“The world is in the middle of a food crisis, driven by the supply chain disruptions during and post-Covid, climate change with increased storms, temperatures, and drought, and the Russia-Ukraine crisis, leading to a shortage of fertilizers for food crop production, which have all led to the high cost of food,” said Govaerts, highlighting that smallholders are dealing with multiple challenges at once.
He continued by describing how the aforementioned challenges to food security are worsening poverty for vulnerable people in Africa, especially smallholder farmers.
However, harnessing the continent’s potential for food production could help to alleviate poverty and food insecurity. Govaerts cited examples of where smallholder farmers have returned to producing nutritious indigenous crops such as millet, sorghum, guinea corn, groundnut, cowpeas and chickpeas, which are reaping tremendous results.
Through investments in crops, farming practices, and agricultural technologies, the potential for food production in Africa can have a huge impact on hunger and poverty.
Agrifood systems contribute to at least 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To advance these goals, agrifood systems need to deliver more nutritious food to more people and simultaneously be environmentally sustainable and resilient. Changes are required at multiple levels to include more sustainable farming, reduce food losses in distribution and retail, and increase the intake of healthier foods by consumers.
Recent studies show that piecemeal interventions focusing on only one aspect or area are insufficient to make the required transformation. Issues related to food security and improved nutrition are complex, and their solutions must transcend traditional disciplinary and institutional boundaries.
Agrifood systems research looks to understand how systems work and actions by governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector that can positively influence outcomes at scale. Researchers and development professionals use this approach to assess how different actors, practices and policies share the production, marketing, availability, and consumption of food. Agriculture, trade, policy, health, environment, transport, infrastructure, gender norms and education all have a role to play in achieving resilient agrifood systems that deliver greater benefits to farmers and consumers.
CIMMYT combines the expertise of economists, agronomists, crop breeders, nutritionists, and gender specialist to create more sustainable, nutritious, and profitable agrifood systems in multiple ways. It works to ensure that cereal crops are grown in the most sustainable way, that the public and private sectors are informed about consumer preferences, and that quality improved seed is available to farmers when they need it. CIMMYT also aims to better understand how cereal based foods are processed and sold to consumers and develop options for promoting the consumption of more nutritious cereal-based foods.
Pasta and other supplies on display in a supermarket, Mexico.
Consumer demand in Mexico
Recently, CIMMYT partnered with the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico (INSP), to compare access to healthy processed cereal-based food in supermarkets, convenience stores, and corner stores for consumers from low- and high-income neighborhoods in Mexico City. Discussions continue to rage about how policies can support more nutritious and healthier diets in Mexico, including the new requirement for food warning labels on the front of packaging.
The study showed that availability of healthy products was scarce in most stores, particularly in convenience stores. Compared to supermarkets in the low-income areas, those in high-income areas exhibited a greater variety of healthy products across all categories. A follow up study is underway that examines the outcomes of the new food label warnings on product availability and health claims.
Other CIMMYT studies have explored the demand by lower- and middle-income consumers in central Mexico for healthy cereal-based foods, including their demand for blue maize tortillas and whole grain bread. These studies help policy makers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) design strategies on how to increase access and consumption of healthier processed wheat and maize products in fast-evolving food systems.
Farmer Gladys Kurgat prepare wheat chapatti with help from her nephew Emmanuel Kirui for her five sons at home near Belbur, Nakuru, Kenya. (Photo: Peter Lowe/CIMMYT)
Blending wheat products in Kenya
In many parts of the world, the Ukraine-Russia war has intensified the need to change how wheat-based products are formulated. For example, Kenya is a country where wheat consumption has been growing rapidly for a decade, yet imports have comprised 90% of its wheat supplies, which up until recently came from Ukraine and Russia. Wheat flour blending in Kenya is a promising option for reducing wheat imports, generating demand for other, lesser-utilized cereals, such as sorghum, and increasing the nutrient profile of bread products. But wheat blending, despite having been discussed for many years in Kenya, has yet to gain traction.
In response, CIMMYT and the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) are exploring the feasibility of reducing wheat imports in Kenya by replacing between 5-20% of wheat flour with flour derived from other cereals, including sorghum and millet. While existing evidence suggests that consumers may except up to 10% blending in cereal flours, the stakes are high for both the wheat industry and government. Robust and context specific evidence is needed on consumers’ willingness to accept blended products in urban Kenya and the economic feasibility of blending from the perspective of millers and processors.
