Numerous organizations have been at the forefront of developing tools to support scaling in agricultural research and innovation for development. One notable example is CIMMYT’s Scaling Scan, a pioneering initiative that is helping to advance scalable solutions in the dynamic field of agriculture.
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Farmers, stakeholders, and partners, including seed companies, Hamara Chicks, PHI Commodities, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), BioHUB Trust (BHT), Kurima Machinery and Technology, and Zimplow Limited, participated in the Seed and Livestock Fair in the Mbire and Murewa districts of Zimbabwe, which showcased indigenous and improved seed varieties and different technologies to strengthen crop and livestock value chain systems.
Initiated by CIMMYT in 2022, as the CGIAR Initiative on Agroecology, these series of fairs have become instrumental in bringing agrodealers closer to farmers and showcasing sustainable technologies and innovations that have the potential to strengthen production systems. It was also an opportunity for the agroecology initiative team to provide feedback to farmers and stakeholders on ongoing activities and technologies that were being tested since the initiative’s inception in Zimbabwe. By adopting a multi-partner approach, these fairs bring local food systems actors together to ensure food and nutrition security and improved income for farmers.
“The agroecology initiative has been collaborating with an array of organizations and institutes that can support our mission towards promoting agroecology and improving farming production, including other CGAIR entities like IWMI and ILRI, Hamara Group, Ecolyfe, and PHI Commodities,” said Dorcas Matangi, research associate at CIMMYT.
This year’s edition of the seed and livestock fair “Fostering Synergies: Diverse Crops, Livestock and Inclusive Communities” advocated for enhancing synergies within the farm to foster sustainable agroecology transitions for resilient food and nutrition outcomes. With over 800 farmers and stakeholders participating, the event provided a vibrant platform for knowledge sharing, exploration of indigenous and improved seed varieties, and sensitization of innovative technologies.
“The seed and livestock fairs hosted by the agroecology initiative bring together farmers and food system actors from all walks of life to foster learning around agroecology, which includes the importance of diversity (crop and livestock) while also appreciating local innovations in the respective area,” said Jesca Mapfinya, a Murewa farmer.
The right seed, assures a good harvest
Various seed companies participated in the fair to showcase different seeds which are well adapted in Murewa and Mbire districts. Each agroecological region in Zimbabwe is unique, with adaptable seed varieties that are either landrace or improved. Local landraces and many underutilized crop species are adapted to weather and climate variability, climate change, and extreme weather such as drought and heat stress. Farmers indicated that their motivations for growing landraces are related to sustainable farming systems suitable for social, cultural, nutritional, and agronomic traits. Their place in rural communities remains important, providing much-needed functional diversity and social capital. Including improved varieties within the basket of options can further intensify production systems in these communities.
“Primarily, we sell seed varieties and build farmer capacity around appropriate agronomic practices. The seed fairs are a good platform to match seeds and systems and allows a farmer to provide feedback about our seed varieties and how they are performing in the respective areas,” said Onesmous Satenga, SeedCo.
Building crop and livestock synergies
For the first time since the inception of the fairs, livestock such as cattle, sheep, goats, chicken and rabbits were displayed. Partners, including ILRI and the Hamara Chicks, who are into sasso chicken and feed production, reiterated the importance of crop diversity for improved livestock nutrition. ILRI and the Grasslands Research Institute exhibited various local feedstocks and alternative livestock feed grasses and also presented several feed formulations. Farmers also provided feedback on the feeding strategies employed for different livestock.
“We feed cattle with poultry litter, maize grain, maize stover, and groundnut shells in various proportions depending on the availability of these feed sources. Forage legumes such as velvet bean (mucuna pruriens) and lablab (lablab purpureus) have been introduced, and we have started to grow these for feed,” said Samson Tashaya, Murewa farmer.
Of keen interest to farmers and stakeholders was the sasso breed of chickens that the Hamara Group was promoting.
“We have recently joined as partners with CIMMYT and are promoting hybrid chicken production, especially sasso, here in Murewa ward 27 and 4. This is our first time coming to this seed fair, and it was a learning opportunity. The interactions with farmers were really good,” said Alan Norton, team leader at Hamara Chicks.
Modernizing smallholder production systems
Mechanization experts from Kurima Machinery and Zimplow shared their recommendations at the fair. They acknowledged that farmers rely heavily on scarcely available labor and production activities that are backbreaking. They advocated for modern production systems to produce more food and support economic transformation. Experts from Kurima Machinery and Zimplow demonstrated several machines that could aid farmers in various on-farm activities.
“This fair has come at the right time as I begin land preparation for my pfumvudza (conservation agriculture plots). I have seen how the basin digger works, and I am keen to purchase an instrument to make my work much easier,” said Chief Chisunga, Mbire.
“This crop season’s outlook is still unclear, but weather experts have warned of an intense El Nino event likely to happen in the second half of the season. Technologies such as conservation agriculture can ensure good moisture retention in crop fields, and it needs to be paired with good agronomic practices,” said Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi, climate and food systems expert.
