by CIMMYT. They heard about this training through local extension workers.
âWe would probably be out of work if we hadnât had the opportunity to learn how agricultural mechanization can be used to help smallholder farmers and gain skills to run our own business to provide these services,â Chawara expressed as he took a quick rest from shelling under a tree.
âIt has really changed our lives. Last season we shelled over 300 tons of maize making just under US $7,000,â he said. âIt has gone a long way in helping us support our families and invest back into our business.â
Masimba Mawire, 30, and Gift Chawara, 28, take a break from shelling and rest under a tree. The small car behind was bought by Chawara with his profits earned from the mechanization service business. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
Chawara and his partners attended one of these trainings, hosted on the grounds of an agricultural technical college on the outskirts of Harare. For a week, they participated in practical courses led by local agriculture and business experts.
As part of the CIMMYT research project, the youth group paid a commitment fee and were loaned a planter and sheller to start their business, which they are now paying off with their profits.
Youth tend to be better at managing modern technologies and successfully take to service providing, said Baudron, who leads the FACASI project.
âWe found consistently, in all countries where we work, that being a successful service provider is highly correlated to being young,â he highlighted. âHowever, other factors are also important, such as being entrepreneurial, educated, able to contribute to the cost of the machinery and preferably having an experience in similar businesses, particularly in mechanics.â
(From left to right) Shepard Kawiz, 24, gathers dried maize cobs into a bucket passing it to his brother Pinnot Karwizi, 26, who pours the maize into the sheller machine by feeding the hopper. The maize falls into the shellerâs barrel where high-speed rotation separates the grain from the cob. As the bare shafts are propelled out one side, Masimba Mawire, 30, is there to catch and dispose of them. Meanwhile, Gift Chawara, 28, is making sure a bag is securely hooked to the machine to collect the maize grain. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
Mentoring and support are key to success
The young men operate like a well-oiled machine. Shepard Kawiz, 24, gathers dried maize cobs into a bucket and passes it to his brother Pinnot Karwizi, 26, who pours the maize into the sheller machine by feeding the hopper. The maize falls into the shellerâs barrel where high-speed rotation separates the grain from the cob. As bare shafts are propelled out one side, Masimba Mawire, 30, is there to catch and dispose of them. Meanwhile, Gift Chawara is making sure a bag is securely hooked to the machine to collect the maize grain.
Trials showed that when youth form a group and are provided guidance they are more inclined to succeed as service providers, explained CIMMYT agribusiness development specialist Dorcas Matangi.
âThe group model works because they share the costs, the workload and they are more attractive to lenders when looking for investment capital,â she remarked.
Throughout the season, Mantangi works with local government extension workers and engineers from the University of Zimbabwe to mentor those starting out. They also organize meetings where service providers can gather to discuss challenges and opportunities.
âThis is a good opportunity to iron out any problems with the machines, connect them with mechanics and spare part providers and we gain their feedback to improve the design of machinery,â she added.
Mechanization backs resilient farming systems
CIMMYT has provided a model to promote the use of agricultural mechanization among smallholder farmers through service providers, affirmed Misheck Chingozha, a mechanization officer with Zimbabweâs Ministry of Agriculture.
Farm machinery helps farmers implement sustainable crop practices that benefit from greater farm power and precision,â he said. âThis is in line with the governmentâs strategy to promote conservation agriculture â defined by minimal soil disturbance, crop residue retention and diversification through crop rotation and intercropping.â
CIMMYT promotes small-scale mechanization, such as two-wheel tractor-based technologies, including direct seeding planters that reduce labor and allow for improved resource allocation when implementing these practices, described CIMMYTâs Baudron.
Conservation agriculture is a sustainable intensification practice that seeks to produce more food, improve nutrition and livelihoods, and boost rural incomes without an increase in inputs â such as land and water â thus reducing environmental impacts.
