An dealer displays KDV1 drought-tolerant seed at the Dryland Seed Company shop in Machakos, Kenya. The CIMMYT study observed that men and women engage with the seed market differently. Photo: Florence Sipalla/CIMMYT.
Preliminary results from a CIMMYT-led pilot study in 10 seed markets across eastern Kenya show that there is a significant difference in the way that men and women engage with improved maize seed markets. “In most major centers, you have at least twice as many men as women coming to buy seed,” said Vongai Kandiwa, CIMMYT gender and development specialist who designed and led the study. The patterns improve a bit when you move to centers that are closer to rural communities. “This tells us that to reach more women, it is important that seed outlets are closer to them in the remote areas.”
MAIZE CRP has announced its third call for proposals as part of the Competitive Grants Initiative (CGI). The call is directed at researchers from outside CGIAR, allowing a greater variety of research partners worldwide to apply for funds to support research and capacity-building activities that will make a significant contribution to the MAIZE vision of success.
The full call for proposals is available on www.MAIZE.org and the deadline for applications is 17 October. Please share this news with your networks!
Photo courtesy of MAIZE.org
Last year, 17 institutions were offered grants, which can range between US$20,000-300,000; The total number of grants awarded to date is 37. For 2014, 11 specific research gaps have been identified within the MAIZE strategy of five Flagship Projects: sustainable intensification of farming systems; new tools and traits for breeding; stress-resilient and nutritious maize; stronger maize seed systems; and more inclusive and profitable maize futures.
Along with the Competitive Partner Grants initiative of the WHEAT CRP, these are the only model of such collaboration among the CRPs. By building a greater variety of partnerships, MAIZE hopes to capture a wider range of innovative ideas and skills, more capable to identify and respond to emerging challenges and maximize the potential for research to improve food systems and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.
Future updates and news of the Competitive Grants Initiative will be shared in the MAIZE newsletter. For any further questions, please contact MAIZE Program Administrator Claudia Velasco (c.velasco@cgiar.org).
Staff members of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) are developing and implementing projects aimed at improving agricultural production and standards of living for farmers in South Asia, with excellent results. At their “Seed Summit for Enhancing the Seed Supply Chain in Eastern India” meeting in Patna, Bihar on 14-15 May they worked to design solutions to improve the delivery of high-yielding seed varieties in eastern India, a region that has traditionally suffered from lack of access to these varieties and low seed replacement rates. The meeting, which included over 60 seed experts from the government, research and private sectors, focused on topics such as better-targeted subsidies on seeds, improved storage infrastructure and stronger extension systems to increase accessibility and adoption of improved seed varieties.
The roundtable “Sustainable Intensification in South Asia’s Cereal Systems: Investment Strategies for Productivity Growth, Resource Conservation, and Climate Risk Management” was held on 19 May in New Delhi. It brought together 20 firms and entrepreneurs to build collaborative action plans and joint investment strategies under CSISA to identify new product tie-ins, joint ventures, technical collaborations and shared marketing channels in order to bring high-tech farming ideas to India’s risk-prone ecologies.
In India, CSISA seeks to increase crop yields through the provision of more accurate, location-specific fertilizer recommendations to maize and rice farmers with the “Crop Manager” decision-making tool. The web-based and mobile Android application uses information provided by farmers including field location, planting method, seed variety, typical yields and method of harvesting to create a personalized fertilizer application recommendation at critical crop growth stages to increase yield and profit.
CSISA-Nepal has initiated a series of participatory research trials in farmers’ fields, in order to promote maize triple cropping, the practice of planting maize during the spring period after winter crop harvesting, when fields would usually be fallow. The practice, while proven to be highly remunerative, is not widely popular. The trials seek to determine optimum management practices for maize in order to encourage triple cropping and to generate additional income for farmers.
Greater gender equality in agriculture is also an important goal of CSISA, supported through the creation of Kisan Sakhi, a support group to empower women farmers in Bihar, India by “disseminating new climate-resilient and sustainable farming technologies and practices that will reduce women’s drudgery and bridge the gender gap in agriculture.” A CSISA-Bangladesh project has already had a positive impact on the lives of rural women, providing new farming and pond management techniques that have helped them to greatly increase the productivity of their fish ponds and gain new respect within their families and communities.
As of April, farmers in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato are now receiving localized agriculture updates and decision-making advice on their mobile telephones thanks to a service launched by MasAgro Móvil. This new development in MasAgro Móvil’s service is part of Guanajuato’s plan to modernize agriculture with CIMMYT-developed technologies. MasAgro Móvil, a project of the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) program, along with other MasAgro tools, received an investment of 10.4 million pesos (US$ 804,000) thanks to the support of Miguel Márquez Márquez, governor of Guanajuato, who seeks to promote sustainable agriculture in his state.
The head of CIMMYT’s GIS unit, Kai Sonder, demonstrating the use of GPS.
Javier Usabiaga Arroyo, Guanajuato’s secretary of agricultural development, announced on 31 May that approximately 755,000 farmers in Guanajuato will eventually have access to vital information through e-MasAgro, a virtual ecosystem that connects various agriculture-related information tools on one site, including MasAgro Móvil. Farmers “will receive technical information, recommendations, response to agricultural plagues and diseases and anything else they might need to improve their production,” he told the El Heraldo newspaper.
