Tag: conservation agriculture

Farmers visit a field from Total LandCare demonstrating conservation agriculture for sustainable intensification practices in Angónia, Tete province, Mozambique.

Policy forum in Mozambique recommends scaling sustainable agriculture practices

Written by Jérôme Bossuet on February 27, 2019. Posted in Features.

*A woman stands on a field intercropping beans and maize in Sussundenga, Manica province, Mozambique. (Photo: Luis Jose Cabango)*

For many small farmers across sub-Saharan Africa, the crop yields their livelihoods depend on are affected by low-quality inputs and severe challenges like climate change, pests and diseases. Unsustainable farming practices like monocropping are impacting soil health and reducing the productivity of their farms.

Sustainable intensification practices based on conservation agriculture entail minimal soil disturbance, recycling crop plant matter to cover and replenish the soil, and diversified cropping patterns. These approaches maintain moisture, reduce erosion and curb nutrient loss. Farmers are encouraged and supported to intercrop maize with nitrogen-fixing legumes — such as beans, peas and groundnuts — which enrich the soil with key nutrients. Farmers are equally advised to cultivate their crops along with trees, instead of deforesting the land to create room for farming.

These practices result in higher incomes for farmers and better food and nutrition for families. Adopting conservation agriculture also improves farmers’ climate resilience. Combined with good agronomic practices, conservation agriculture for sustainable intensification can increase yields up to 38 percent.

Since 2010, the Sustainable Intensification of Maize and Legume Cropping Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) project has promoted effective ways to produce more food while protecting the environment across Eastern and Southern Africa. In particular, the SIMLESA project aims at sustainably increasing the productivity of maize and legume systems in the region.

The SIMLESA project demonstrated the advantages of deploying low-carbon and low-cost mechanization adapted to smallholder farming: it addresses labor shortages at critical times like planting or weeding, boosting farmers’ productivity and yields. The SIMLESA project introduced mechanization in different phases: first improved manual tools like the jab planter, later draft power machinery innovations such as rippers, and finally motorized mechanization in the form of small four-wheel tractors.

From proof of concept to nation-wide adoption

In Mozambique, conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification practices have significantly expanded: from 36 farmers in six villages in four districts in 2010, to over 190,000 farmers in more than 100 villages in nine districts by the end of 2018. This remarkable result was achieved in collaboration with partners such as the Mozambican Agricultural Research Institute (IIAM), extension workers, communities and private companies.

“Smallholder agriculture mechanization reduced the amount of labor required for one hectare of land preparation, from 31 days to just 2 hours. This enabled timely farming activities and a maize yield increase of about 170 kg per hectare, reflecting an extra 3-4 months of household food security,” said the national coordinator for SIMLESA in Mozambique, Domingos Dias.

Following its successes, SIMLESA and its partners have embarked on a series of meetings to discuss how to leverage public-private partnerships to expand conservation agriculture practices to other regions.

Throughout February and March 2019, a series of policy forums at sub-national and national levels will be held across the seven SIMLESA countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The first policy dialogue took place on February 7 in Chimoio, in Mozambique’s district of Manica. Key agriculture stakeholders attended, including representatives from CIMMYT, IIAM, the Ministry of Agriculture, as well as policy makers, private sector partners and international research institutes.

*Participants of the SIMLESA policy forum in Chimoio, Manica province, Mozambique, pose for a group photo.*

“We are delighted at SIMLESA’s unique strategy of involving multiple partners in implementing conservation agriculture for sustainable intensification practices. This has, over the years, allowed for faster dissemination of these practices and technologies in more locations in Mozambique, thereby increasing its reach to more farmers,” said Albertina Alage, Technical Director for Technology Transfer at IIAM. “Such policy forums are important to showcase the impact of conservation agriculture to policy makers to learn and sustain their support for scaling up conservation agriculture for sustainable intensification,” she added.

