Theme: Climate adaptation and mitigation
Climate change threatens to reduce global crop production, and poor people in tropical environments will be hit the hardest. More than 90% of CIMMYT’s work relates to climate change, helping farmers adapt to shocks while producing more food, and reduce emissions where possible. Innovations include new maize and wheat varieties that withstand drought, heat and pests; conservation agriculture; farming methods that save water and reduce the need for fertilizer; climate information services; and index-based insurance for farmers whose crops are damaged by bad weather. CIMMYT is an important contributor to the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.
Farmers key to realizing EAT-Lancet report recommendations in Mexico, CIMMYT highlights
MEXICO CITY (CIMMYT) — The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) was invited to discuss the findings of the EAT-Lancet Commission report and its implications for Mexico, during a launch event hosted by Mexico’s Health Department on March 4, 2019.
The report, published earlier this year, aims to offer an in-depth scientific analysis of the world’s food production systems and their impact on the planet and human health. It proposes a “planetary health diet” that balances nutrition with sustainable food production.
“Our first objective was to develop healthy diets for the 10 billion people who will inhabit the planet in 2050”, said Juan Ángel Rivera Dommarco, Director General of Mexico’s Public Health Institute and member of the EAT-Lancet Commission. According to Dommarco, the healthy diet recommended for Mexico had to increase the intake of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains to avert chronic diseases and combat malnutrition and obesity.
The report also makes several recommendations to reduce the environmental impact of food production, taking into account planetary boundaries. “The world needs to sustainably intensify food production and to produce basic foodstuffs of higher nutritional value”, said Fabrice DeClerck, EAT’s Science Director.
“If anybody is able to manage the complex systems that will sustainably yield the volume of nutritious food that the world needs, that’s the farmer”, said Bram Govaerts, Director of Innovative Business Strategies at CIMMYT. “In Mexico, more than 500 thousand farmers already innovate every day and grow maize, wheat and related crops under sustainable intensification practices that CIMMYT and Mexico’s Agriculture Department promote with MasAgro”.
Víctor Villalobos Arámbula, Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture, said that the EAT-Lancet Commission report recommendations were very much in line with the strategic public policies that Mexico plans to implement in the coming years.
Policy forum in Mozambique recommends scaling sustainable agriculture practices
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.
“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.
Breaking Ground: Fernando H. Toledo researches new models of analysis under simulated scenarios
Genomics is a wide theme of interest for geneticists. As part of the efforts to advance on this subject, Fernando H. Toledo, associated scientist in agricultural statistics at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), is working on the research of genomic selection models to increase accuracy. His research considers several complex traits and environmental conditions under climate change scenarios.
The research in which Toledo works is multidisciplinary — it involves genetics and breeding knowledge, as well as statistics and computer science. “This work is fundamental for the breeding and farming community. Our aim is to allow breeders to pursue precise selection of new genetic materials with good performance and ensuring food security in the field under varying environmental conditions.”
Fernando H. Toledo was born in São Paulo, Brazil, but grew up in Curitiba, Paraná, one of the biggest agricultural states in the country. He obtained his engineering degree, with a major in crop science, at Paraná Federal University.
He got his master’s degree in genetics and plant breeding at Lavras Federal University, under the supervision of Magno Ramalho, one of the most prestigious breeders in Brazil. During his Ph.D. in quantitative genetics at the Agricultural College of the University of São Paulo, Fernando was advised by Roland Vencovsky, known as the father of quantitative genetics in the country. “The main lesson I took from both of them was that biometrics science must try to answer the breeders’ questions.”
Toledo got a scholarship from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) to spend a season at CIMMYT in 2013, where he developed part of his thesis about the use of selection indices under the supervision of José Crossa.
CIMMYT’s work is highly relevant to breeding activities in Brazil. It dates back to the 1950s when Brazilian breeders and geneticists took maize populations and varieties to be important resources of their current germplasm. “The public and private sectors in Brazil recognize the importance of CIMMYT, which awoke my interest in working in a relevant institute for agriculture in developing countries.”
In 2015, Toledo applied for a postdoctoral position at the Biometrics and Statistics Unit of the Genetic Recourses Program at CIMMYT. He started working as an associate scientist in 2017.
