Use of lightweight, 5-9-horsepower mini-tillers by smallholder farmers in Nepal’s mid-hills cut tillage costs and boosted maize yields by facilitating timely maize cultivation, thus enhancing food self-sufficiency and farm profits and reducing rural poverty, a new study by an international team of scientists shows.
Published in the Journal of Economics and Development, the study reports findings of an on-farm survey involving more than 1,000 representative households from 6 districts of the mid-hills, a region of steep and broken terrain where rainfed maize is a staple crop, outmigration of working-age inhabitants makes farm labor scarce and costly, and farmers on small, fragmented landholdings typically till plots by hand or using ox-drawn plows.
“Conventional two- or four-wheel tractors are difficult to operate in the mid-hills’ rugged topography,” said Gokul P. Paudel, researcher working together with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany, and lead author of the study. “Farms are small and the mini-tillers are a good fit. Very small farms — those comprising less than 0.4 hectares of land and normally not served by hired farm labor or larger machinery — benefited the most from mini-tiller adoption.”
The paper is the first to provide empirical linkages between small-scale farm mechanization and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly No Poverty (SDG-1) and Zero Hunger (SDG-2).
“Given its rural poverty and the resulting outmigration from farm areas to cities and to other countries, Nepal has increasingly become a labor-exporting country,” explained Paudel, who partnered in this study with researchers from the Asian Development Bank Institute and Cornell University. “Our research can help guide investments by Nepal and other developing countries in scale-appropriate farm mechanization, supporting those who wish to remain on rural homesteads and make a go of it.”
Machine operators starting the mini-tiller in the Kavrepalanchok district in the mid-hills of Nepal. (Photo: CIMMYT)
The science team found that farm size, labor shortages, draft animal scarcity, and market proximity were major factors that facilitate the adoption of appropriate mechanization in Nepal, according to Tim Krupnik, CIMMYT systems agronomist and study co-author.
“Smallholder farms dominate more than two-thirds of agricultural systems globally,” Krupnik said. “Interest in scale-appropriate farm mechanization is growing rapidly, particularly among donors and governments, and practical empirical measures of its impact are crucial.” The findings of the latest study fill this knowledge gap and provide sufficient evidence to prioritize the spread of appropriate technologies among smallholder farmers.
Krupnik noted that, through its office in Nepal and strong shared research and capacity-building activities, CIMMYT has worked for almost four decades with Nepali scientists and development partners, including the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD), to raise the productivity and sustainability of the country’s maize- and wheat-based farming systems.
In addition to strong government partnerships, CIMMYT works closely in Nepal with a range of non-government organizations, and importantly, hand-in-hand with private farm machinery manufacturers, retailers, and mechanics.
The study described was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Academy for International Agricultural Research (ACINAR) commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and carried out by ATSAF e.V. on behalf of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the One CGIAR Regional Integrated Initiative Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA), and generous funders who contribute to the CGIAR Trust Fund.
For smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, new agricultural technologies such as improved maize varieties offer numerous benefits — increased incomes, lower workloads and better food security, among others. However, when new technologies are introduced, they can denaturalize and expose gender norms and power relations because their adoption inevitably requires women and men to renegotiate the rules of the game. The adoption of new varieties will often be accompanied by a number of related decisions on the allocation of farm labor, the purchase and use of inorganic fertilizers, switching crops between women- and men-managed plots, and the types of benefit household members expect to secure may change.
In an article published this month in Gender, Technology and Development, researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) explore how women in Nigeria negotiate these new power dynamics to access and secure the benefits of improved maize varieties and, more broadly, to expand their decision-making space.
Using focus group and interview data collected as part of the GENNOVATE project, the authors draw on case studies from four villages — two in the northern states of Kaduna and Plateau; two in the southwestern state of Oyo — to develop an understanding of the relationship between gender norms, women’s ability and willingness to express their agency, and the uptake of agricultural technologies. “This is an important step toward improving the capacity of agricultural research for development to design and scale innovations,” say the authors. “Achieving this ambition is highly relevant to maize.”
The results were similar across all four sites. The authors found that women in each area were constrained by powerful gender norms which privilege male agency and largely frown upon women’s empowerment, thus limiting their ability to maximize the benefits from improved varieties or realize their agency in other domains.
All women respondents remarked that improved maize varieties were easy to adopt, have higher yields and mature quickly, which meant that income flows started earlier and helped them meet household expenditures on time. They prioritized the contribution of improved maize to securing household food security, which helped them meet their ascribed gender roles as food providers.