With support from CIMMYT, students at the University of Zimbabwe are working to develop agricultural machinery fitted to the environmental conditions and needs of farmers in their country and other parts of Africa. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
Students fuel next-generation machinery
As part of their degree, students at the University of Zimbabwe are working with CIMMYT to continuously improve the effectiveness and efficiency of agricultural machinery.
In a bid to improve the allocation of resources, agricultural engineering student Ronald Mhlanga, 24, worked on a prototype that uses sensors to monitor the amount of seed and fertilizer distributed by planters attached to two-wheel tractors. The device sends information to the driver if anything goes off course, helping farmers improve precision and save resources.
âOften planters will get clogged with mud blocking seeding. The sensors identify this and send a signal to the driver,â said Mhlanga. âThis allows the driver to focus on driving and limits wasted resources.â
Learning from farmer feedback and working with agricultural engineers and the private sector, CIMMYT is building agricultural mechanization suited to the needs and conditions of sub-Saharan African farms, concluded Baudron.
The Cargill-CIMMYT Award supports initiatives that tackle food security challenges in Mexico through long-term solutions. Winners have successfully increased the production of nutrient-rich food and made it available to people.
This year, the jury selected the most innovative projects in three categories:
Farmers: Carlos BarragĂĄn, for the project âDe la milpa a tu platoâ (âFrom the field to your plateâ). Based in the state of Oaxaca, this initiative promotes food security and sustainability in small-scale farming systems.
Opinion Leaders: FundaciĂłn Mexicana para el Desarrollo Rural, for the project Educampo. This project supports poor maize smallholders who live in marginalized communities to make their farming more productive and profitable.
Researchers: Mario LĂłpez, for the project âTechnology for bean production.â This initiative incremented production from 2 to 9 tons per hectare, disseminated agricultural technologies and increased the use of improved seed.
Winners were awarded a total of $25,000. The Farmers and Researchers categories received $10,000 each and the Opinion Leaders category was supported with $5,000.
A panel of experts from the agricultural and food sectors selected the winners from a shortlist of 30 projects across the country. The jury included representatives from Cargill Mexico, CIMMYT, Grupo Bimbo, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, Mexicoâs Agriculture Council and Mexicoâs Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food.
About Cargill
Cargillâs 155,000 employees across 70 countries work relentlessly to achieve our purpose of nourishing the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way. Every day, we connect farmers with markets, customers with ingredients, and people and animals with the food they need to thrive.
We combine 153 years of experience with new technologies and insights to serve as a trusted partner for food, agriculture, financial and industrial customers in more than 125 countries. Side-by-side, we are building a stronger, sustainable future for agriculture. For more information, visit Cargill.com and our News Center.
About Cargill Mexico
Cargill Mexico aims to contribute in improving agricultural productivity, satisfying and fulfilling the expectations of the domestic industry. In addition to adding value to human and animal nutrition and thus encourage economic development, Cargill Mexico reinvests its profits in several new businesses in the country. Cargill has 9 business units that have operations in Mexico, it employs more than 1,750 people in 13 states and has a total of 30 facilities, including a corporate office in Mexico City. For more information, visit Cargill.com.mx, and our News Center.
About CIMMYT
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is the global leader in publicly-funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. Headquartered near Mexico City, CIMMYT works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, thus improving global food security and reducing poverty. CIMMYT is a member of the CGIAR System and leads the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and Wheat and the Excellence in Breeding Platform. The Center receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies. For more information, visit staging.cimmyt.org.
ROME — A new training manual is set to provide practical guidance for agricultural mechanization entrepreneurs in rural areas, where family farmers commonly lack capital to invest in the farm power required to increase food production.
The five-module training manual targeted at farm mechanization hire service providers, including youth and women, was developed by researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and official launched July 13 at FAO’s Rome headquarters.
It sets out a syllabus which trainers can tailor to local environments to equip entrepreneurs with essential business skills and knowledge to promote appropriate mechanization farmers need to sustainably intensify production, said Josef Kienzle, an agricultural engineer at FAO.