The regionalized service offered by MasAgro Móvil in Guanajuato has the potential to be a game-changer for smallholder and medium-scale farmers. After registering for the service, farmers receive short, simple, timely and free agricultural information on the most innovative and profitable conservation agriculture practices. Each message is compatible with the region´s agricultural cycle and provides information that is difficult for an average farmer to find. In the past few months, MasAgro Móvil has sent various messages specific to Guanajuato, focusing on fertilization and monitoring for diseases. It also began sending weekly weather forecasts, regionalized news and invitations to local events.
Photo: Guanajuato Communication Department
In the future, the service will add price alerts, crop health advice and more market-segmented information. The developers are also experimenting with messages that interact with the users, help retrieve user information and facilitate feedback. Abraham Menaldo, a consultant for MasAgro Móvil, said the feedback has been positive so far and farmers are eager to participate and interact. MasAgro Móvil’s goal is to expand this model to the rest of the country, which would replace the current service that sends information to each of MasAgro’s innovation centers, known as hubs.
Project leaders are developing collaborations to create parallel services in the states of Tlaxcala and Hidalgo. A communications campaign planned for autumn 2014 will encourage more farmers to use the system. Extension agents will identify places where farmers congregate, and visit in person to help them register on-site. The campaign will include a study of the target group’s perceptions of MasAgro, their livelihood and the future of farming. MasAgro Móvil’s website offers detailed information about services, future projects, program activities and CIMMYT’s partner-led mobile development projects around the world.
The site will eventually offer an online registration service to minimize some of the technological problems farmers have encountered, such as autocorrect mistakenly changing the spelling of a key word. MasAgro Móvil was recognized by the Inter-American Development Bank as an ideal tool to integrate farmers into the agricultural value chain in its report “The Next Global Breadbasket: How Latin America Can Feed the World: A Call to Action for Addressing Challenges & Developing Solutions.”
The primary purpose of the CIMMYT Global Conservation Agriculture Program (GCAP) is to co-develop sustainable intensification options for and with smallholder farmers in maize- and wheat-based farming systems in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Doing so contributes to CGIAR intermediate development outcomes on food security and poverty reduction. GCAP initially focused on conservation agriculture (CA) principles and high-quality, site-specific field agronomy research in a wide range of agro-ecosystems. Over the past few years, GCAP broadened its research portfolio in close collaboration with the CIMMYT Socio-Economics Program (SEP) to more holistically address sustainable intensification pathways and tackle adoption and adoptability of technical innovations.
In short, sustainable intensification of agriculture seeks to increase farming enterprises’ productivity in regard to land, water, labor and input productivity of farming enterprises in a socially equitable manner while preserving the natural resource base and the environment. This is easier said than done as the sustainable intensification paradigm requires understanding of the complex interactions (synergies and trade-offs) between bio-physical, environmental and socio-economic/market/policy factors at different scales/levels (field, farm, landscape, regions) in order to develop viable options in changing rural environments.
Not being ‘lost in, but dealing with complexity’ is GCAP staff members’ primary concern in order to achieve impact at scale and propose site- and farm-specific integrated adoptable solutions. This requires the use of systems research approaches and the development and use of conceptual frameworks. An example of this is the partnership with Wageningen University funded by the MAIZEand WHEATCRPs.
Reaching impact at scale also requires strategic partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders – from advanced research institutions to government and private extension agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector. GCAP’s flagship projects in South Asia (CSISA), Africa (SIMLESA) and Mexico (MasAgro/TTF) were all designed specifically to use agricultural research for development (AR4D) to intensify farming systems. At the same time, these projects implement innovative approaches with effective methodological use of gender and innovation. A specific program to backstop gender and innovation in GCAP projects is led by the Royal Institute of the Tropics (KIT) of the Netherlands and funded by the MAIZE and WHEAT CRPs.
GCAP operates on the principles that technical innovations and scientific progress have great potential to help smallholder farmers when properly put in context. Therefore, a large part of the GCAP research portfolio is still focused on technical innovations and on the following themes:
Conservation agriculture and its contribution to sustainable intensification (i.e. the Nebraska Declaration).
Small-scale mechanization and labor saving technologies (i.e. the FACASI project).
Decision support tools (DSTs) for site-specific nutrient/water management and precision agriculture/remote sensing for smallholders farmers.
Effective use of information and communication technologies.
CIMMYT, CIBIOGEM and the North Carolina State University (NCSU) transgenics and society group joined together at CIMMYT headquarters on 24 July for the symposium “Transgenics and Society: Towards a constructive dialogue that contributes to policies and regulatory frameworks.” The event was organized to highlight the importance of scientific and moral considerations surrounding individuals’ and hence society’s perspectives about transgenic crops and other emerging technologies.
Secretary for Information and Research Support of CIBIOGEM Dr. Laura Tovar Castillo, welcomed participants on behalf of Dr. Sol Ortiz García, Executive Secretary of CIBIOGEM, and highlighted the importance of this symposium and of achieving constructive dialogue about transgenic technologies. Nearly 1 billion people are suffering from hunger and poverty worldwide, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
Photo: CIMMYT
Kevin Pixley, director of the CIMMYT Genetics Resources Program, opened the event with a quote from Megan Clark, CEO of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO): “In the next 50 years we will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history.”