Forum participants called for better coordination between the public and the private sector to deliver appropriate machinery for use by smallholders in new areas. They recommended adequate support to enable farmers to better integrate livestock and a diverse cropping system, as well as continue with conservation agriculture trials and demonstration activities. Besides involving farmers, their associations and agro-dealer networks in scaling conservation agriculture initiatives, participants agreed to promote integrated pest and disease management protocols. This is considering the recent outbreak of the fall armyworm, which devasted crops in many countries across sub-Saharan Africa.

“The SIMLESA project is and will always be a reference point for our research institute and the Ministry of Agriculture in our country. The good progress of SIMLESA and the results of this forum will help to draw strategies for continuity of this program implemented by government and other programs with the aim to increase production and productivity of farmers,” Alage concluded.

The SIMLESA project is a science for development alliance, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in collaboration with national research institutes in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

The itsy bitsy spider can make a big impact in agriculture

Written by on January 15, 2019. Posted in Features.

*Face of an adult male Phidippus audax male jumping spider. (Photo: Opoterser/Wikimedia Commons)*

A new study explores how conservation agriculture in southern Africa supports spider populations and diversity in fields, which could help mitigate pest damage and potentially lead to higher yields for farmers. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), herbivorous insects such as aphids, caterpillars and weevils destroy about one fifth of the world’s total crop production each year. Spiders can help keep voracious pests in-check, but conventional farming practices (e.g. tilling, crop residue removal and monoculture) can harm or drastically reduce these beneficial bio-control agents.

There are more than 45,000 identified spider species around the world. From glaciers to tropical rainforests, they inhabit every terrestrial ecosystem on earth. Some can even live in tidal zones, and at least one species inhabits fresh water. While we tend to associate spiders with webs, only about 50 percent of the species catch their prey this way; the rest hunt on plants, on the ground or below it, using a variety of tactics such as stalking, stabbing, crushing – even seduction.

Although spiders have been around for 300 million years, some species are at risk of extinction due to habitat loss and fragmentation. Drastic reductions in vegetation – whether from a new parking lot or a tilled field – removes the food source that attracts their prey. Bare ground exposes their nesting sites and themselves, which makes it harder to hunt and easier to be hunted by birds and small mammals.

At the Chinhoyi University of Technology experimental farm in Zimbabwe, a team of researchers aimed to determine the response of spiders under different agricultural practices. Conventional farmers often prepare their fields for planting by physically breaking up and inverting the top 6-10 inches of soil. This practice of ploughing prepares a fine soil tilth, which makes it easier to plant; it breaks up and buries weeds, and reduces soil compaction to aerate the soil. But tilling also increases topsoil erosion from wind and water. It accelerates soil carbon decomposition, reduces soil water infiltration and disrupts microorganisms living in the soil, including beneficial insects and spiders.

The researchers conducted two experiments over the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 cropping seasons to see how tilling, crop residue retention (i.e. leaving stalks and post-harvest organic matter in the field), fertilizer application and weeding affected ground- and plant-wandering spider species. They hypothesized that spider abundance and diversity would increase with lower levels of soil disturbance and more plant cover.

The results showed direct seeding into no-till soil increased the abundance of spiders and the diversity of species. Mulching also showed a positive effect. Contrary to their hypotheses and results from temperate regions, the application of fertilizer and intense weeding did not affect the spider community. The researchers attributed this to the difference in climatic conditions (tropical vs. temperate) of this study in southern Africa.

“Often the government’s and farmer’s immediate reaction to a crop pest issue is to apply a pesticide, but we can make use of biological control agents, which may be cheaper and less damaging for the environment,” says Christian Thierfelder, a co-author of the study. Thierfelder is a cropping systems agronomist and conservation agriculture specialist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) with long-term experience in sustainable intensification.

“Spiders, ants and beetles all do a really good job with little or no cost to the farmer,” he adds. “For us, it’s quite fascinating to see simple agronomic practices to affect and control crop pests. This also provides new avenues of dealing with the fall armyworm, an invasive species which has devastated crops across the majority of sub-Saharan Africa countries.”