CIMMYT Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in November 2023 with the Addis Ababa-based private food processing company Alvima Foods Complex Plc, in an effort to encourage durum wheat production among smallholder farmers and create market linkage in selected woredas of Oromia and Amhara regional states.
The MoU, which is part of CIMMYT Ethiopia’s overall durum wheat project aiming to reinvigorate durum wheat production in the country, was signed by Workneh Rikita, Alvima general manager, and Kindie Tesfaye, CIMMYT Ethiopia’s senior scientist.
The MoU aims primarily to create market linkage between farmers and manufacturers, in a context of a sharp decrease of durum wheat production. “Prior to the 1980s, 80% of the wheat produced in Ethiopia was durum, but in 2016 our nationwide research on wheat showed that the durum wheat coverage was 5%, which stands in contrast to the country’s effort to industrialize the economy and substitute import goods with local produce”, said Kindie Tesfaye, CIMMYT durum wheat project leader. “We, as CIMMYT, want to encourage farmers to produce good quality durum wheat in quantity, and teach them about contract farming by creating market linkage with produce receivers like Alvima.”
“Cooperation, not business venture”
Established in 2011, Alvima Foods Complex initially centered its operations around importing and exporting agro-food products. In 2017, the company set up a pasta and flour processing factory and contracted 800 farmers to produce durum wheat. “At first, our objective was to produce premium quality pasta, unlike most processing companies in the country which produce pasta from hard wheat or mixed wheat,” said Workneh Rikita, Alvima’s general manager. In the absence of binding rules, the project failed and Alvima resigned to import durum wheat. “The law on contract farming was constituted recently and the difficulties to access foreign currency (therefore to import goods), which led us to turn our attention back to our initial project”, said Workneh Rikita.
Alvima Foods Complex general manager added that his company didn’t sign the agreement as a business venture but as an advantageous cooperation to learn from. He thanked CIMMYT for agreeing to work with his company and expressed his hopes for its success.
The current durum wheat market in Ethiopia is unpredictable as prices are set by the brokers, which heavily disadvantages the growers. The objective of the memorandum of understanding is to address such market challenges faced by farmers, affording them guaranteed market opportunities at a fair price.
As part of the agreement between Alvima Foods Complex and the durum wheat growers in target districts of the Amhara and Oromia regional states, CIMMYT will leverage on its expertise to help the farmers produce more and in good quality. Alvima will access the produce from farmers’ cooperatives directly, without the intervention of middlemen, to guarantee better incomes to producers. Moreover, CIMMYT is training farmers on use of climate information, accessing climate advisories, video-based production trainings, and crop disease management.
“If the farmers get the premium price for their produce, they will be encouraged to continue producing better wheat,” said Kindie Tesfaye. “We want the cooperation to be sustainable and to create direct links between farmers and local food processors (such as AVLIMA). The MoU will also benefit Ethiopia by decreasing imports of processed food items.”
A multilayered challenge to durum wheat production
Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CIMMYT and Digital Green (an organization creating digital tools to assist farmers) have been conducting durum wheat improved varieties were insufficiently promoted; the seed was not made adequately accessible to farmers; productivity was perceived by farmers as being low; and market linkage was poor. These multilayered challenges led farmers to prioritize bread wheat varieties, according to Kindie Tesfaye.
In response, CIMMYT structured its support around three main pillars: the organization helps farmers access seeds together with Oromia’s Seed Enterprise, provides farmers with digital advisory services to improve their productivity, and works with the private and public sectors to upgrade market linkages, as with the memorandum of understanding signed with Alvima Foods Complex Plc.
The Pakistan-China laboratory has developed wheat varieties that have shown an impressive 8-10% yield increase over local varieties, and CIMMYT has expressed interest in collaborating with the laboratory to further strengthen wheat variety development efforts.
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Women play a critical role in the future of food security. Female farmers face a significant disadvantage before they ever plow a field or sow a seed. Farming is a challenging profession, and it is even more challenging for women when they perform these functions whilst facing numerous constraints.
Nur-A-Mahajabin Khan, communications officer, showcases how fodder chopper technology is improving the lives of women farmers in rural Bangladesh.
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In plant breeding, efforts to increase the rate of genetic gains and enhance crop resilience to the effects of climate change are often limited by the inaccessibility and costs of phenotyping methods. The recent rapid development of sensors, image-processing technology and data analysis has provided new opportunities for multiple scales phenotyping methods and systems. Among these, satellite imagery may represent one of the best ways to remotely monitor trials and nurseries planted in multiple locations, while standardizing protocols and reducing costs.
This is because relevant data collected as part of crop phenotyping can be generated from satellite images. For instance, the sensors onboard the SkySat satellite constellation of Planet Labs have four spectral bands—blue, green, red, and infrared—which can be used to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which is a measure of vegetation and its greenness, and various canopy traits like ground cover, leaf area index and chlorosis. It can also be used to monitor plot establishment and phenological parameters.