Among the critical questions to be explored by CIMMYT and JKUAT: What flour blends will consumers most likely to accept? What are the potential health benefits from blending with sorghum and millet? Is there enough sorghum and millet readily available to replace the wheat removed from flour? And finally, what is the business case for wheat flour blending?
Cover photo: Wheat harvest near Iztaccíhuatl volcano in Juchitepec, Estado de México. (Photo: CIMMYT/ Peter Lowe)
Shelves filled with maize seed samples make up the maize active collection at the germplasm bank at CIMMYT’s global headquarters in Texcoco, Mexico. It contains around 28,000 unique samples of maize seed — including more than 24,000 farmer landraces — and related species. (Photo: Xochiquetzal Fonseca/CIMMYT)
A new $25.7 million project, led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), a Research Center part of CGIAR, the world’s largest public sector agriculture research partnership, is expanding the use of biodiversity held in the world’s genebanks to develop new climate-smart crop varieties for millions of small-scale farmers worldwide.
As climate change accelerates, agriculture will be increasingly affected by high temperatures, erratic rainfall, drought, flooding and sea-level rise. Looking to the trove of genetic material in genebanks, scientists believe they can enhance the resilience of food production by incorporating this diversity into new crop varieties — overcoming many of the barriers to fighting malnutrition and hunger around the world.
“Better crops can help small-scale farmers produce more food despite the challenges of climate change. Drought-resistant staple crops, such as maize and wheat, that ensure food amid water scarcity, and faster-growing, early-maturing varieties that produce good harvests in erratic growing seasons can make a world of difference for those who depend on agriculture. This is the potential for climate-adaptive breeding that lies untapped in CGIAR’s genebanks,” said Claudia Sadoff, Managing Director, Research Delivery and Impact, and Executive Management Team Convener, CGIAR.
Over five years, the project, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to identify plant accessions in genebanks that contain alleles, or gene variations, responsible for characteristics such as heat, drought or salt tolerance, and to facilitate their use in breeding climate-resilient crop varieties. Entitled Mining useful alleles for climate change adaptation from CGIAR genebanks, the project will enable breeders to more effectively and efficiently use genebank materials to develop climate-smart versions of important food crops, including cassava, maize, sorghum, cowpea and rice.
Wild rice. (Photo: IRRI)
The project is a key component of a broader initiative focused on increasing the value and use of CGIAR genebanks for climate resilience. It is one of a series of Innovation Sprints coordinated by the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C) initiative, which is led by the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
“Breeding new resilient crop varieties quickly, economically and with greater precision will be critical to ensure small-scale farmers can adapt to climate change,” said Enock Chikava, interim Director of Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “This initiative will contribute to a more promising and sustainable future for the hundreds of millions of Africans who depend on farming to support their families.”
Over the past 40 years, CGIAR Centers have built up the largest and most frequently accessed network of genebanks in the world. The network conserves and makes nearly three-quarters of a million crop accessions available to scientists and governments. CGIAR genebanks hold around 10% of the world’s plant germplasm in trust for humanity, but account for about 94% of the germplasm distributed under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which ensures crop breeders globally have access to the fundamental building blocks of new varieties.
“This research to develop climate-smart crop varieties, when scaled, is key to ensuring that those hardest hit by climate shocks have access to affordable staple foods,” said Jeffrey Rosichan, Director of the Crops of the Future Collaborative of the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR). “Further, this initiative benefits US and world agriculture by increasing genetic diversity and providing tools for growers to more rapidly adapt to climate change.”
“We will implement, for the first time, a scalable strategy to identify valuable variations hidden in our genebanks, and through breeding, deploy these to farmers who urgently need solutions to address the threat of climate change,” said Sarah Hearne, CIMMYT principal scientist and leader of the project.
Building on ten years of support to CIMMYT from the Mexican government, CGIAR Trust Fund contributors and the United Kingdom’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the project combines the use of cutting-edge technologies and approaches, high-performance computing, GIS mapping, and new plant breeding methods, to identify and use accessions with high value for climate-adaptive breeding of varieties needed by farmers and consumers.
INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES:
Sarah Hearne – Principal Scientist, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO ARRANGE INTERVIEWS, CONTACT THE MEDIA TEAM:
Marcia MacNeil, Head of Communications, CIMMYT. m.macneil@cgiar.org, +52 5558042004 ext. 2070.