A robust number of studies from Europe, Australia and North America have shown the link between conservation agriculture and biodiversity, but Thierfelder says that research on biodiversity in agronomic systems is relatively new in southern Africa. While the study in Zimbabwe helps fill this gap, more research is needed to show the connection between the abundance of spiders, beetles and ants with the suppression of insect pest activity.

For more information, read Spider community shift in response to farming practices in a sub-humid agroecosystem in southern Africa.

This research was jointly funded by Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) and the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD). The CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE) supported this study through Christian Thierfelder’s contributions.

With multi-sector support for climate-sensitive practices, African farmers can boost food security and resilience

Written by Matthew O'Leary on December 14, 2018. Posted in Features.

Support for smallholder farmers to trial and select sustainable practices suited to their varying conditions is essential to build resilient farms needed to feed Africa’s soaring population, said economist Paswel Marenya at the Second African Congress on Conservation Agriculture in Johannesburg this October.

Farmers face different agroecological, socioeconomic and institutional environments across Africa. The mounting challenges brought by climate change also vary from place to place. Family farmers are born innovators, with government and industry support they can develop a resilient farming system that works for them, said the researcher from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

One of the emerging paradigms of sustainable agriculture resilient to climatic changes is conservation agriculture — defined by minimal soil disturbance, crop residue retention and diversification through crop rotation. Although not a one-size-fits-all approach, it is a promising framework to be applied and adapted to meet farmers’ unique contexts, he said.

“Conservation agriculture’s potential to conserve soils, improve yields and limit environmental impacts makes it one of the elements that should be given prominence in efforts to secure sustainable and resilient farming in Africa,” he told audiences at the conference dedicated to discuss conservation agriculture systems as the sustainable basis for regional food security.

Along with eleven other researchers, Marenya presented evidence gathered over eight years researching the development of locally-adapted conservation agriculture-based practices as part of the Sustainable Intensification of Maize and Legume Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA).

“Research shows that with a network of appropriate support, farmers can access the tools and knowledge to experiment, learn, adapt and adopt these important principles of conservation agriculture,” he said.

“Their farming can thus evolve to practices that have low environmental impacts, diversify their cropping including intercropping maize with legumes, and test affordable machinery for efficient, timely and labor-saving operations. In the end, each farmer and farming community have the ability to tailor a conservation agriculture-based system based on what works best given their unique socioeconomic settings,” said Marenya.

Trialing sustainable practices leads to adoption

Through the project over 235,000 farming households in the region have trialed sustainable practices reporting positive results of improved soil fertility, reduced labor costs, and increased food production and maize yields despite erratic weather, said collaborating investigator Custudio George from the Mozambique Institute of Agricultural Research.

“The majority of these farmers have gone on to adopt their preferred practices throughout their whole farm and now actively promote conservation agriculture to other farmers,” he added

Women undertake the majority of agricultural activities in sub-Saharan Africa. When they are empowered to try sustainable practices they overwhelmingly adopt those technologies identifying them as an economically viable way to overcome challenges and increase household food security, said Maria da Luz Quinhentos, who is an agronomist with the Mozambique Institute of Agricultural Research.

*Maria da Luz Quinhentos, from the Mozambique Institute of Agricultural Research (IIAM).*

Forming networks to support farmer resilience

The research project took a multidisciplinary approach bringing together sociologists, economists, agronomists and breeders to study how maize-legume conservation agriculture-based farming can best benefit farmers in seven countries; including Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.

In this vein, the project sought to connect farmers with multi-sector actors across the maize-legume value chain through Innovation platforms. Innovation Platforms, facilitated by SIMLESA, are multi-stakeholder forums connecting farmer groups, agribusiness, government extension, policy makers and researchers with the common goal to increase farm-level food security, productivity and incomes through the promotion of maize-legume intercropping systems.