Climate change, depleted natural resources and overpopulation are just a few of the problems contributing to worldwide food insecurity. Pixley noted that this requires us to make a difference worldwide. “How are we going to help these people survive?” asked CIMMYT director general Tom Lumpkin in his welcome to participants. “CIMMYT is in favor of the technology of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Though I do say that with words of caution, because we do want to support the developing world with access to this technology, but it is possible to make a bad GMO. I’ve traveled all around the world and seen lax handling of GMOs.”
The discussion was separated into two sessions. CIMMYT staff can view the presentations on InSide CIMMYT. The first session was led by Fred Gould, NCSU professor of entomology and transgenics. Gould’s presentation was titled “The Past, Present and Future of Genetic Engineering Technologies,” and discussed the past marketing of genetically engineered products, new technologies and the possibilities of many new GM technologies. Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Program at NCSU, finished the first session with a discussion on the governance of genetically engineered organisms and how they are regulated in different countries. “We need to find a middle approach to incorporate values and science in the governance of genetically engineered organisms,” said Kuzma in a wrapup of her presentation.
The second half of the symposium presented the perspective of professionals who have deep ties in Mexican agriculture and also are concerned about the personal and moral issues that influence perceptions about GMOs. Presenters included: Concepción Rodríguez Maciel, associate researcher and professor at the Colegio de Postgraduados; Javier Becerril, professor of economics at the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatán; and Carolina Camacho, principal researcher in the CIMMYT Socioeconomics Program. The theme that ran through these presentations was the need for transgenic crops in Mexico compared with the difficulty of fully explaining the benefits and concerns of transgenic crops to small-scale farmers. Rodríguez Maciel said: “As a country, we have spent way too much time discussing biotechnology issues. It’s time to integrate all the different types of agriculture to face the challenges that climate change will bring. We do need to remember that we are talking to normal human beings and we need to speak their language.”
Jason Delborne, associate professor of science, policy and society at NCSU, rounded out the discussion with his presentation on how to conduct a productive and informative dialogue on transgenic research. He has developed a five-step process that is designed to facilitate a formal discussion regarding transgenic research and ease the general public into a conversation about transgenics that leads to productive action. Building on the foundations of this symposium, CIMMYT hopes to contribute to discussions in Mexico and elsewhere that generate better understanding of the scientific and personal perspectives that societies must acknowledge and address in developing their policies about transgenics (and next generations of technologies).
As highlighted by Jason Delborne, the most important step is often asking and addressing the right question, which in many cases during this symposium participants learned was not actually about transgenics. Instead, the right questions might be about conserving biodiversity, enhancing the ecological sustainability of agricultural practices, preserving the right to save grain for planting next crops, offering technologies that are affordable to resource-poor farmers or about how humankind will produce as much food in the next 50 years as has been consumed over the entire history of humanity.
When traveling from Chimoio to Tete along one of the main roads in central Mozambique, one inevitably passes through Malomue, a small rural village in Báruè District. Since 2008, conservation agriculture (CA) technologies and improved drought-tolerant maize varieties have been promoted to farmers through various donor-funded projects, including a USAID-funded Feed the Future initiative.
In the past, farmers in the area would cultivate their land, clear the surface of all protective cover and burn the residue from the previous cropping season. The main food security crop in the area is maize, and due to lack of access to improved seed, lowyielding landraces were often planted. The introduction of improved agriculture technologies developed and tested by the Platform of Agriculture Research and Innovation (PARTI) and the Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Lab (SANREM) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) implemented in collaboration with the University of Tennessee, have brought significant change to Malomue. Farmers have been exposed to improved seed, fertilizers, improved weed management practices and more sustainable planting techniques based on conservation agriculture principles and practices.
Josè Leuane Dicane, a rural farmer from the community with approximately 15 hectares of cultivated land, said, “The first lesson I learned is that no fire should enter my plots, and I have managed to avoid burning grass from my neighbors.” Dicane also appreciates the reduced labor required when chemical weed control options and direct seeding techniques are used, as well as the increased moisture retention and fertility increases when legume crops are rotated and crop residues are kept on the soil surface. Improved drought-tolerant maize varieties, developed by CIMMYT and extended through Mozambican private seed companies, have further increased the yields on the fields of farmers such as Dicane. Dicane and his large family have become food self-sufficient. He has planted a garden where he produces higher value horticulture crops under small-scale irrigation, and has become an emerging commercial farmer by successfully selling his produce at a profit in the nearby town of Catandica.
The project has identified him as one of the most visionary and successful farmers in central Mozambique, worthy of sharing his experiences with others in the world. With support from USAID, Dicane and his wife were invited to go to the United States to attend a meeting of SANREM/CRSP. On 16 May, Dicane and his wife Judisse boarded an airplane on their way to the U.S. Neither had ever flown, stayed in a hotel or seen the world outside of Mozambique. This was the experience of a lifetime for them. During the SANREM/CRSP meeting on 20 May, they shared their new farming expertise with other participants and farmers. They spoke as if they had presented to an audience many times. Their very impressive report on the lives of rural farmers from Mozambique made a difference to many of the participants. The farmers from Malomue have been given a voice and the opportunity to describe the gradual changes in their lives. The changes might be small, but viewed through another lens, they are also groundbreaking.