“At the same time though, women felt they could not maximize their benefits from improved maize varieties due to men’s dominance in decision-making,” the authors explain. “This was particularly the case for married women.”
“Men are meant to travel far – not women”
Woman selling white maize at Bodija market in Ibadan, Nigeria. (Photo: Adebayo O./IITA)
Embedded gender norms – particularly those relating to mobility – infuse the wider environment and mean that women’s access to opportunities is considerably more restricted than it is for men.
The findings demonstrate that both women and men farmers secure benefits from improved maize varieties. However, men accrue more benefits and benefit directly, as they have unfettered mobility and opportunity. They can access markets that are further away, and the maize they sell is unprocessed and requires no transformation. Additionally, men do not question their right to devote profits from maize primarily to their own concerns, nor their right to secure a high level of control over the money women make.
On the other hand, women respondents — regardless of age and income cohort — repeatedly stated that while it is hard to earn significant money from local sales of the processed maize products they make, it is also very difficult for them to enter large markets selling unprocessed, improved maize.
The difficulties women face in trying to grow maize businesses may be partly related to a lack of business acumen and experience, but a primary reason is limited personal mobility in all four communities. For example, in Sabon Birni village, Kaduna, women lamented that though the local market is not large enough to accommodate their maize processing and other agri-business ventures, they are not permitted travel to markets further afield where ‘there are always people ready to buy’.
“Women’s benefits relate to the fact that improved maize varieties increase the absolute size of the ‘maize cake’,” say the authors. “They expect to get a larger slice as a consequence. However, the absolute potential of improved varieties for boosting women’s incomes and other options of importance to women is hampered by gender norms that significantly restrict their agency.”
The implications for maize research and development are that an improved understanding of the complex relational nature of empowerment is essential when introducing new agricultural technologies.
A woman sells maize at the market in Sidameika Tura, Arsi Negele, Ethiopia. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views or position of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
While all eyes are on Lombardy, Madrid, New York and Wuhan, what do we know about the impact of COVID-19 on the rural poor and on food security in developing countries? How can the impact of the crisis be moderated? What positive breakthroughs could be provoked by this shock to move us into a better “new normal”? What can donors and implementing organizations do to support low- and middle-income countries during and beyond this crisis?
Members of the Agriculture and Rural Development working group of the international Scaling Up community of practice held a virtual meeting to discuss these questions and how scaling-up innovations could help to recover from the current crisis and mitigate future ones.
Poor rural communities are particularly vulnerable
When it comes to a highly contagious disease, being in a rural area sounds better than being in a busy city, but that is a deceptive impression. Smallholder farmers often are older than average and hence more vulnerable to the virus, and they have less access to health services.
They also depend on field laborers that are not able to travel from surrounding villages to help with planting, weeding and harvesting. To process crops, smallholder farmers need to transport crops to processing centers, which may be closed, as are the markets where they obtain agricultural inputs or sell farm products. Large international agrobusiness firms, which supply inputs and purchase local famers’ products may withdraw, at least temporarily, from the rural economies. There are already reports of farmers feeding cattle strawberries and broccoli in India, as they are unable to get their goods to the market.
Most farmers also depend on non-farm and off-farm activities for their livelihoods, as they may be field laborers for other farmers, work in the processing industry or work in construction. Interrupted transportation and closures pose serious challenges to maintain safe business continuity throughout the rural economy. The risk is not only that immediate rural production, food deliveries, exports, employment and incomes will collapse, but also that planting for next year’s crops will be disrupted.
It is key to differentiate between global and local supply chains, which will suffer in different ways. For example, in Uganda, supermarkets are open but small, informal markets are closed. In past crises, governments have focused on the survival of global value chains over local ones. Small, rural businesses are more likely to close permanently than large international ones.
Globally, international support for agriculture and rural development has been lagging in recent years. Today, the international support from aid agencies and NGOs is interrupted, as travels are restricted and community meetings are prohibited. With increased donor attention to a domestic and international health crisis, aid for rural communities may drop precipitously.
Men transport wheat straw on donkey karts in Ethiopia’s Dodula district. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Opportunities for an improved “new normal” as we respond to the crisis
The short-term response to help minimize the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the rural poor is critical, but we also need to support the shaping of a “new normal” where rural food systems are resilient, profitable and inclusive for poor rural communities. Members of the Scaling Up community of practice explored various ideas.
First, the COVID-19 pandemic could present opportunities to break silos and show how closely health and agriculture are related.