“Having a network of stakeholders allows farmers to test and adopt conservation agriculture-based techniques without the risk they would have if they tried and failed alone,” said Michael Misiko who studies farmer adoption as part of SIMLESA.

“Farmers form groups to work with governments to gain access to improved seed, learn new farming practices and connect with local agribusinesses to develop markets for their produce,”

“When new problems arise stakeholders in local and regional innovation platforms can diagnose barriers and together identify mutual solutions,” he said.

Researchers and governments learn from innovation platforms and can use results to recommend productive climate-smart practices to other farmers in similar conditions, Misiko added.

Climate-smart agriculture key to achieve Malabo Declaration

The results from SIMLESA provide African governments with evidence to develop policies that achieve the Malabo Declaration to implement resilient farming systems to enhance food security in the face of a growing climate risks, said Marenya.

Hotter temperatures, increased dry spells and erratic rainfall are major concerns to farmers, who produce the majority of the region’s food almost entirely on rain-fed farms without irrigation.

If these smallholders are to keep up with food demand of a population set to almost double by 2050 while overcoming challenges they need productive and climate-resilient cropping systems.

CIMMYT research identifies that the defining principles of conservation agriculture are critical but alone are not enough to shield farmers from the impacts of climate change. Complementary improvements in economic policies, markets and institutions — including multi-sectoral linkages between smallholder agriculture and the broader economy — are required to make climate-resilient farming systems more functional for smallholder farmers in the short and long term, said Marenya.

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)

What is green manure? And how is it helping maize farmers?

Written by Matthew O'Leary on September 14, 2018. Posted in Features.

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 O’Leary/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.

“My 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,” 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.

“Over 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 region’s maize yields are not increasing,” he explains. “The failure to address poor soil health will have a disastrous effect on feeding the region’s growing population.”

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

Planted in proximity to maize, legumes — like pigeon pea, lablab and jack beans — 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.

“Our 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,” he notes. “They leave 50 to 350 kg per hectare of residual nitrogen in the soil and do not need extra fertilizer to grow.”

Added to the principles of conservation agriculture — defined by minimal soil disturbance, crop residue retention and diversification through crop rotation and intercropping — 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.

“I’m 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,” 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.

“Season by season the soil on each of the trial plots has got darker and my maize healthier,” describes Musafari. “Rains used to come and wash away the soil, but now we don’t plow or dig holes, so the soil is not being washed away; it holds the water.”

“I 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 it’s gone,” he adds.

Since the first season of the trial, Musafari’s 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.

Musafari’s wife Eveline has also been convinced about the benefits of intercropping, expressing the family now wants to extend it to the whole farm. “Intercropping 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,” 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, CRS’s Heinrich says.

“Immediate benefits, such as reduced weeding labor and legume cash crops that farmers can sell off quick, provide a good incentive for adoption,” he adds.

Honest and Eveline Musafari with extension worker, Memory Chipinguzi. Neighbors have noticed the intercropping trials on the Musafari’s farm and are beginning to adopt the practice to gain similar benefits. (Photo: Matthew O’Leary/CIMMYT)

Climate-resilient farming systems for Africa

Food security is at the heart of Africa’s development agenda. However, climate change is threatening the Malabo Commitment to end hunger in the continent by 2025. Temperatures are increasing: the past three decades have been the warmest on record, according to the International Panel on Climate Change.

Hotter climates, more dry spells and erratic rainfall are a major concern to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, where over half of maize is grown in rain-fed farming without irrigation.

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.

“Intercropping with legumes is one complementary practice which can help building healthy soils that stand up to erratic weather,” says Thierfelder. “CIMMYT promotes climate-resilient cropping systems that are tailored to farmers’ needs,” he emphasizes.

“To 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.”

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 O’Leary/CIMMYT)

African youth find entrepreneurial opportunity in agricultural mechanization

Written by Matthew O'Leary on August 9, 2018. Posted in Features.

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.