The use of satellite-based phenotyping in breeding trials has typically been restricted by low resolution, high cost and long intervals between fly-overs. However, the advent of a new generation of high-resolution satellites—such as the SkySat constellation—now offers multispectral images at a 0.5m resolution with close to daily acquisition attempts on any place on Earth. This could be a game changer in terms of the scale at which yield trials can be conducted, enabling more precise variety placement and thereby increasing genetic diversity across farmer’s fields and reducing the probability of disease epidemics. It could also revolutionize the capacity for research in realistic field conditions, since traits can be measured throughout the cycle in a highly standardized way, over multiple sites at low cost. For example, an image which covers 25 km2 can monitor an entire research station at a cost of about US$300.
To test the suitability of this technology, a team of researchers from CIMMYT set out to evaluate the reliability of SkySat NDVI estimates for maize and wheat breeding plots of different sizes and spacing, as well as testing its capacity for detecting seasonal changes and genotypic differences.
Both their initial findings, recently published in Frontiers in Plant Science, and more recently acquired data, show that the SkySat satellites can be used to monitor plots commonly used in wheat and maize nurseries. While wheat yield plots usually are 1.2m wide, maize plots tend to consist of at least two rows, resulting in a width of 1.5m. Plot length ranges from 2-4m. The authors also discuss on other factors to be considered when extracting and interpreting satellite data from yield trials, such as plot spacing.
Through the successful collection of six satellite images in Central Mexico during the rainy season and parallel monitoring of a maize trial in Zimbabwe, the researchers demonstrate the flexibility of this tool. Beyond the improvement of spatial resolution, the researchers suggest that the next challenge will be the development and fine-tuning of operational procedures that ensure high quality, standardized data, allowing them to harness the benefits of the modern breeding triangle, which calls for the integration of phenomics, enviromics and genomics, to accelerate breeding gains.
Read the full study: Satellite imagery for high-throughput phenotyping in breeding plots
This research was supported by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, the CGIAR Research Program on Maize, the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat, and the One CGIAR Initiatives on Digital Innovation, F2R-CWANA, and Accelerated Breeding.
The world’s food systems are under threat by escalating armed conflicts, economic stagnation, the effects of the climate crisis and natural resource degradation. Against this backdrop, the next seven years are crucial in meeting the challenges of keeping the world’s growing population fed and secure.
Recognizing that business as usual will not be sufficient, CIMMYT has embarked on a journey to proactively face the new challenges of the 21st century. This novel approach to agrifood systems is the core of CIMMYT’s 2030 Strategy, which has the potential to shape the future of agriculture.
“We understand that the challenges facing food security are complex, varied and rapidly changing. For instance, the effects of COVID-19 and Ukraine-Russia conflict on food systems are still being felt today. With that in mind, we set out to develop a strategy that is both robust and nimble. The best way to create a sustainable and inclusive strategy was to engage directly with CIMMYT scientists and staff, the people on the front lines of this effort to deliver food and nutrition security to the world,” said CIMMYT Director General Bram Govaerts.
Looking back to move forward
The first step in crafting the 2030 Strategy was looking at where does CIMMYT want the world to be in 2100. In answering this question, CIMMYT crafted a long-term vision of how it wants to engage in a changing world and achieve the transformation to a food and nutrition secure world within planetary boundaries. CIMMYT has integrated the use of foresight and specifically a set of 2030 Food and Agriculture scenarios to explore potential changes in intervention areas over the strategic period and help prepare engagements in different contexts across the globe. These scenarios are a decision-making tool that has underpinned the development of the strategy to ensure that it is context-driven and focused on the most pressing challenges facing the agrifood systems in which CIMMYT operates.
From the future CIMMYT looks back at its history and examines how its core business has evolved over the years to proactively meet ever-changing needs across the world.
At each stage of CIMMYT’s evolution, it has taken its strengths and the skills it has built and added to its experience, and expanded on what it delivers while maintaining the core strengths.
In CIMMYT’s earliest days, the mission was developing and improving germplasm and agronomic practices, then CIMMYT began working more closely with farmers (1980s), broadened emphasis in genetic improvements (2000), embarked on sustainable multidisciplinary projects (2010s), and most recently, advancing technologies in participatory innovation systems (2015-2022). All leading to the mission codified in the 2030 Strategy: accelerating food systems transformation by using the power of collective action.
Now, in 2023, CIMMYT’s progress is being shaped by the CGIAR mission statement: “To deliver science and innovation that advance the transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.”
Building the Strategy
To define the 2030 Strategy, CIMMYT responded to the following core questions:
“As an organization, we have concentrated on strategies that foster collaboration and adapt them for a non-profit international organization whose vision is not to grow as an institution but to deliver greater value for the communities they serve, to innovate for the end users of their products and to ensure a better future for our global community,” said Govaerts.
The tools used to develop the elements of this strategic plan leveraged the framework provided in the CGIAR Research and Innovation Strategy to guide the process. Staff from across the Center engaged in a consultative process to develop the objectives for following strategic components: Excellence in Science and Innovation, Excellence in Operations, Talent Management, Resource Mobilization, Partnership, and Influence.
Developing the Excellence in Science and Innovation component serves as an example of this collaborative, bottom-up approach. Planning was led by the Emerging Thought Leaders Group, made up of 24 early and mid-career scientists across the breadth of CIMMYT’s global and program portfolio. The group worked collaboratively with CIMMYT researchers and staff to first delineate the challenges facing agri-food systems and then workshopped solutions which now serve as the foundation of the 2030 Strategy.