As part of this unit, Toledo is currently involved in the planning and analysis of field trials comprising phenotypic and genomic data. He is developing new models and methods for these analysis as well as plant breeding simulations. “Genomic selection has been used over CIMMYT’s breeding programs before but there are still a lot of improvements to implement, so new models of analysis can be tested under simulated scenarios, which results in better recommendations for breeders.”
On top of that, he is implementing new open-source high-performance software products to facilitate the use of cutting-edge methods for data analysis. “I really like the connection we can build at CIMMYT in terms of practical work for breeders and the development of new statistical methods, models, tools and software we release to attend their requirements, with the main aim of improving precision during the selection of the best genetic materials.”
Led by Juan Burgueño, senior biometrician and head of the Biometrics and Statistics Unit, Toledo is training students, scientists and partners regarding statistical concepts and data analysis. “These trainings courses are a great opportunity to share our work with others and to learn the scientists’ needs in order to improve our capabilities.”
Toledo’s main inspiration to continue his work at CIMMYT is having the opportunity to generate knowledge for others in developing countries. “Our work is driven by the breeders’ needs and that usually helps them to improve their understanding by using what we developed for them and making it a forward-backward relation, which is fascinating.”
Experts analyze food systems at EAT-Lancet Commission report launch in Ethiopia
Earlier this year, the EAT-Lancet Commission published a groundbreaking report linking healthy diets and sustainable food systems. It proposed scientific targets that meet both the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement action plan to reduce carbon emissions. Since then, more than 20 launch events have been scheduled around the globe, including Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
On February 7, the African Union hosted the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets for sustainable food systems. Government officials, researchers and experts attended the “Food Systems Dialogue on Ethiopia” and developed a list of recommendations going forward. Some of these included at least 10 percent resource allocation to agriculture, the creation of functional and efficient internal markets for enhancing food distribution within the country, post-harvest loss reduction, and stronger collaboration between government and other stakeholders.
“The report has drawn the attention of policy makers, civil society and donors,” said Kindie Tesfaye Fantaye, a researcher and crop modeler at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “The event was a good opportunity to create awareness on the chronic problems of stunting and malnutrition in Africa, and agriculture’s central role in contributing to effective solutions.”
Tesfaye Fantaye said CIMMYT’s work is well aligned with the report’s recommendations. In addition to research on sustainable intensification approaches that improve livelihoods while reducing the environmental footprint, CIMMYT explores ways to reduce postharvest losses and increase the nutritional quality of food through biofortification.
During a high-level side event, the commissioners indicated that the report is in-line with the different African Union policies and strategies, including the Malabo Declaration on Agriculture and Postharvest Losses, Agenda 2063 and Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP).
“The power of food is its connection. If we get it right, it brings us to a healthy people and a healthy planet,” said Gunhild Anker Stordalen, the founder and executive chair of EAT Foundation.
BISA and PAU awarded for collaborative work on residue management
The Borlaug Institute for South Asia-Punjab Agricultural University (BISA-PAU) joint team recently received an award from the Indian Society for Agricultural Engineers (ISAE) in recognition of their work on rice residue management using the Super Straw Management System, also known as Super SMS.
Developed and recommended by researchers at BISA and PAU in 2016, the Super SMS is an attachment for self-propelled combine harvesters which offers an innovative solution to paddy residue management in rice-wheat systems.
The Punjab government has made the use of the Super SMS mandatory for all combine harvesters in northwestern India.
The Super SMS gives farmers the ability to recycle residues on-site, reducing the need for residue burning and thereby reducing environmental pollution and improving soil health. Instead, the Super SMS helps to uniformly spread rice residue, which is essential for the efficient use of Happy Seeder technology and maintaining soil moisture in the field.
Harminder Singh Sidhu, a senior research engineer with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) working at BISA, stressed the need for more sustainable methods of dealing with residue. “Happy Seeder was found to be a very effective tool for direct sowing of wheat after paddy harvesting, using combine harvesters fitted with Super Straw Management System.”
BISA-PAU researchers received the ISAE Team Award 2018 at the 53rd Annual Convention of ISAE, held from January 28 to January 30, 2019, at Baranas Hindu University in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh state.
The director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Trilochan Mohapatra, presented the award, acknowledging it as “a real team award which is making a difference on the ground.”
The recipients acknowledged the role of local industry partner New Gurdeep Agro Industries for its contributions to promoting the adoption of this machinery. Within eight months of commercialization in the Indian state of Punjab, over 100 manufacturers had begun producing the Super SMS attachment. Currently, more than 5,000 combine harvesters are equipped with it.