The manual will initially be rolled out in sub-Saharan African rural communities where improved access to agricultural mechanization is crucial, he said.
Small-scale mechanization, such as two-wheel tractor based technologies including direct seed planters, represent a shift away from destructively intensive agriculture. However, the decline of hire tractor schemes means resource-poor farmers often lack the financial means to obtain them, said Bruno Gerard, director of CIMMYTâs sustainable intensification program.
âTo increase the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of their farms, family farmers need greater access to affordable yield-enhancing inputs. Hire service providers can improve access to mechanization that reduces labor drudgery and promotes sustainable intensification practices,â he said.
Sustainable intensification seeks to produce more food, improve nutrition and livelihoods, and boost rural incomes without an increase in inputs â such as land and water â thus reducing environmental impacts.
âInclusive mechanization strategies create an enabling environment and provide a framework for making decisions on how to allocate resources, how to address current challenges, how to take advantage of opportunities that arise while in the meantime emphasize the concept of sustainable crop intensification and the roles of the private and public sectors,â said Kienzle. Farm machinery enables farmers to adopt sustainable crop production intensification practices â such as conservation agriculture â that benefit from greater farm power and precision.
The manual will be initially distributed and courses organized through FAO and CIMMYT field projects in sub-Saharan Africa utilizing local trainers and experts in machinery and agribusiness, he said. The manual is expected to be rolled out to other subregional offices and hubs in the future.
Clara Chikuni has gained a reliable income since becoming a mechanization service provider and offering maize shelling in her local area. (Photo: Matthew OâLeary/CIMMYT)
Clara Chikuni, a mother from rural Zimbabwe, has secured a stable income after starting her own mechanized shelling business two years ago. Servicing maize farmers in a 5 kilometer radius of her home, Chikuni has more customers than she says she can handle and has developed reliable employment compared to her previous job buying and selling shoes.
âThere is a lot of demand for mechanized maize shelling services. I am happy I can provide a service to the community and make money to support my family,â she said. âI hope with the profits I can move into the two wheel tractor business in the future.â
âThe training and support gave me the know-how and confidence to start my business,â said the mother. âOther women now ask me how I did it and I encourage them to also get involved.â
There is a market for farming mechanization services that can make a big difference for a smallholder farm and help it transition from subsistence farming to a more market-oriented farming enterprise, said FAOâs Kienzle.
Apart from hire services, mechanization creates additional opportunities for new business with repair and maintenance of equipment, sales and dealership of related businesses including transport and agro-processing along the value chain.
The knowledge and expertise of both CIMMYT and FAO combined has made this manual unique and very praxis oriented, focused on smallholder mechanization businesses, he said.
Two experimental lines of provitamin A-enriched orange maize, Zambia. Photo: CIMMYT.
A new study from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Wageningen University examines the preferences and needs of maize processors and consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). According to the authors, the demand for maize, a staple crop in SSA, will triple by 2050 due to rapid population growth. At the same time, the effects of climate change, such as erratic rainfall and drought, threaten agricultural productivity and the ability to meet this growing demand, while persistently high malnutrition pose additional challenges to the region. The authors suggest six objectives to enhance maize breeding programs for better food security and nutrition in SSA.
First, they recommend breeding programs enhance the nutrient density of maize through biofortification to help reduce deficiencies in vitamin A, zinc and protein. Since wheat is difficult to grow in most of SSA and expensive to import, they also suggest that programs breed to enhance the suitability of maize for making bread and snacks. The authors recommend breeding to improve maize for use as âgreen maizeâ â the first crop to reach the marketplace after the dry season. If suitable green maize varieties are available, the hunger gap between seasons could be significantly reduced.