“COVID-19 cuts across sectors and jurisdictions in ways that single organizations and established governance structures are ill-equipped to accommodate,” said Larry Cooley, Scaling Expert and Founder and President Emeritus of Management Systems International (MSI)
For example, rural agricultural extension networks could be used to disseminate information on health awareness and education around COVID-19 and collect data on local impacts. This may cause and provide relief in the short term, but may also provide opportunities for collaboration in the long run.
“Our agricultural networks go deep into the rural areas and we are training our agri-entrepreneurs in India to disseminate health messages, products and services to help address COVID-19,” said Simon Winter, Executive Director of the Syngenta Foundation.
“At the African Development Bank we are providing emergency relief finance and re-purposing funding to have a link with COVID-19,” said Atsuko Toda, the bank’s Director of Agricultural Finance and Rural Development.
Second, a “new normal” could also mean an even stronger independence from externally funded projects, experts and solutions to more local ownership and expertise in rural areas, something that the community of practice has been promoting strongly. We could help to support more autonomy of the farmer, a strong local market and scale-up local value chains. Strengthening the capacity of small and medium enterprises linking farmers to urban markets could help ensure stability in future economic shocks.
“Governments and donor ‘projects’ looked too much at export and global value chains. I see great opportunities to scale up local and regional input and output value chains that benefit local farmers and small and medium enterprises,” said Margret Will, expert on value chains.
Third, the COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to accelerate the scaling of innovations.
“Lack of access to labor could be disrupting harvesting and planting in our Feed the Future countries, accelerating an already predominant trend of migration, especially among the young, to urban areas. We see a looming need for mechanization of farms at scale, using mini-tillers, planters, harvesters and other time- and labor-saving equipment,” said Mark Huisenga, Senior Program Manager for the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security.
Masimba Mawire collects bare maize cobs after removing the grain using a mechanized maize sheller in Zimbabwe. (Photo: Matthew O’Leary/CIMMYT)
Rural communities that use more ecological intensive practices, such as conservation agriculture and push-pull farming or safe storage practices are less dependent on external inputs and labor.
The current crisis forces us to use digital communication systems, replace human work with digital tools where possible and use technology to help target interventions. Both the public and private sector could build on this opportunity to invest in increased access to internet, electricity and other digital resources, including in impoverished areas. All these technological innovations can help farmers to better cope with the constraints of COVID-19 and any future crises or stresses to the food system, while also making agriculture more productive and more attractive to the young.
“The pandemic creates an opportunity to accelerate the use of digital technologies in smallholder agriculture, not only for extension advice but to crowdsource information about COVID-19 impacts,” said Julie Howard, Senior Advisor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Finally, COVID-19 will change our global governance system, and the agriculture, research and development sector has a role to play in this transformation. A systems change must focus on dietary diversity and food safety and security, paying attention to the rural poor in low- and middle-income countries. We can work together to scale cross-sector platforms to build solid networks and scale-up innovations to strengthen sustainable and resilient food systems.
Systems change beyond the agricultural sector, sustainability through local ownership and uptake of innovations that support profitable and resilient agricultural and related rural activities are key components of how the Scaling Up Community of Practice approaches scaling. A systems change is imminent, and it is important to support a transformation in a direction where local markets, rural labor and regional economies come out stronger in the long term. This requires vision, expertise, mobilization of resources, information sharing and crowdsourced leadership, and the network of scaling experts can contribute to this.
The Agriculture and Rural Development working group of the international Scaling Up community of practice is made up of individuals from more than 100 official donors, foundations, think tanks, research and development organizations united by their interest in scaling the impact of innovations on food security and rural poverty. Areas of particular interest for the group include designing for scale, using scaling frameworks, learning about scaling, responsible scaling, sustainability and system thinking. Members of the working group include professionals with vast experience from the field, and the group explicitly tries to learn from the application of complex concepts such as sustainability, systems change and scaling in real world settings by local actors. In addition to quarterly virtual meetings, the working group encourages and supports exchanges among its members on a variety of subjects. Participation in, and management of, the Agriculture and Rural Development working group is done on a purely voluntary basis.
About the Authors:
Lennart Woltering — Scaling catalyst at CIMMYT and chair of the Agriculture and Rural Development working group.
Johannes Linn — Non-resident Senior Fellow at Brookings and former Vice President of the World Bank.
Maria Boa — Scaling coordinator at CIMMYT and secretary of the Agriculture and Rural Development working group
Mary Donovan — Communications Consultant at CIMMYT.