“Each component complements the others,” said Govaerts. “This is our answer to the core questions. Only by working collectively can we initiate sustainable solutions that reach everyone.”
Together, the components create a network to support CIMMYT’s three pillars: Discovery (research and innovation), SystemDev (working collaboratively to innovate foundational systems), and Inc. (incubating startups and new ways of doing business in the agri-food system space).
CIMMYT is leading the way in shaping a sustainable and prosperous agricultural landscape
The goal to facilitate food security where sustainable agriculture is part of the solution to the climate crisis and agriculture provides an avenue to build household resilience and enables communities to pull themselves out of poverty requires the strategic use of resources. CIMMYT’s 2030 Strategy, built from the bottom up on a foundation over 50 years’ experience and the expertise of scientists, staff, and farmers maximizes resources, enhances dynamic partnerships, and both retains and recruits a world-class staff in a world of growing challenges to food security.
Read the 2030 Strategy: Science and Innovation for a Food and Nutrition Secure World: CIMMYT’s 2030 Strategy
Scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) suggest counties in Kenya should scale up and accelerate the adoption of technologies that can control and prevent Maize Lethal Necrosis (MLN) and fall armyworm (FAW) to achieve higher maize yields.
Although the technologies exist, many farmers have little information on how to implement them.
Seed companies and senior officials from the Ministry of Agriculture could play a key role in disseminating information, as could mobile phone technology and emerging digital innovation platforms.
Read the original article: Counties Urged To Scale Up And Adopt Pest Control Technologies
The origins of the CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded agricultural research consortium for the poor, are closely related to the Green Revolution; a revolution mostly told as the work of one Northern hero with a superior technology that saved the world from starvation. Only recently has the notion that the introduction of that superior technology was one of many investments and innovations that kicked off as the Revolution started to gain ground – and that these investments and innovations came from both the North and South. Scaling of innovation happens in a larger system, often one that feels resistant to whatever we try to scale or, like in the case of the Green Revolution, aligned with what was being scaled and thus led to a tipping point and a completely new way agriculture is produced. The Revolution changed our relation to food, from which there was no going back.
In my ten years at the CGIAR – from 2005 to 2010 at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and then from 2017 to now at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) – major shifts can be observed in how scaling is approached.
First, scaling equals large adoption during the project, stemming from strong confidence that “if we build it, they will come”, or we just show how good our innovation is and others will scale it. From my own experience developing scale-appropriate drip irrigation in the Sahel, North Africa, I can say that approach hardly worked. When I re-joined the CGIAR in 2017, there was much more attention to the context in which the intervention is being scaled – we need to “create an enabling environment” for the innovation, and multiple innovations need to scale alongside “our”, mostly technical, innovation. It was very interesting to see up close how more and more colleagues have started to question whether scaling is “good” in the first place and whether it should be about “our” innovations.
COVID-19 and the major energy transitions that are going on in Europe and some states in the United States of America (USA) seem to have awoken a much stronger systems view, the realization that change takes decades, and that there are winners and losers in that process. I think we did a great job in questioning the “silver bullet” and “transfer of technology” mindset and see the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a transition process that requires radically different approaches and addresses multiple leverage points.
Scaling at One CGIAR
The major reform from 15 CGIAR centers to One CGIAR was the perfect opportunity to take scaling seriously as a science and an art. A range of methodologies have been developed, and informal networks of like-minded people have worked together a lot to push for a new paradigm on scaling. It is great that scaling is now well embedded in the One CGIAR strategy for the future. The big One CGIAR Initiatives have all reserved about 5 percent of their budgets to integrate scaling expertise. Also, scaling is very much recognized as a topic that requires a culture and mindset change within the organization to be much more effective.
Not surprisingly, the Call to Action from the Global South and its eight action points resonated a lot with me, especially since the following principles match really well:
That this Call comes from researchers in the Global South is so powerful. It shows us that the current ways of working are not delivering and paints a picture of a better way of doing things, but at the moment, we are in uncertain limbo between the two. The guidance in the Call can help to incite momentum and change. I believe we are coming to a critical mass of people that can tip the scale and that the actions in the Call can become the new normal – so that the stories we tell in the future focus not just on external (Northern) innovations that lead to big change, but on the interplay between what is going in the South and how external “solutions” fit in.
Cover photo: Lead farmer Santa Bhandari harvests green maize for her buffaloes
Neulapur, Bardiya, Nepal. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Food crops and animal feeds produced through biotechnology innovations can now be imported into Kenya after the ban on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) was lifted.
Kenyan scientists and research institutions are now able to develop crop varieties that will benefit farmers and their communities.
In a landmark statement on October 3, the Cabinet said: “In accordance with the recommendation of the Task Force to review matters relating to GMOs and Food Safety, and in fidelity with the guidelines of the National Biosafety Authority (NBA) on all applicable international treaties including the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB), Cabinet vacated its earlier decision of 8th November 2012 prohibiting the open cultivation of GMOs and the importation of food crops and animal feeds produced through biotechnology innovations; effectively lifting the ban on GMOs. By dint of the executive action open cultivation and importation of white (GMO) maize is now authorized.”