Hari S. Gupta was selected as the second Director General (DG) of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) in India and assumed his new position on August 7th. BISA, named to honor Dr. Norman E. Borlaug (1914-2009), world-renowned agricultural scientist and 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is helping to meet food security and sustainable productivity growth in both irrigated and rain-fed production areas by adapting wheat and maize systems to the emerging challenges of climate change, natural resource scarcity and market demands. While working at CIMMYT and its predecessor organization, Borlaug’s development of high-yielding, dwarf varieties of wheat helped trigger the Green Revolution in the 1960s. BISA was established in 2011 to catalyze agricultural research for development (AR4D) in South Asia and is a non-profit international agricultural research institute founded by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and CIMMYT, and managed by the latter.
According to Thomas A. Lumpkin, CIMMYT Director General, who also served concurrently as the first DG of BISA, “The challenge today is to increase yields of staple crops in South Asia despite the fact that climate change, population growth, dietary changes and natural resource degradation all pose enormous challenges to agriculture.” BISA was created to “address the challenges head on,” added Lumpkin. Providing food and nutritional security is “a daunting task” and the region needs “a dedicated, world-class effort focused entirely on these problems.” Lumpkin stated, “To lead BISA’s work on those problems, Dr. Gupta was chosen from a field of very qualified candidates. We anticipate that he will be a very strong DG for BISA and will lead it into its next phase.”
Photo: Courtesy of Indian Agricultural Research Institute
Prior to joining BISA, Gupta served for almost five and one-half years as Director and Vice Chancellor of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), one of the largest agricultural research institutes in Asia. With 10 centers spread across India, IARI is the flagship research institute of ICAR and is known globally as the institution that was instrumental in spreading the Green Revolution across India. During the Green Revolution, Borlaug and regional scientists, policymakers and farmers in South Asia took India and Pakistan from near-famine in 1965-1966 to food self-sufficiency. Dr. Borlaug’s work in AR4D is credited with saving 1 billion people from hunger and malnutrition, and many were in South Asia. However, Borlaug correctly predicted that the Green Revolution boost in food production could not last, and was only a reprieve for humanity to adapt more sustainable systems and policies for managing population growth and use of natural resources.
Describing the goals he will focus on as DG of BISA, Gupta stated, “In order to usher a second Green Revolution in South Asia, improving crop productivity in conjunction with efficient use of natural resources – especially of soil and water – will be my top priority. In addition, reducing the vulnerability of South Asian agriculture to climate change will be addressed with an emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Climate change, ever-increasing population, persistent poverty, chronic malnutrition and declining annual crop yield gains are retarding human development across South Asia.
Despite notable progress over the past several decades, South Asia is still home to more than 300 million undernourished people (35 percent of the global total). Food price spikes exacerbate these issues and make the lives of South Asia’s poorest even more difficult. Because of these issues, Gupta said, “Increasing the system productivity per unit area and time with conservation of natural resources is BISA’s guiding principle. Development of technology for rain-fed areas will receive priority whereas sustaining the gains made in irrigated areas will help in meeting the region’s short-term needs for food and feed.” He continued, stating, “In order to make agriculture more efficient in South Asia, mechanization – particularly using renewable sources of energy in farm operations – will be pursued vigorously. My experience at IARI will help me to work with others to implement the programs rapidly and efficiently.” Prior to joining IARI, Gupta worked for a number of agricultural research organizations, including serving as: director, Vivekanand Institute of Hill Agriculture, or VPKAS (2000-09); principal scientist and head of the Division of Plant Breeding, ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region (1989-99); senior scientist, ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region (1983-89); and scientist, Central Potato Research Institute (1978-83). Gupta earned his M.Sc. in genetics at GB Pant University of Agriculture & Technology in Pant Nagar, India. He earned his Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal.
Among the highlights of his post-doctoral research are: Rockefeller Foundation Career Fellow in 2003 and 2006 at Washington State University (WSU) on the genetic engineering of rice for increasing starch biosynthesis; visiting scientist at WSU, working on the induction of early flowering in crop plants in 1993-94; and Commonwealth Scholar in the Department of Life Science at the University of Nottingham (UK) on plant regeneration from protoplast and protoplast-mediated genetic manipulation in rice in 1987-88. Among the honors and recognition that Gupta has received during his career are: President, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding (2011-13); Sardar Patel Outstanding Institution Award to IARI during his tenure (2011); ICAR’s Team Award for Outstanding Multidisciplinary Research (2010, 2008 and 1997); Dr. AS Cheema Award for Outstanding Contribution to Indian Agriculture (2010); Outstanding Institution Award to VPKAS (2008 and 2001) during his tenure as director; ICAR “Hari Om Ashram” Trust Award (2007); NRDC’s Meritorious Invention award (2006); ICAR National Professor (2006); Dr. Rajendra Prasad Award for Best Book in Crop Sciences (2004); and Rockefeller Foundation Career Fellowship (2000). Gupta belongs to numerous professional societies, including: Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding; Fellow, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences; Fellow, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding; Fellow, Indian Society of Agricultural Biochemists; founding member, Society for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology; and life member of the Indian Societies of the Biological Chemists, Genetics and Plant Breeding, Hill Agriculture and Seed Science.