The authorsâ fourth suggestion is breeding to improve characteristics that enhance the efficiency of local processing. For example, soft maize is preferred for traditional dry and wet milling, but hard maize is usually preferred for pounding or refining processes in the home. Lastly, the authors suggest breeding to reduce waste by maximizing useful product yield and minimizing nutrient losses, and breeding to reduce anti-nutrient concentrations in grains. For example, phytate or phytic acid is a naturally occurring compound found in cereals that binds with minerals and prevents their absorption. Transgenic and gene editing approaches may offer viable options for reducing phytate production.
The authors emphasize that none of these opportunities to enhance breeding strategies are âmagic bulletâ solutions. Sustainable, diversified crop production and post-harvest management strategies will play an important role in improving nutrition, food security and livelihoods.
Bayesian functional regression as an alternative statistical analysis of high-throughput phenotyping data of modern agriculture. Montesinos-López, A., Montesinos-Lopez, O.A., De los Campos, G., Crossa, J., Burgueño, J., Luna-Vazquez, F.J. In: Plant Methods v. 14, art. 46.
Exploring the physiological information of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence through radiative transfer model inversion. Celesti, M., van derâ Tol, C., Cogliati, S., Panigada, C., Peiqi Yang, Pinto Espinosa, F., Rascher | Miglietta, F., Colombo, R., Rossini, M. In: Remote Sensing of Environment v. 215, p. 97-108.
Genome-wide association mapping for resistance to leaf rust, stripe rust and tan spot in wheat reveals potential candidate genes. Juliana, P., Singh, R.P., Singh, P.K., Poland, J.A., Bergstrom, G.C., Huerta-Espino, J., Bhavani, S., Crossa, J., Sorrells, M.E. In: Theoretical and Applied Genetics v. 131, no. 7, p. 1405-1422.
High-throughput method for ear phenotyping and kernel weight estimation in maize using ear digital imaging. Makanza, R., Zaman-Allah, M., Cairns, J.E., Eyre, J., Burgueño, J., Pacheco Gil, R. A., Diepenbrock, C., Magorokosho, C., Amsal Tesfaye Tarekegne, Olsen, M., Prasanna, B.M. In: Plant Methods v. 14, art. 49.
IPM to control soil-borne pests on wheat and sustainable food production. Dababat, A.A., Erginbas-Orakci, G., Toumi, F., Braun, H.J., Morgounov, A.I., Sikora, R.A. In: Arab Journal of Plant Protection v. 36, no. 1, p. 37-44.
Long-term impact of conservation agriculture and diversified maize rotations on carbon pools and stocks, mineral nitrogen fractions and nitrous oxide fluxes in inceptisol of India. Parihar, C.M., Parihar M.D., Sapkota, T.B., Nanwal, R.K., Singh, A.K., Jat, S.L., Nayak, H.S., Mahala, D.M., Singh, L.K., Kakraliya, S.K., Stirling, C., Jat, M.L. In: Science of the Total Environment v. 640-641, p. 1382-1392.
Major biotic maize production stresses in Ethiopia and their management through host resistance. Keno, T., Azmach, G., Dagne Wegary Gissa, Regasa, M.W., Tadesse, B., Wolde, L., Deressa, T., Abebe, B., Chibsa, T., Mahabaleswara, S. In: African Journal of Agricultural Research v. 13, no. 21, p. 1042-1052.
Natural variation in elicitation of defense-signaling associates to field resistance against the spot blotch disease in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Sharma, S., Ranabir Sahu, Sudhir Navathe, Vinod Kumar Mishra, Chand, R., Singh, P.K., Joshi, A.K., Pandey, S.P. In: Frontiers in Plant Science v. 9, art. 636.
Population structure of leaf pathogens of common spring wheat in the West Asian regions of Russia and North Kazakhstan in 2017. Gultyaeva, E.I., Kovalenko, N.M., Shamanin, V.P., Tyunin, V.A., Shreyder, E.R., Shaydayuk, E.L., Morgunov, A.I. In: Vavilovskii Zhurnal Genetiki i Selektsii v. 22, no. 3, p. 363-369.