Read the original article: Kenya Lifts 10-year Ban On GM Foods, Allows Open Cultivation, Importation Of White GM Maize
Cover photo: A decade-long ban on genetically modified foods has been lifted in Kenya. (Photo: New Nigerian Newspaper)
Ten years ago, a foundation was laid on the principles of Norman Borlaug to translate agrarian challenges into opportunities through collaboration between the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). This major step toward sustainable food and nutrition security was taken through the establishment of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) as an independent, non-profit research organization.
Today, BISA is a global name in agriculture research with a vision to promote food security, nutrition, stable livelihoods, and eco-friendly practices in South Asia. Given the prominent challenges of climate change in these economically fragile agroecosystems, the partnership between BISA, ICAR, and CIMMYT plays a pivotal role in developing improved wheat and maize varieties with climate-smart and conservation agriculture-based practices.
A decade of impact
One of the most significant outcomes of BISA’s work has been its contribution to building a vast, solid network for evaluating and disseminating new high-yielding and climate-resilient wheat varieties for India and other South Asian countries in close partnership with ICAR and CIMMYT. BISA’s transformative solutions and science-led research are critical to targeting stressed resources and attaining global food security.
With support from ICAR and CIMMYT, BISA has developed state-of-the-art research facilities at its three strategically selected research stations, having 1,200 acres of land that the Government of India, jointly with the respective state governments, generously granted to the project. Located in three disparate agro-climatic and socioeconomic environments, these sites are model research farms supporting agriculture research in South Asia. The learning labs at BISA emphasize that scaling climate-smart villages also strengthen climate-resilient agriculture, primarily through addressing challenges such as residue burning. BISA’s collaborative and inclusive approach is more relevant today when the world is grappling with various food and nutrition insecurity challenges.
Time for expansion
BISA envisages attracting countries from south Asia, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), as well as National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS), national research institutes, private sector companies, and civil society organizations as active partners for expanding reach in the region. To this end, BISA has completed extensive work in Nepal and Bangladesh and has extended its services to Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
Still, more needs to be done in South Asian countries. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a strong commitment to harnessing the best of international scientific discoveries with local efforts. Collective action is to be garnered to provide trusted and effective mechanisms for developing and sharing cutting-edge agricultural technologies in the South Asian region.
To this end, a BISA High-Level Meeting was organized on September 1 and 2 in Delhi, with senior government representatives from the NARS in Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and India. The meeting provided a forum to identify opportunities to co-create and deploy innovative, multidisciplinary solutions to effectively address the transboundary challenges related to food, nutrition, and environmental security faced by farming communities in South Asia. This platform strives to unite the scientific community and thought leaders to support research and development across the agriculture domain.
Delegates from these countries felt that there is a need for a robust program of germplasm exchange within the region, which is essential to strengthening agriculture’s resilience. All countries expressed a significant need to raise their capacity of young researchers in advanced research techniques related to genomics, phenotyping, climate-smart agriculture, precision agriculture, and digital technologies. Delegates also discussed BISA’s role as a research and innovation regional catalyst, innovation hub, and integrated research platform to build resilient agrifood systems and achieve long-term sustainability and resilience for food security in South Asia.
BISA’s farm-ready research, from setting up climate-resilient villages and developing viable alternatives to rice residue burning to facilitating an open exchange of elite germplasm and cutting-edge technologies, reflects not only the vision of CIMMYT but also the philosophy of our mutual inspiration, Borlaug, who believed strongly in sharing knowledge and “taking it to the farmer”.
Cover photo: Delegates from Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India meet to deliberate on the significant issues in South Asia’s agriculture sector. (Photo: BISA)
Research shows that digital innovations can increase small-scale farmers’ incomes, boost the adoption of better practices, and increase resilience to climate shocks while reducing the gender gap and managing food system risks. However, these benefits are not universal. More than 600 million people and 40 percent of small farms are still not covered by mobile internet, especially in those countries most dependent on agricultural production. Across low- and middle-income countries, women are 7 percent less likely than men to own a mobile phone and 15 percent less likely to use mobile internet.
A new CGIAR Research Initiative, Digital Innovation, has been launched to research pathways to bridge this digital divide, improve the quality of information systems, and strengthen local capacities to realize the potential of digital technologies.
Read the original article: Connect rural areas with digital innovations to unlock climate resilience for hundreds of millions of farmers
It’s a familiar problem in international agricultural development – a project with external funding and support has achieved impressive early results, but the money is running out, the time is growing short, and there’s not a clear plan in place to continue and extend the program’s success.
Over the past seven years, the German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) established Green Innovation Centers in 13 countries in Africa and two in Asia, partnering with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to support projects that introduce mechanization in a way that improves long-term food security and prompts economic growth. Now, as the project enters its final two years of funding, GIZ and CIMMYT are focused on ensuring the gains produced by the Green Innovation Centers are not lost.