“When my neighbor told me the boys were shelling small amounts of maize at reasonable prices, I got in contact with them,” said Karimuno. “It’s cheaper than hiring people to help me do it manually and the speed means I can sell it faster.”

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 O’Leary/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.

Mechanized agricultural services have traditionally only been used by large-scale farmers who could afford the high prices, but small and medium-sized machines are fast becoming affordable options for family farmers through the advent of service providers, explained Frédéric Baudron, an agronomist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

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.

“We would probably be out of work if we hadn’t 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,” Chawara expressed as he took a quick rest from shelling under a tree.

“It has really changed our lives. Last season we shelled over 300 tons of maize making just under US $7,000,” he said. “It has gone a long way in helping us support our families and invest back into our business.”

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 O’Leary/CIMMYT)

Mechanization as a way out of poverty

Sub-Saharan African youth struggle with high unemployment and working poverty. Agriculture is perceived as a sector that can absorb much of the rising level of unemployment, particularly when combined with entrepreneurship. Mechanization is one of the ways youth can get ahead, pointed out Baudron.

Through the Farm Mechanization and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification (FACASI) project, supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), CIMMYT is offering training courses to promote mechanization in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Trainings equip entrepreneurs with essential business skills and knowledge, tailored to rural environments, so they can support farmers with appropriate mechanization services that sustainably intensify their production.

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.

“We found consistently, in all countries where we work, that being a successful service provider is highly correlated to being young,” he highlighted. “However, 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.”

(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 sheller’s 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 O’Leary/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 sheller’s 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.

“The group model works because they share the costs, the workload and they are more attractive to lenders when looking for investment capital,” 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.

“This 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,” 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 Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Agriculture.

Farm machinery helps farmers implement sustainable crop practices that benefit from greater farm power and precision,” he said. “This is in line with the government’s strategy to promote conservation agriculture – defined by minimal soil disturbance, crop residue retention and diversification through crop rotation and intercropping.”

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 CIMMYT’s 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 – such as land and water – 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 O’Leary/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.

“Often planters will get clogged with mud blocking seeding. The sensors identify this and send a signal to the driver,” said Mhlanga. “This allows the driver to focus on driving and limits wasted resources.”

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.

Farmer in Malawi defines true project success

Written by on June 15, 2017. Posted in Blogs.

Esnath Shaibu (left) on his farm in Malawi discussing resource allocation on his plots. Photo: C. Thierfelder/CIMMYT

LIWONDE, Malawi (CIMMYT) — Esnath Shaibu, a smallholder farmer from Matandika, southern Malawi was a host farmer with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) for seven years who helped the organization conduct research trials on sustainable agriculture intensification with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Shaibu’s farm in Matandika, like most other farms in this area, is small and restricted to less than one hectare (ha) per household. Matandika is highly affected by the effects of climate change and a growing population is putting more pressure on dwindling land resources. Farmers have experienced more droughts in recent years which has affected food and nutritional security. Investment into soil conservation and maintaining soil fertility has therefore become critical.

A good proportion of Shaibu’s livelihood is generated from the land of his .3 ha research plot, which evaluates conservation agriculture (CA) systems in the environments and circumstances of Matandika.

The fields in Matandika are on hillsides and need to be seeded with as little disturbance as possible to avoid soil erosion and run-off. Farmers have also understood the value of crop residues and integrate legumes as intercrops in their fields to intensify their farming systems and increase diversification. Optimal plant spacing, early planting and precision application of fertilizers have been other good agriculture practices that farmers perfected in this area.

During the trials, Shaibu practiced a direct seeded CA method, intercropping maize and pigeonpea, and compared the results with conventional tillage practices just planting maize. Yields from Shaibu’s plots were increasingly stable under the CA system, as they proved to be more resilient against in-season dry-spells, drought and unevenly disturbed rainfalls which often fell at great intensity.

Shaibu graduated from the CA program in 2014, but continued to implement the same principles and practices on his own without CIMMYT’s interference or support.