The ADRA2A rs553668 variant is associated with type 2 diabetes and five variants were associated at nominal significance levels in a population-based caseâcontrol study from Mexico City. Totomoch-Serra, A., Muñoz, M. de L., Burgueño, J., Revilla-Monsalve, M.C., Perez-Muñoz, A., Diaz-Badillo, A. In: Gene v. 669, p. 28-34.
Eleven years ago this week, Apple Inc. released the iPhone. While it was not the first smartphone on the market, industry experts often credit the iPhoneâs groundbreaking design with the launch of the mobile revolution. The device, its competitors and the apps that emerged with them have changed how over two billion people interact with the world on a daily basis.
The success of this revolution, however, goes far beyond the actual technology. At the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) outside Mexico City, scaling expert Lennart Woltering points to a smartphone lying on his desk.
âWe have to remember that this phone is just hardware. It is useless if you donât have a network connection or an outlet in your house with electricity,â he says.
Woltering joined CIMMYT last year as part of the German Development Cooperationâs effort to aid the scaling-up of agricultural innovations. New, improved seeds, small-scale machinery and conservation practices can all play a role in achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals, but Woltering says many other non-technological factors, such as markets and policies, can prevent these innovations from having significant impact.
Roadside vendor sells roasted maize cobs in Kenya. (Photo: P.Lowe/CIMMYT)
âMany research institutes and nongovernmental organizations tend to focus on technology as the solution for everything,â he says. âBut we find that 9 out of 10 cases, limiting factors have more to do with financing not being available to people, or poor policies that are hampering the adoption of technology.â
For example, CIMMYT has many initiatives in South Asia to promote conservation agriculture. Adopting no-till practices can help reduce erosion and improve soil health for better yields, but farmers who make this transition often need access to a different kind of machinery, such as the Happy Seeder, to plant their seeds. If government subsidies exist for conventional rototillers but not for the Happy Seeder, it is difficult to persuade farmers to make that economic sacrifice.
âIt is a completely different ballgame in the real world, and you have to be honest about whatever fake reality you created in your project,â says Woltering.
Projects are designed in a very controlled way. They have a fixed budget and a fixed end date, and they are often shielded from the social and economic complexities that can propel or hinder an innovation from scaling.
âSo if a donor says, âWe want two million people to be reached,â well, how are you going to do that? Thatâs where the Scaling Scan can help,â says Woltering.
Extension agents in Mexico use the Scaling Scan. (Photo: L. Woltering/CIMMYT)
The Scaling Scan helps an individual analyze, reflect on, and sharpen oneâs scaling ambition and approach through a series of questions and prompts. It focuses on ten scaling âingredientsâ that need to be considered (e.g. knowledge and skills, public sector governance, awareness and demand) to reach the desired outcome.
âThe Scaling Scan helps you figure out what exactly is required, what is possible, and what bottlenecks exist that you need to address in your strategy,â Woltering says.
Woltering collaborated with The PPPLab, a consortium of four Dutch institutes, to release the first version of the Scaling Scan last year. They tested it with project teams in the Netherlands, Mexico, India, Nepal and Kenya, and based on the feedback, they are now releasing a second version, which is available here.
In the trials with the first Scaling Scan, some teams realized the results they wanted to achieve were too ambitious given the circumstances. For other teams, it helped them clarify exactly what they wanted to achieve.
âHaving a project objective is not enough to internalize the main goal,â says Woltering. âIt also changes over time, especially if itâs a long-term project. The scaling scan can be good for an annual checkup.â
Woltering emphasizes that successful scaling requires multidisciplinary collaboration.
âIf you only have a team of agronomists, you will not reach a scale of millions you want to achieve. If you only have a team of policy experts, you will not succeed,â he says. âThere are professionals that can really help and add value to what we are doing.â
âItâs hard to get an agronomist and an economist in the same room together, but weâre not going to change the world if we donât work together with others who have their specific specialty or expertise,â he says.