Like any complex challenge, there’s not just one solution to the sustainability problem – but CIMMYT is working to address a massive question around why pilots fail in agricultural development by implementing a systematic approach to scalability that recognizes the critical importance of context and puts projects on a sustainable path before the money is gone.
Training the trainers
As the Green Innovation Centers enter a crucial, final stage, a CIMMYT-led team recently completed training for seven GIZ staff from Ivory Coast, Togo, Ethiopia, and Zambia, who are now certified to facilitate CIMMYT’s Scaling Scan tool and train others to put agricultural innovations in their home countries on a solid path for growth. The training team included CIMMYT scaling advisor Lennart Woltering, CIMMYT mechanization support specialist Leon Jamann, and students from Germany’s University of Hohenheim and Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University.
The Scaling Scan is a practical tool that helps users set a defined growth ambition, analyze their readiness to scale using ten core ingredients, and identify specific areas that need attention in order to reach the scaling ambition.
The GIZ staff learned to use the Scaling Scan by applying it to early stage innovations in their home countries, ranging from commercial fodder production in the Southern Province of Zambia to seed value chains in the Oromia and Amhara regions of Ethiopia.
What will scale up in Ethiopia?
In Ethiopia, smallholding farmers producing legumes, wheat and maize struggle to increase their yield to a level that can improve food security, generate higher incomes for producers and their families, and promote economic growth and jobs in agricultural communities. To help smallholders develop sustainable solutions, GIZ senior advisor Molla Dessalegn worked with his Green Innovation Center team to brainstorm and launch a range of 20 proposed innovations – from risk mitigation and new contract structures to introduction of new technology – all with the aim of improving agricultural yields.
To date, these innovations have introduced over 200,000 Ethiopian smallholders to new knowledge and practices to improve their output. But with the project exit bearing down, Molla and his team were eager to identify which innovations held the most promise for survival and growth beyond the endpoint. So they put their pilot projects to the test using the Scaling Scan.
The scan involves an intensive, day-long seminar originally designed for in-person delivery, but remote versions have also proved successful as COVID limited global travel. The scan focuses on thorough analysis and scoring of the current state of a pilot project and its potential for growth given the realities of conditions on the ground.
Facilitators lead project managers through evaluation of the ten ingredients required for successful scaling, from finance and collaboration to technology, know-how, and public sector governance. The outcome is a clear data set assessing the scalability of the pilot and directing attention to specific areas where improvement is needed before a project can expect serious growth.
An unexpected outcome
What emerged from the scan surprised Molla. Some of the strategies he saw as most successful in the early stages, such as a contract farming program, scored poorly, whereas the scan identified deployment of mobile seed cleaners as a solution that held particular promise for scalability. These outcomes prompted the team to refocus efforts on this strategy.
About 95 percent of Ethiopian smallholders rely on informal seed systems, either saving and reusing seed or exchanging low quality seed with other farmers. Seed cleaning plays a critical role in helping farmers build a high quality, high yield seed development system. Molla and his team had already worked with smallholder cooperatives in Oromia to distribute three mobile seed cleaners, and they knew these machines were being heavily relied upon by farmers in this region.
The Scaling Scan showed them, among other things, that the successful adoption of the seed cleaners had even more potential – it was an innovation that could be sustained and even expanded by local stakeholders, including the Ministry of Agriculture.
This result prompted Molla to recommend investment in additional mobile seed cleaners – four to serve cooperatives in the Amhara region and a fifth for the West Arsi district in Oromia. These machines are now in operation and helping additional smallholders improve the quality of their seed stock. This initial expansion confirms the Scaling Scan results – and CIMMYT plans to continue supporting this growth with the purchase of another round of seed cleaners.
The Scaling Scan also identified problems with the business model for sustaining the mobile seed cleaners through cooperatives in Ethiopia, and this outcome directed the Green Innovation Centers to partner with a consultant to develop improvements in this area. In this way, one of the most important values of the scan is its ability to guide decision-making.
Scaling up the future
Seed cleaners alone won’t solve every yield problem for Ethiopian farmers, but the scan has now guided the initial implementation – and contextual adaptation – of a new form of agricultural mechanization across two regions of the country, with the promise of more to come.
And there’s more to come from the Scaling Scan as well.
Now that he’s received certification as a trainer, Molla plans to help farmers, officials, and other development workers adopt this rigorous approach to evaluating innovations that show potential. When funding for his project ends in 2024, he will be leaving 300,000 smallholders in Ethiopia with more than machines – he will be leaving them with the knowledge, experience, and practices to make the most of the technological solutions that are improving their yields today and building a more secure future for their communities.
Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are conducting a study in the state of Bihar, India, to improve our understanding of women’s and men’s contributions to decision-making around wheat crop management. The results will help reach women with new varieties that meet their needs and priorities.
The study seeks to overcome a big challenge for research organizations and national policymakers: to design a better framework for faster turnover of improved varieties and increased access to women and marginalized farmers.
Wheat is the second-largest crop grown in Bihar after rice, with a production of 5-6 million tonnes of it every year. Despite women’s contributions to farming activities, from sowing to harvesting, traditional gender norms can undermine their access to productive resources and influence household decisions. Additionally, women’s workload in wheat agriculture is increasing, due to men’s departure to non-agricultural jobs, but women are still not necessarily recognized as capable farmers.