New report calls for urgent diet and food system changes to sustainably feed world
A new report by more than 30 world-leading experts in health and environmental sustainability offers a roadmap for a global food system that provides a healthy, sustainable diet for the world’s 10 billion people by 2050.
The report, Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems, represents the first comprehensive review of what constitutes a healthy diet from a sustainable food system.
Published jointly by EAT, a global non-profit foundation founded to catalyze a food system transformation, and The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, the report links diets with human health and environmental sustainability. It lays out five global scientific strategies to achieve healthy diets and sustainable food production by the year 2050: shifting diets, producing healthy food, sustainably intensifying food production, improving land and water governance, and reducing food loss and waste.
The report urges substantial dietary shifts and specific courses of action from consumers, policymakers, businesses and government agencies alike to transform the world’s food system. As the report states, “Without action, the world risks failing to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, and today’s children will inherit a planet that has been severely degraded and where much of the population will increasingly suffer from malnutrition and preventable disease.”
The report emphasizes eating diets heavy in fruits, nuts, vegetables and whole grains and light on meat, as current Western-style diets are already straining the global food system’s environmental impact and pushing planetary limits. According to CIMMYT consultant and leading nutritionist Julie Miller Jones of St. Catherine University, USA, eating whole grain foods reduces obesity and the risk of almost all chronic diseases.
Given that the food system drives nearly 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, occupies 40 percent of land and causes 80 percent of biodiversity loss, increasing healthy, resource-saving foods and reducing unhealthy and unsustainably produced foods is an essential step in securing future environmental sustainability.
The founder and executive chair of EAT, Gunhild Stordalen, commented at the report’s launch event January 17 in Olso, Norway: “No single sector, technology or entity can fix it alone but, for the first time, we have a clear direction and initial targets to align and guide our actions.”
Read the full report here: http://www.thelancet-press.com/embargo/EATComm.pdf.
Read the summary here: https://eatforum.org/content/uploads/2019/01/EAT-Lancet_Commission_Summary_Report.pdf
Best of 2018: Editors’ picks
In 2018, our editors continued to cover exciting news and events related to maize and wheat science around the world. Altogether, we published more than 200 stories.
It is impossible to capture all of the places and topics we reported on, but here are some highlights and our favorite stories of the year.
Thank you for being a loyal reader of CIMMYT’s news and features. We are already working on new stories and platforms for 2019. Stay tuned!
New technical guide to help farmers protect against fall armyworm
In response to the spread of the fall armyworm across Africa, CIMMYT and its partners published a technical guide for integrated pest management. Produced by international experts, it offers details on the best management practices to help smallholder farmers effectively and safely control the pest while simultaneously protecting people, animals and the environment.
The voracious fall armyworm was on the news again in July, as its presence was reported in India, giving this issue a global scale.
CIMMYT and IITA are co-leading the new Fall Armyworm R4D International Consortium, composed of 40 partners, which held an international conference in Ethiopia in October.
Cobs & Spikes podcast: Blue maize opportunities for Mexican farmers
This year we launched our new podcast, Cobs & Spikes, where you can listen to stories from the field, interviews and explainers.
The most popular episode so far was about blue maize, a distinctive feature of Mexico’s food culture. Valued for its rich flavor and texture, it is also catching the attention of some food processing companies and high-end culinary markets. CIMMYT researchers are helping Mexican farmers tap into two emerging markets that could boost incomes while conserving culture and biodiversity.
Scientists confirm value of whole grains and wheat for nutrition and health
A review of scientific studies on cereal grains and health showed that gluten- or wheat-free diets are not inherently healthier for the general populace and may actually put individuals at risk of dietary deficiencies.
Based on a compilation of 12 reports, eating whole grains is actually beneficial for brain health and associated with reduced risk of diverse types of cancer, coronary disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and overall mortality.
African youth find entrepreneurial opportunity in agricultural mechanization
Mechanized agricultural services have traditionally only been used by large-scale farmers who could afford them, but small and medium-sized machines are fast becoming affordable options for family farmers through the advent of service providers. An increasing number of young people across eastern and southern Africa are creating a stable living as entrepreneurs, providing agricultural mechanization services.
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.