About BISA
BISA is developing a state-of-theart agricultural research platform, technology transfer centers and training facilities. BISA’s focus is on holistic, interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to breeding, conservation agriculture and socioeconomics for wheat- and maizebased cropping and food systems. BISA’s facilities and formal institutional partnerships can create a world-class research infrastructure and lead to strategic collaborations among regional and international scientists, as well as public and private stakeholders across the region’s agricultural value chains.
The Institute closely coordinates and synergizes with CIMMYT and other international centers such as the International Rice Research Institute and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, with national institutions such as ICAR, the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council and the Nepal Agriculture Research Council and the private sector within the region. BISA currently has three sites in India – Ludhiana in Punjab State, Pusa in Bihar State and Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh State. Each of the states contains varied agro-ecological zones allowing BISA and its partners to test a variety of maize and wheat cultivars suited to the equally varied environments of South Asia. BISA also has site commitments from Nepal and Pakistan and is in discussion with Afghanistan and Bangladesh for sites in those countries. Through BISA, CIMMYT and several national agricultural research systems (NARS) have taken a key step towards sustainable food and nutritional security.
CIMMYT has a long, successful history of partnerships in South Asia, playing an important role with regional partners in catalyzing the Green Revolution. The NARS have demonstrated their commitment to regional food and nutritional security, and recognized the contribution that BISA, an independent, non-profit organization with broad international backing, can make to strengthen existing efforts in the region. BISA’s role in strengthening South Asia’s food and nutritional security focuses on leveraging and accelerating efforts rather than duplicating or competing with existing institutions. BISA fills the most critical gap in present efforts in South Asia – an impartial coordinating platform for discovery and sharing information and technologies.
BISA’s primary focus is to strengthen capability-sharing through the collaborative execution of AR4D projects. This increase in resource productivity should increase food and nutritional security, environmental protection and economic development. BISA is also strengthening the links between national and international efforts, building capacity in the region’s scientific community and introducing the best seed, agricultural technologies and information to improve the productivity and profitability of the region’s smallholder farmers and agricultural value chains.
CIMMYT scientists working on the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) are exploring novel ways to conduct research on gender and climate change. “Household methodologies offer a potentially innovative entry point for climate-smart interventions,” said CIMMYT-CCAFS project leader Dr. Clare Stirling, explaining the project’s interest in doing in-depth gender research. “In the past, most agricultural interventions have focused on men, even though women provide most of the workforce and day-to-day management and knowledge on farms.”
Photo: Florence Sipalla/CIMMYT
CIMMYT-CCAFS is keen on tapping into women’s knowledge of farming practices. “Studies show that involving and empowering women in decision-making can have a significant impact on production,” said Stirling. “Evidence suggests that household methodologies can offer a very effective route to increasing the impact of work by CIMMYT-CCAFS.” The CIMMYT-CCAFS team’s commitment to gender research has not gone unnoticed. “At the last CCAFS annual meeting, we won the gender award in recognition of the progress that we have made in our gender activities and outputs,” said Stirling.
The scientists, drawn from multi-disciplinary backgrounds in conservation agriculture, maize and socioeconomics programs, recently held a workshop on gender research methodologies that have been successful in other settings. The workshop was facilitated by gender consultants Cathy Farnworth and Helena Zefanias Lowe, and its purpose was to increase awareness about new approaches. Participants also discussed ways to improve the welfare of women in farming communities by ensuring they are part of the actionable implementation of research at farm level.
One of the methodologies discussed was the Gender Action Learning System (GALS), which allows researchers to use visual tools to gather more nuanced information from farming communities during household studies. “GALS creates opportunities for both men and women. It starts with individuals and grows to collective action,” said Lowe. Sharing examples from Sierra Leone, where GALS was implemented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Lowe demonstrated how the method enabled researchers to generate information on how men and women shared resources and decision-making power in the household.
CIMMYT-CCAFS scientists held a workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, on gender research methodologies that have been successful in other settings. Photo: Florence Sipalla/CIMMYT
“When we talk about gender, the tendency is to think of it solely as women’s issues, but the GALS method brings other relationships into the picture such as co-wives, older men and younger women,” said Lowe. The use of this methodology resulted in some successes within the community, such as an increased number of women in farmers’ associations and leadership positions, as well as improved negotiation skills for both men and women. Through participation in GALS, some members of the farming community also became trainers and are now able to share their knowledge with others.
Farnworth indicated that the household methodologies discussed at the workshop were not just about women’s empowerment. “The idea is that everybody changes and becomes empowered because men are also disempowered by some of the roles they play,” she said. In discussing household methodologies, Farnworth noted that a great deal of extension work focuses on the household as a unit and does not examine intra-household dynamics, hence the need to consider new methodologies.
CIMMYT socio-economist Dr. Sika Gbegbelegbe gained new knowledge from the workshop. “The method goes beyond the science to bring about transformational change,” she said, adding that learning how GALS had been successful in the West African context was indicative that it could be applied elsewhere. “However, it takes time to implement, to see the change happening in people’s lives,” she added.
CIMMYT will lead a new research initiative to make agriculture more productive, profitable and sustainable for smallholder farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of Nepal, Bangladesh and India.
Launched in Dhulikhel, Nepal, on 4 July, the five-year US$6.8 million regional research initiative, Sustainable and Resilient Farming Systems Intensification in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (SRFSI), will tap the agricultural potential of the area and target 7,000 farmers to test and adopt appropriate new technology and farming approaches.