Gender exclusion in agriculture
Given social norms and household-and-farm labor division based on gender, women are often confined to specific roles in the agricultural production system. In smallholder farming communities of South Asia like Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, men’s increasing involvement in non-agricultural activities has increased women’s workloads in every sphere of agricultural production. However, these long-held assumptions of their role can lead to exclusion from decision-making, limiting their control over what, how, and how much a crop is produced, their economic wellbeing, including household food security.
The CIMMYT study on “Intra-household gender dynamics in decision-making for wheat crop management in India (Bihar)” investigates women’s and men’s roles in production decisions. Led by Hom Gartaula, Gender, and Social Inclusion Specialist at CIMMYT, it covers eight villages — four in Darbhanga and four in Madhepura district — with 25 houses considered in each village.
As part of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for improved livelihoods in Asia and Africa (AGG) project, the research study will help gain deeper insights into the intra-household gender dynamics. It will also help in untangling who does what, how wheat cultivation and management decisions are organized within the households and the perceptions of the male and female farmers around why decisions are made in such a way.
Storytelling through household decision-making scenarios
In traditional rural societies, survey-based data collection might not be the best way to evaluate women’s agency, as the deeply rooted cultural restrictions might not allow them to talk openly about sensitive issues, like their relationship with a spouse. This study uses an innovative storytelling approach to data collection: using vignettes, farmers are given short stories to relate to their household circumstances. Stories are also easier to remember and help build a connection with the characters quickly.
The vignettes approach was first applied in the context of smallholder maize production in Kenya under the AGG project. According to Rachel Voss, the leader of the Kenyan study, “Using vignettes to explore decision-making in both East Africa and South Asia allows us to learn and compare across these regions and across crops. Gender relations in Indian wheat and Kenyan maize production might look similar in some ways, but very different in other ways, and our research and programming will need to respond to those differences.”
In this study, five vignettes with fictitious husband and wife characters are presented to participants to represent the different ways production and consumption decisions are made in the household. These vignettes describe how they engage in key decisions like seed procurement, labor hired, and harvest used for consumption or sale. With guidance from evaluators, respondents identify which scenario best aligns with the decision-making process in their household.
Researchers feel this qualitative data, gathered through a storytelling approach, could guide the reach of gender interventions in a more effective way. Gartaula and the team explained that the participants can build connections to a character in the story without biases, expressing their experiences in household decision-making through vignettes. They also observed that sometimes what the participant shared is the opposite of their assumption of women being excluded from decisions.
Rethinking gender roles
Traditional gender roles are deeply entrenched in the region. In the farming communities of rural Bihar, one might assume that who does what in wheat-rice cultivation is obvious, and it has been well studied in the past. However, investigating the stereotypes around gender to understand practices within households is an innovative aspect of this study.
For example, landless couple Pappu Paswan and Kamini Devi of village Kamtaul in Darbhanga district have been cultivating wheat on leased farm plots for many years. Devi is engaged in every aspect of decision-making. “We cultivate in leased plots of different sizes, spread across, requiring more effort and time in attending to them. We discuss additional labor during harvest and if there is money enough to pay them,” said Devi pointing her finger at the vignette illustrating ‘cooperation’ in household decision-making. They produce enough for their consumption, but when possible, “I advise my husband to sell some for income,” she added.
Despite contributing to decisions jointly with Pappu when it comes to farm labor and household finances, Devi has little or no knowledge of seed varieties and access. Her husband informs that it was UP262 (wheat seed variety) they have been cultivating for the last two years.
In Rishikesh Ram’s household, land ownership and livelihood specialization were factors in decision-making. He owns the land and makes all farming decisions, including how much will be saved for consumption at home. His wife, Kiran Devi, a nurse at the village primary health center, is hardly involved in any farming work. “As the income from her job contributes to expenses at home, decisions about loans or payment for labors on the farm are joint decisions,” Ram said.
“In these two households of the diverse decision-making process, different approaches to messaging and relevant extension services must be explored to address the issues of exclusion, access, and knowledge gaps in these households,” Gartaula observed.
Bridging the gender gap in agri-food systems
With the feminization of agriculture in the region, women’s contribution to agricultural production is likely to increase. Policy and research interventions must recognize this growing population and support their full economic and social contributions as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and laborers. However, whether women’s growing role in wheat production leads to increased decision-making authority and empowerment is still unknown. But hope is that AGG-supported gender research in South Asia and East Africa will help guide actions on gender and social inclusion in agri-food systems and support cross-learning between the regions.
Scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have been harnessing the power of drones and other remote sensing tools to accelerate crop improvement, monitor harmful crop pests and diseases, and automate the detection of land boundaries for farmers.
A crucial step in crop improvement is phenotyping, which traditionally involves breeders walking through plots and visually assessing each plant for desired traits. However, ground-based measurements can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.
This is where remote sensing comes in. By analyzing imagery taken using tools like drones, scientists can quickly and accurately assess small crop plots from large trials, making crop improvement more scalable and cost-effective. These plant traits assessed at plot trials can also be scaled out to farmers’ fields using satellite imagery data and integrated into decision support systems for scientists, farmers and decision-makers.