When questioned about his rationale during a field visit in 2017, Shaibu said “we saw something good in it,” and his healthy looking crop spoke for itself.

Shibu’s case demonstrates that technology adoption is only successful if we as development practitioners work ourselves out of a job. He is a true adopter who has continued investing his own resources to produce a good maize crop on a significant proportion of his land by applying CA principles at highest standards. Shaibu has also converted other fields he owns to CA and continues to be an influential advocate in the community for the benefits of CA.

New findings on gender gap in conservation agriculture

Written by on November 26, 2015. Posted in Features. 1 Comment on New findings on gender gap in conservation agriculture

Belita Maleko, a farmer in Nkhotakota, central Malawi, sowed cowpea as an intercrop in one of her maize plots, grown under conservation agriculture principles. (Photo: T. Samson/CIMMYT)

Despite wide-ranging, in-depth conservation agriculture studies conducted over many years, almost none consider gender and gender relations as a factor that may explain low adoption rates, according to the recently published paper “Gender and conservation agriculture in East and Southern Africa: towards a research agenda.”

The paper examines research to date on the interactions between conservation agriculture interventions – meaning minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotation that can simultaneously boost yields, increase profits and protect the environment – and gender in East and Southern Africa and sets out a research agenda based on gaps observed. Given the increasing interest in conservation agriculture due to climate change impacts in the region, the authors also argue that greater attention to gender is needed in order to ensure successful interventions. The following Q&A with one of the study’s authors, Clare Stirling, CIMMYT Senior Scientist with the Sustainable Intensification Program based in Wales, UK, details the study’s findings and what is needed to ensure gender is included in future conservation agriculture interventions.

Q: How do conservation agriculture practices interact with gender?

A: There are many known and unknown ways in which conservation agriculture interacts with gender and the purpose of this paper is to review the evidence and identify gaps that exist. conservation agriculture is knowledge-intensive and can also be labor-intensive and, along with many soil improvement technologies, involves long-term investment with delayed returns. This clearly has important implications for women, as their ability to invest will depend on many factors such as entitlements, access to information, and their ability to act upon it.

If we take labor requirements as an example – many studies highlight labor shortages as a constraint to the adoption of conservation agriculture, particularly when zero tillage is not complemented by the application of herbicides. Without herbicide use, conservation agriculture techniques for land preparation increase weeding over and above plowing and ridging by as much as three times in maize production. In East and Southern Africa, this burden falls largely on women as weeding is largely a woman’s task. Studies conducted in several countries show that where (frequently subsidized) herbicides have been used, the release of women and children from weeding tasks results in multiple benefits, including more children attending school and more time for women to engage in income-generation activities.

Q: Why has gender been left out of many conservation agriculture studies to date?

A: I am not sure that this is a question that should be posed specifically in relation to conservation agriculture but could be asked of agronomic research in general. Things are improving, but I would suggest that the reason has been that gender is a challenging and complex issue that takes many of us out of our comfort zone both professionally and perhaps personally. It requires an interdisciplinary approach and a set of skills that many agricultural research centers simply have too limited a supply of and I include in this a critical mass of female research staff of sufficient seniority. Without this critical mass of gender expertise, agronomic research will continue to be designed and implemented according to the “male agronomist” norm.

Q: What impact has this had on conservation agriculture adoption in East and Southern Africa?

A: lncreased feminization of labor in smallholder agriculture has resulted in major changes in the roles and responsibilities of women in rural Africa, but still agricultural service suppliers and the wider policy environment in general remain locked into the conceptual norm of the primary farmer being male. This inevitably results in inappropriate targeting of research, extension services, and policy, and logic would tell us that it has also contributed to low adoption rates of conservation agriculture.

As the paper explains, the new norm of the “female primary farmer” has not resulted in their widespread recognition as such by external agencies or indeed within their communities. The ability of women-led households, or male-headed households with women as primary farmers, to adopt conservation agriculture may be compromised if government policies, extension systems, and other actors continue to design interventions around the conceptual norm of the male-headed household. This needs to change.