The program, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), will operate in eight districts: two in northwest Bangladesh, two in the eastern Terai of Nepal and two each in the Indian states of Bihar and West Bengal.
The three-day Inception and Planning Meeting that launched the program was attended by 84 participants from Australia, Bangladesh, India, Mexico and Nepal. SRFSI is managed by CIMMYT on behalf of multiple partners including the national research and extension systems of Bangladesh, India and Nepal, Indian and Australian universities, national and international nongovernmental organizations, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia and four CGIAR Centers (CIMMYT, the International Rice Research Institute, the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute).
The project was officially initiated by the Australian Ambassador to Nepal, Glenn White, together with the Executive Director of the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), Dr. Dil Bahadur Gurung; the Joint Secretary of the Nepal Ministry of Agricultural Development, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Adhikari; Dr. Claire Glendenning of the Australian Department of Foreign Affair and Trade; and Dr. John Dixon, principal adviser for ACIAR.
“This initiative will help to raise agricultural productivity in a region which has the potential to become one of Asia’s great food bowls,” White told the gathering of scientists and development practitioners.
The EGP is home to some 300 million people, with the world’s highest concentration of rural poverty and a strong dependence on agriculture for food security and livelihoods. The region is dominated by small farms with many female farmers who have little access to credit, quality seeds, fertilizers, irrigation or formal extension services. They also have to contend with climate-related risks and extreme events such as floods, drought and cold snaps.
“This program will allow farmers to test a range of innovations to help them boost food production, including conservation agriculture and efficient use of water resources, while strengthening their ability to adapt and link to markets and support services,” White said. “Our aim is to enable at least 130,000 farmers to adopt these technologies within the next 10 years.”
Gurung and Adhikari lauded the long-term partnership between CIMMYT and Nepal, as well as the ACIAR support of this project, and assured that the Ministry will extend its full support.
Key Objectives of the SRFSI
The Eastern Gangetic Plains region has the potential to become a major contributor to South Asian regional food security, but rice and wheat productivity remain low and diversification is limited because of poorly developed markets, sparse agricultural knowledge and service networks, and inadequate development of available water resources and sustainable production practices. Labor shortages – mainly during sowing and harvesting – are becoming more acute. These factors lead to smallholder vulnerability to climate and market risks that limit investments in new technologies.
SRFSI will undertake several high-priority activities to reduce these factors:
• Improving farmers’ access to inputs, services and market information in order to reduce the risk associated with adopting new practices.
• Removing policy barriers to technology adoption.
• Analyzing the appropriateness of technologies, service provider models, markets and policies for women farmers, and adjusting them where necessary, to help ensure food security and gender equity in the region.
• Developing new knowledge among farmers, researchers, extension and change agents, service providers, agro-dealers and others involved in agriculture. This has been identified as the key to achieving widespread adoption of new technologies and reductions in poverty in the EGP.
• Investing heavily in capacity building at multiple levels, from field days to short courses to linkages with advanced research institutions. Ultimately the project focal communities, where all aspects of the project activities are put into place to achieve the desired change, will become demonstration or learning sites for institutions or individuals interested in agricultural development, where they can observe the technological changes and talk with farmers and farmer organizations about the importance of the different components of the project in bringing about agriculture change.
Members of the project management committee discussed SIMLESA’s second phase during a 1 July planning meeting in Addis Ababa.
Phase II of the Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa project (SIMLESA) began 1-4 July with a series of planning meetings in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. SIMLESA-II is a five-year project funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
Members of the project management committee (PMC) met on 1 July to ensure that management and implementing partners have a common understanding of project objectives, targets, milestones, indicators and the assignment of coordination responsibilities. The PMC includes Olaf Erenstein, director of the Socio-economics Program; Bruno Gérard, director of the Conservation Agriculture Program; Mekuria Mulugetta, SIMLESA project coordinator; Daniel Rodriguez of the Queensland Alliance for Agricultural and Food Innovation; and Peter Craufurd, SIMLESA strategy leader.
Based on lessons learned from SIMLESA’s first phase, the PMC adjusted the design of activities, timelines and strategies for scaling out SIMLESA practices to farmers. One recommendation was to assign a coordinator to each of SIMLESA’s four objectives: Paswel Marenya for objective one, Isaiah Nyagumbo for objective two, Peter Setimela for objective three and Michael Misiko for objective four. The PMC noted that during the first phase, research scientists were operating in silos, and they urged the scientists to work as a team since the project objectives and activities are more closely linked in the second phase.
Olaf Erenstein, director of CIMMYT’s Socio-economics Program, addressed CIMMYT scientists, SIMLESA national coordinators and partners during a SIMLESA planning meeting.
The PMC also appointed a committee to spearhead the selection of partners for competitive grants in each country. The committee will consist of the national coordinator for each of the five target countries, an ACIAR representative, a project steering committee member, the objective four leaders and a PMC member. The two new partners, the International Livestock Research Institute and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, are responsible for forage- and soil science-related activities, respectively.
A joint meeting with SIMLESA country coordinators was held on 3-4 July. The coordinators gave presentations on achievements of the first phase and lessons learned, plus the challenges and strategic plan for the second phase. Planned project activities for the second phase are not homogeneous across the SIMLESA countries; they are guided by the country’s priorities, the amount of support that will be required and the opportunities for scaling out. Discussion centered on strategies to scale out new technologies to more than 650,000 small-scale farmers by 2023.