New wheat gene map will speed breeding and help secure grain supplies
In a scientific breakthrough, the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium presented an annotated reference genome with a detailed analysis of gene content among subgenomes and the structural organization for all the chromosomes. The research was published on Science.
A BBC news report on this discovery mentioned CIMMYT as a leader in wheat research to help feed the world’s rapidly expanding population.
Better together: Partnership around zinc maize improves nutrition in Guatemala
Over 46 percent of children under five in Guatemala suffer from chronic malnutrition. More than 40 percent of Guatemala’s rural population is deficient in zinc, an essential micronutrient that plays a crucial role in pre-natal and post-natal development and is key to maintaining a healthy immune system.
CIMMYT is working with partners HarvestPlus and Semilla Nueva to reduce malnutrition and zinc deficiency in the country, through the development and deployment of Guatemala’s first biofortified zinc-enriched maize.
Last year we also reported on the release of a new zinc-enriched maize variety in Colombia and how vitamin A orange maize is improving nutrition in Zimbabwe.
Innovation, partnerships and knowledge for African farmers meet at AGRF 2018
CIMMYT was present at the African Green Revolution Forum in Kigali, Rwanda. Leaders discussed practical ways to transform policy declarations into impact on the ground, at a time when farmers are facing the challenge of climate change and the threat of emerging pests and diseases.
On the occasion of this event, CIMMYT’s Director General, Martin Kropff, and the Regional Representative for Africa, Stephen Mugo, authored an op-ed on agricultural innovation in Africa, published by Thomson Reuters (in English) and Jeune Afrique (in French).
International experts discuss progress and challenges of maize research and development in Asia
More than 280 delegates from 20 countries gathered in Ludhiana, in the Indian state of Punjab, for the 13th Asian Maize Conference and Expert Consultation on Maize for Food, Feed, Nutrition and Environmental Security.
Technical sessions and panel discussions covered topics such as novel tools and strategies for increasing genetic gains, stress-resilient maize, sustainable intensification of maize-based cropping systems, specialty maize, processing and value addition, and nutritionally enriched maize for Asia.
Four young people were distinguished in the first edition of the 2018 MAIZE-Asia Youth Innovators Award. One of them wrote a blog about her personal story and her commitment to make hunger history.
Researchers find “hotspot” regions in the wheat genome for high zinc content, new study shows
An international team of scientists applied genome-wide association analysis for the first time to study the genetics that underlie grain zinc concentrations in wheat.
Analyzing zinc concentrations in the grain of 330 bread wheat lines across diverse environments in India and Mexico, the researchers uncovered 39 new molecular markers associated with the trait, as well as two wheat genome segments that carry important genes for zinc uptake, translocation, and storage in wheat.
Around the same time, a study confirmed the nutritional and health benefits of zinc-biofortified wheat in India. It showed that when vulnerable young children in India consume foods with wheat-enriched zinc, the number of days they spend sick with pneumonia and vomiting significantly diminishes.
Study in Ethiopia links healthy soils to more nutritious cereals
A study in Ethiopia found that wheat grown in areas closer to the forest had more nutrients, like zinc and protein. Soils in these areas are rich in organic matter — about 1% higher — due to decomposing trees and plants, as well as manure of livestock grazed in the forest.
Increasing organic matter by 1 percent was associated with an increase in zinc equivalent to meet the daily needs of 0.2 additional people per hectare and an increase in protein equivalent to meeting the daily needs of 0.1 additional people per hectare. These modest increases in soil organic matter contribute a small, but important, increase in nutrients found in wheat.
Although these nutrient increases are not enough to address hidden hunger on their own, they reveal how healthy soils are an additional tool — alongside diet diversity and the biofortification of food — to fight malnutrition.
In 2018 we published our latest annual report, highlighting CIMMYT’s global work and collaboration with partners. It features infographics and case studies from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mexico and Pakistan.
It is a good way to understand how CIMMYT’s science improves livelihoods around the world.
You can read the web version or the PDF of the report, or watch the video summary below.
Breaking Ground: Tek Sapkota finds ways to reduce emissions from agriculture without compromising food security
As the world population increases, so does the need for food. “We need to produce more to feed increasing populations and meet dietary demands,” says Tek Sapkota, agricultural systems and climate change scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). In the case of agriculture, the area of land under cultivation is limited, so increased food production has to come through intensification, Sapkota explains. “Intensification means that you may be emitting more greenhouse gases if you’re applying more inputs, so we need to find a way to sustainable intensification: increase the resilience of production systems, but at the same time decrease greenhouse gas emissions, at least emission intensity.”