The Scaling Scan also includes a responsibility check through some very simple but strategic questions.
âEvery system has its pros and cons â some people benefit, some do not. Some have power, some do not,â says Woltering. âSo what does it mean if your innovation goes to scale? Maybe thereâs a whole new power dimension.â
Successfully scaling something may have unintended consequences. There are always tradeoffs and resistance to change. Woltering says the responsibility check can help actors in the development sector to think through these questions and consider what the possible outcomes could be.
For more explanation on how and when to use the tool, we invite you to download the Scaling Scan (also available in Spanish) which contains detailed practical information. We recommend the Excel sheet (also available in Spanish) to have the average scores and results generated automatically. A condensed, two-page PDF is also available.
Participants of the international training. Photo: S.Thapa/CIMMYT-Nepal
Improved seed with proper management practices is an important agricultural input which can boost crop productivity by more than 50 percent. This gain is necessary to achieve food security and alleviate poverty in many developing countries. However, it can be challenging for farmers to find high-quality seeds as availability, affordability and accessibility remain hurdles to improved seed distribution. Â In Nepal, the majority of rural farmers use farm-saved seeds of inferior quality leading to low productivity and subsistence livelihood.
The seed industry in Nepal, as in most developing countries, is still emerging and largely untapped. Lack of availability of start-up working capital, business incentives in the sector, new technologies and required technical expertise limit the current seed value chain.
To address this, the Nepal Seed and Fertilizer (NSAF) project is engaging Nepalese seed companies in a business mentoring process to enhance their ability to test and deploy new products, develop business and marketing plans and sustain a viable, competitive seed business, particularly in hybrid seeds.
The NSAF project, in collaboration with the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) & the Seed Entrepreneurs Association of Nepal (SEAN) organized an âInternational Training Workshop on Seed Business Managementâ for senior-level seed company managers and business owners representing 15 private seed companies from Nepal and Pakistan. Held from April 23 to 25 in Kathmandu, the training aimed to develop market-oriented seed businesses that emphasize hybrid seed. The training focused on increasing the technical, financial and market management capacities of senior managers and conveying the requirements of a competitive seed business using case studies from Africa and Asia.
Navin Hada, AID project development specialist at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-Nepal highlighted the timeliness of the training and congratulated the NSAF team for bringing south Asian seed companies and international experts together for experience sharing and collaborations.
âSEAN has more than 2000 registered members in Nepal and business-oriented training like this help our members to enhance their efficiency,â said Laxmi Kant Dhakal, chairman of SEAN and president of the Unique Seed Co Plc.
Suma Karki from Seed Quality Control Center (SQCC) of Nepal receiving certification of participation Photo: E. Kohkar/CIMMYT-Pakistan.
The training was facilitated by John MacRobert, a consultant for business mentoring of Nepalese seed companies and former principal seed system specialist for CIMMYT with the support of the NSAF team. The training workshop included lectures, discussions and customized exercises to develop business plans; marketing, production and financial strategies; seed quality control; and research and development plans.
During the reflection session to close the training, Dyutiman Choudhary, NSAF project coordinator, appreciated the professional interaction and experience sharing among Nepalese and Pakistani seed companies and acknowledged the role of MacRobert in bringing diverse experiences from Africa and other regions.
At the closing ceremony, Yubak Dhoj G.C, secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Land Management and Co-operative, emphasized the importance of hybrid seed self-sufficiency for Government of Nepal initiatives for attaining food security and alleviating poverty.
The Nepal Seed and Fertilizer project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and is a flagship project in Nepal. NSAF aims to build a competitive and synergistic seed and fertilizer systems for inclusive and sustainable growth in agricultural productivity, business development, and income generation in Nepal. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)-led, USAID-funded, Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan supported the participation of Pakistani seed companies to the training.Â