At the end of the meeting, all participants agreed on an implantation plan that will be further refined at the national level during country-specific planning and review meetings.
Nemesia Achacollo, Bolivia’s Minister of Rural Development and Land, joined CIMMYT Director General Dr. Thomas A. Lumpkin in the lobby of the Borlaug building during her visit earlier this year. The two signed a scientific collaboration agreement to strengthen food security in the Andean country last week in Bolivia.
Bolivia became the first country in South America to adopt the sustainable intensification strategy for agriculture that CIMMYT has used successfully in Mexico with the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture project (MasAgro), and in countries in Africa and Asia through similar projects. The project in Bolivia will develop new, high-yielding maize varieties adapted to the country’s growing conditions that will be commercialized by the local seed sector. The project also plans to develop and to transfer new technologies for sustainable farming practices based on conservation agriculture principles. “When combined, these factors account for higher and more stable yields, and contribute to mitigate agriculture’s impact on the environment,” said CIMMYT Director General Dr. Thomas A. Lumpkin.
The agreement was signed during the “Day of Collaborative Evaluation of Maize Research” organized by INIAF. Hans Mercado, INIAF Executive Director General, outlined the main activities planned for the three years of work that have been initially approved for the project. These include: analyses of commercial and family agriculture systems to improve their economic and ecologic performance; breeding of maize varieties adapted to Bolivia’s growing conditions; advice on the development of a seed production system that includes private and public players; and capacity building and training of human resources at different levels of specialization.
The ceremony was hosted by Bolivia’s Minister of Rural Development and Land, Nemesia Achacollo, who announced an investment of US$ 350,000 per year in the rural development project. She noted that the agreement was reached following her visit to CIMMYT earlier this year, when she had an opportunity to see and learn about MasAgro achievements in Mexico. Achacollo also stressed that INIAF had already introduced two maize hybrids developed by CIMMYT that yield seven tons per hectare, double the average yield obtained in Bolivia.
“CIMMYT celebrates Bolivia’s vision and leadership in investing in research for rural development,” said Lumpkin. “We hope that more countries in the region will follow Bolivia’s example and adopt similar strategies to strengthen food and nutritional security while also protecting the environment.”
Results of a survey conducted by the Adoption Pathways (AP) project indicate that even when male-headed and female-headed households have the same resources, the latter are still less food-secure. This difference could be attributed to unreported social exclusion, discrimination and access to credit facilities which the researchers will explore further through group discussions and using repeated observations (panel data) with the farmers.
ACIAR donor representatives at Egerton University.
“Equal access to inputs, human capital, resources and institutional services may not close the gender food security gap,” said Menale Kassie, CIMMYT socioeconomist and the AP project leader. “The quality of information extension workers are providing to female farmers could be different.” Kassie presented research results of a survey conducted in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania to donor representatives from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) led by Nick Austin, the chief executive officer, and Mellissa Wood, director of the Australian International Food Security Research Centre (AIFSRC) at Egerton University in Njoro, Kenya.
Farmers who adopt a suite of conservation agriculture (CA) technologies get the best returns. “If farmers combine technologies, the income they generate is much higher,” Kassie said. “Farmers who adopted a combination of sustainable intensification practices (SIPs) such as crop rotation, minimum tillage and improved maize seed had the highest returns.” Survey results from Tanzania also show that adoption of improved varieties improves the food security status of food-insecure households.
The results also shed light on the spill-over effects of SIP adoption, risk of crop failure and the cost of risk reduction. The AP project is compiling detailed gender-disaggregated data to study causes of food insecurity and technology gaps. “This data set is cross-cutting and will be used by stakeholders beyond the project partners,” Kassie said. “We are bringing students on board to increase research productivity.”
From right: Donor representatives ACIAR CEO Nick Austin, AIFSRC director Mellissa Wood and Australian High Commission’s Paul Greener listen to Egerton University
Wilcyster Nyateko, a master’s student at Egerton University using AP data and working under the supervision of Professor Gideon Obare, presented her research proposal “Determinants of diffusion of agro-innovation amongst smallholder farmers in Eastern and Western Kenya” to the donor delegation. “The AP data helped to widen my perspectives,” said Nyateko, who is going to include variables such as plot characteristics, tenure and distance of the plot from the household and market in her analysis based on the feedback she received. Other stakeholders who will have access to the panel data include Egerton University’s policy thinktank, Tegemeo Institute. “This is a fascinating data set,” Austin said after the presentation.
The project has contributed to capacity building of partners and young economists who have participated in data collection. “The project also provided employment opportunities to the enumerators,” Kassie said. The project has produced 15 publications and seven policy briefs and presented research results in various international forums. “Some of the challenges encountered include attrition problems such as spouses working in distant places and who are not able to participate in the survey or families included in the original sample who had migrated to other villages.”
AP plans to produce more empirical outputs using the panel data, build the capacity of partners and share the research outputs with key stakeholders (e.g. policymakers, development partners, researchers and farmers). “The key challenge is taking research products to these stakeholders; doing so requires more resources and time, beyond the project period,” Kassie said. The donors also paid a courtesy call to the Egerton University leadership where they were hosted by Professor Rose Mwonya, the deputy vice chancellor of academic affairs, and Professor John Mwangi, who gave them an overview of the university and its involvement in the AP project.