Here are some of the latest developments from our team of remote sensing experts.
Measuring plant height with high-powered drones
A recent study, published in Frontiers in Plant Science validated the use of drones to estimate the plant height of wheat crops at different growth stages.
The research team, which included scientists from CIMMYT, the Federal University of Viçosa and KWS Momont Recherche, measured and compared wheat crops at four growth stages using ground-based measurements and drone-based estimates.
The team found that plant height estimates from drones were similar in accuracy to measurements made from the ground. They also found that by using drones with real-time kinematic (RTK) systems onboard, users could eliminate the need for ground control points, increasing the drones’ mapping capability.
Recent work on maize has shown that drone-based plant height assessment is also accurate enough to be used in maize improvement and results are expected to be published next year.
Advancing assessment of pests and diseases
CIMMYT scientists and their research partners have advanced the assessment of Tar Spot Complex — a major maize disease found in Central and South America — and Maize Streak Virus (MSV) disease, found in sub-Saharan Africa, using drone-based imaging approach. By analyzing drone imagery, scientists can make more objective disease severity assessments and accelerate the development of improved, disease-resistant maize varieties. Digital imaging has also shown great potential for evaluating damage to maize cobs by fall armyworm.
Scientists have had similar success with other common foliar wheat diseases, Septoria and Spot Blotch with remote sensing experiments undertaken at experimental stations across Mexico. The results of these experiments will be published later this year. Meanwhile, in collaboration with the Federal University of Technology, based in Parana, Brazil, CIMMYT scientists have been testing deep learning algorithms — computer algorithms that adjust to, or “learn” from new data and perform better over time — to automate the assessment of leaf disease severity. While still in the experimental stages, the technology is showing promising results so far.
Improving forecasts for crop disease early warning systems
CIMMYT scientists, in collaboration with Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Cambridge University and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), are currently exploring remote sensing solutions to improve forecast models used in early warning systems for wheat rusts. Wheat rusts are fungal diseases that can destroy healthy wheat plants in just a few weeks, causing devastating losses to farmers.
Early detection is crucial to combatting disease epidemics and CIMMYT researchers and partners have been working to develop a world-leading wheat rust forecasting service for a national early warning system in Ethiopia. The forecasting service predicts the potential occurrence of the airborne disease and the environmental suitability for the disease, however the susceptibility of the host plant to the disease is currently not provided.
CIMMYT remote sensing experts are now testing the use of drones and high-resolution satellite imagery to detect wheat rusts and monitor the progression of the disease in both controlled field trial experiments and in farmers’ fields. The researchers have collaborated with the expert remote sensing lab at UCLouvain, Belgium, to explore the capability of using European Space Agency satellite data for mapping crop type distributions in Ethiopia. The results will be also published later this year.
Delivering expert irrigation and sowing advice to farmers phones
Through an initiative funded by the UK Space Agency, CIMMYT scientists and partners have integrated crop models with satellite and in-situ field data to deliver valuable irrigation scheduling information and optimum sowing dates direct to farmers in northern Mexico through a smartphone app called COMPASS — already available to iOS and Android systems. The app also allows farmers to record their own crop management activities and check their fields with weekly NDVI images.
The project has now ended, with the team delivering a webinar to farmers last October to demonstrate the app and its features. Another webinar is planned for October 2021, aiming to engage wheat and maize farmers based in the Yaqui Valley in Mexico.
Detecting field boundaries using high-resolution satellite imagery
In Bangladesh, CIMMYT scientists have collaborated with the University of Buffalo, USA, to explore how high-resolution satellite imagery can be used to automatically create field boundaries.
Many low and middle-income countries around the world don’t have an official land administration or cadastre system. This makes it difficult for farmers to obtain affordable credit to buy farm supplies because they have no land titles to use as collateral. Another issue is that without knowing the exact size of their fields, farmers may not be applying to the right amount of fertilizer to their land.
Using state of the art machine learning algorithms, researchers from CIMMYT and the University of Buffalo were able to detect the boundaries of agricultural fields based on high-resolution satellite images. The study, published last year, was conducted in the delta region of Bangladesh where the average field size is only about 0.1 hectare.
Developing climate-resilient wheat
CIMMYT’s wheat physiology team has been evaluating, validating and implementing remote sensing platforms for high-throughput phenotyping of physiological traits ranging from canopy temperature to chlorophyll content (a plant’s greenness) for over a decade. Put simply, high-throughput phenotyping involves phenotyping a large number of genotypes or plots quickly and accurately.
Recently, the team has engaged in the Heat and Drought Wheat Improvement Consortium (HeDWIC) to implement new high-throughput phenotyping approaches that can assist in the identification and evaluation of new adaptive traits in wheat for heat and drought.
The team has also been collaborating with the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat (AGG) project, providing remote sensing data to improve genomic selection models.
Cover photo: An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV drone) in flight over CIMMYT’s experimental research station in Ciudad Obregon, Mexico. (Photo: Alfredo Saenz/CIMMYT)