The paper summarizes the gender-related questions that remain to be addressed with regard to conservation agriculture, and there are many. There are overarching questions relating to intra-household decisions making, access to services, and labor. In addition, there are many more questions relating to specific aspects of conservation agriculture, such as the impacts of minimum tillage and weeding on labor; opportunity costs and how increased requirements are met; opportunities, constraints, and trade-offs of conservation agriculture-based crop diversification; and the tailoring of conservation agriculture-based information and training to women farmers.

Q: Moving forward, how can researchers address the gender gaps in conservation agriculture in their studies?

A: Gender-sensitive research needs to be mainstreamed into projects. In order to achieve this, we need more multidisciplinary teams including both male and female researchers of similar seniority. While there is a decent body of gender research on the socioeconomic aspects of agricultural technologies such as barriers to uptake and extension services, it seems that there is still a large gap in gender-sensitive agronomic research. What are the implications for gender of increased weeding, need for planting basins, crop diversification, and residue retention? All very basic questions that still need answering. So moving forward, we need more research that involves gender specialists working closely with agronomists on the design, implementation, evaluation, and scaling out of conservation agriculture-based practices.

Nebraska Declaration on Conservation Agriculture signed

Written by on June 17, 2013. Posted in News.

8623227856_28319de0bf_z After months of discussions and debates on the scientific evidence regarding conservation agriculture for small-scale, resource-poor farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, a group of 40 scientists reached a consensus on the goals of conservation agriculture and the research necessary to reach these goals. The discussions leading to the signing of the Nebraska Declaration on Conservation Agriculture on 5 June 2013 began during a scientific workshop on “Conservation agriculture: What role in meeting CGIAR system-level outcomes?” organized by the CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA, during 15-18 October 2012. Several CIMMYT scientists contributed to the Lincoln workshop and the subsequent draft of the convention. “Not every participant agreed to sign. It went too far for some conservation agriculture purists and not far enough for others. This is usually the case when a consensus between 50 scientists and experts is sought,” said Bruno Gerard, director of CIMMYT’s Global Conservation Agriculture Program (GCAP), pointing to an interesting read in that respect, ‘Conservation agriculture and smallholder farming in Africa: The heretics’ view’ by Giller et al. (2009).

According to the Declaration, most efforts to date in developing countries have promoted conservation agriculture as a package of three practices: minimum disturbance of soil, retention of sufficient crop residue, and diversified cropping patterns. However, the situation on the ground shows limits of this strict definition, as there is little evidence of conservation agriculture wide adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but there is some evidence of adoption of one or two of the components. To play a significant role in low-productivity, resource-poor agricultural systems, broader efforts going beyond a focus on the package of the three main practices are necessary. Emphasis needs to be placed on diagnostic agronomy and participatory on-farm research to identify the constraints faced by farmers and to guide farmers in finding solutions to them. As there is a range of sound agronomic, economic, and/or social reasons for choosing not to adopt the three-component conservation agriculture package, it is necessary to systematically assess the suitability and viability of management options and practices while considering farmers’ objectives and constraints, the Declaration stresses.

Rigorous and coordinated research is needed to assess and better understand the process of adoption of conservation agriculture. Unless the farmers’ reasons for choosing to adopt or not to adopt a certain practice are known, a wider adoption of conservation agriculture practices is unlikely.

“I think the declaration is useful as conservation agriculture principles should be seen as a way to sustainable intensification and not an end by itself,” commented Gerard. “The declaration fits well with the present efforts of GCAP and the Socioeconomics Program to put conservation agriculture in a broader context, and to better understand adoptability and constraints to adoption, which are agroecology-, site-, and farm-specific. Furthermore, it stretches the importance of systems research to integrate field level agronomy work within a multi-scale and multi-disciplinary framework.”