A new project designed to improve farming systems in Bangladesh, India and Nepal kicked off work with a strategic planning meeting 19-21 May in New Delhi.
The Sustainable and Resilient Farming System Intensification (SRFSI) project, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), is scheduled to run for 50 months and will focus on the heavily populated Eastern Gangetic Plains, home to some 300 million people and the world’s highest concentration of rural poverty. Together with farmers – especially women farmers – project staff will develop more intensive, sustainable and resilient farming systems by incorporating conservation agriculture (CA) and strategic supplementary irrigation into the current farming systems. The changes allowed by these two practices will permit more timely planting of the main cereal crops – rice, maize and wheat – increasing yield and allowing for a third crop to be sown between the main winter crop and summer rice. Supplementary irrigation will help ensure timely planting and act as a buffer against mid-season droughts, predicted to become more frequent with the advance of climate variability.
The project also calls for crop and system modeling to aid the development of farmer decision support tools, frequent farmer discussions and consultations, support and training of local service providers and agricultural dealers and farmer-to-farmer information exchange.
The strategic planning meeting set the stage for summer field work in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. Photo: Mahesh K Gathala
The meeting opened with an introduction to the program and background information from Dr. John Dixon, the ACIAR principal advisor responsible for SRFSI and a former director of CIMMYT’S Impact and Assessment (Socio-economics) Program, and Dr. Mahesh Gathala, a CIMMYT cropping systems agronomist and leader of the SRFSI project. Partners from the region then presented results from pre-project activities, including reports of field research in Bangladesh and West Bengal, and studies on the hydrology of the communities where the project will be based. Dr. Rasheed Sulaiman discussed a survey of potential partners for the innovation systems developed in the project.
With this background, workshop attendees began to focus on planning the field work for the coming summer season. Gathala and Andy McDonald presented a view of the researchable issues common to the project areas, followed by presentations from longtime CIMMYT partners in the region on opportunities for change. Based on these presentations, Gathala and Pat Wall, former director of CIMMYT’s Global Conservation Agriculture Program who has been involved in the development of the SRFSI project, developed and proposed a core research program for the coming season based on direct seeding and/or direct transplanting of rice (a key strategy to reach CA systems), strategic supplementary irrigation of the rice crop and short-season rice varieties, all of which will enable timely harvest of the rice crop and allow for seeding of the winter crops at the optimum time. This plan will be discussed and refined with partners in separate country planning workshops.
Initially the SRFSI was to include a large component of technology out-scaling (commonly called extension), but ACIAR decided to make out-scaling the focus of a separate but associated project. Dixon discussed current thinking on the phases of technology generation, out-scaling, adoption and impact, followed by interesting and enlightening presentations on successful projects linking agribusiness and small farmers to achieve technology adoption from Sanjeev Asthana and N. Sai Krishna of the National Skills Foundation of India, Srivalli Krishnan of USAID and Madan Pariyar of the SRFSI partner organization, iDE. A framework for the project will now be developed and this will be the focus of discussion at the next planning workshop set for 6-7 July in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Agronomy scientists got practical, hands-on advice on translating their research data into credible scientific publications during a five-day workshop in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The 13 scientists have been conducting research for the past four years addressing sustainable intensification in Africa using conservation agriculture and improved maize and legume varieties as part of the SIMLESA program, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. The goal of the workshop was to help them accelerate production of publications based on their research.
Participants met with biometricians one-on-one to discuss the data and experiments they wanted to analyze, and the outputs of the statistical analyses for each data set were shared in feedback sessions. Feyissa Mekonnen, data manager for CIMMYT’s Global Conservation Agriculture Program and Socioeconomics Program, assisted with the analysis of the data, which was collected under objective 2 during phase 1 of SIMLESA. In the final session, participants received some hints on how to present statistical results in scientific publications.
Dr. Mulugetta Mekuria, the SIMLESA program coordinator, emphasized the need to transform research data into scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals for the benefit of the scientific and development communities. All the participants confirmed to Dr. Mekuria that they would complete draft papers by the end of July.
Agronomy scientists from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawai, Mozambique and Zimbabwe trained with biometricians and data analysts. Photo: CIMMYT
The workshop, held 26-31 May, was attended by scientists from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, organized by regional CIMMYT scientists Dr. Fred Kanampiu and Dr. Isaiah Nyagumbo and facilitated by five biometricians from the Agricultural Research Council of South Africa led by Yolisa Pakela-Jezille. It ended with a social event for participants and CIMMYT staff where Dr. Mekuria bid farewell to Dr. Kanampiu, who will be leaving CIMMYT at the end of July after 17 years.
In India, CSISA seeks to increase crop yields through the provision of more accurate, location-specific fertilizer recommendations to maize and rice farmers with the “Crop Manager” decision-making tool. The web-based and mobile Android application uses information provided by farmers including field location, planting method, seed variety, typical yields and method of harvesting to create a personalized fertilizer application recommendation at critical crop growth stages to increase yield and profit.
“This program will allow farmers to test a range of innovations to help them boost food production, including conservation agriculture and efficient use of water resources, while strengthening their ability to adapt and link to markets and support services,” White said. “Our aim is to enable at least 130,000 farmers to adopt these technologies within the next 10 years.”