Sapkota is involved in a number of global climate change science and policy forums. He represents CIMMYT in India’s GHG platform, a multi-institution platform that regularly prepares greenhouse gas emission estimates at the national and state levels and undertakes relevant policy analyses. Nominated by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and his country, Nepal, he is one of the lead authors of the “special report on climate change and land” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He coordinates climate change mitigation work at CIMMYT. “I am mainly involved in quantification of greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental footprint from agricultural production systems, exploring mitigation options and quantifying their potential at different scales in different regions,” Sapkota says. In addition, he explores low-carbon development activities and the synergies between food production, adaptation and mitigation work within the different components of CIMMYT’s projects.
Agriculture is both a victim of as well as a contributor to climate change, Sapkota explains. “Climate change affects all aspects of food production, because of changes in temperature, changes in water availability, CO2 concentrations, etc.,” he says. “The other side of the coin is that agriculture in general is responsible for about 25 to 32 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.”
Measuring emissions and examining mitigation options
A big part of Sapkota’s work is to find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change and the emissions from the agricultural sector. There are three types of mitigation measures, he explains. First, on the supply side, agriculture can “increase efficiency of the inputs used in any production practice.” Second, there’s mitigation from the demand side, “by changing the diet, eating less meat, for example.” Third, by reducing food loss and waste: “About 20 percent of the total food produced for human consumption is being lost, either before harvest or during harvest, transport, processing or during consumption.”
Sapkota and his team analyze different mitigation options, their potential and their associated costs. To that purpose, they have developed methodologies to quantify and estimate greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural products and systems, using field measurement techniques, models and extrapolation.
“You can quantify the emission savings a country can have by following a particular practice” and “help countries to identify the mitigation practices in agriculture that can contribute to their commitments under the Paris climate agreement.”
Their analysis looks at the biophysical mitigation potential of different practices, their national-level mitigation potential, their economic feasibility and scalability, and the country’s governance index and readiness for finance — while considering national food security, economic development and environmental sustainability goals.
Recently, Sapkota and his colleagues completed a study quantifying emissions from the agricultural sector in India and identifying the best mitigation options.
This type of research has a global impact. Since agriculture is a contributor to climate change “better management of agricultural systems can contribute to reducing climate change in the future,” Sapkota says. Being an important sector of the economy, “agriculture should contribute its share.”
Impact on farmers
Sapkota’s research is also helping farmers today. Inefficient use of products and inputs is not only responsible for higher greenhouse gas emissions, but it also costs farmers more. “For example, if farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plain of India are applying 250 to 300 kg of nitrogen per hectare to produce wheat or rice, by following precision nutrient management technologies they can get similar yield by applying less nitrogen, let’s say 150 kg.” As farmers cut production costs without compromising yield, “their net revenue from their products will be increased.”
Farmers may also get immediate benefits from government policies based on the best mitigation options. “Governments can bring appropriate policy to incentivize farmers who are following those kinds of low-emission technologies, for example.”
Farmers could also get rewarded through payments for ecosystem services or for their contribution to carbon credits.
Sapkota is happy that his work is beneficial to farmers. He was born in a small village in the district of Kaski, in the mid-hills of Nepal, and agriculture was his family’s main livelihood. “I really enjoy working with farmers,” he says. “The most fascinating part of my work is going to the field: talking to farmers, listening to them, learning what kind of farming solutions they’re looking for, and so on. This helps refine our research questions to make them more strategic, because the way farmers look at a problem is sometimes entirely different from the way we look at it.”
When he was in Himalaya Secondary School, he studied agriculture as a vocational subject. “I was interested because we were doing farming at home.” This vocation got cemented in university, in the 1990s. When he heard about the agricultural industry and the future opportunities, he decided to pursue a career in science and focus on agriculture. He got his bachelor’s and master’s degree of science in agriculture from the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS), Tribhuvan University, in Nepal.
A global path
He first heard about CIMMYT when he was doing his master’s. “CIMMYT was doing research in maize- and wheat-based plots and systems in Nepal. A few of my friends were also doing their master theses with the financial support of CIMMYT.” After his master’s, he joined an organization called Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) which was collaborating with CIMMYT on a maize research program.
Sapkota got a PhD in Agriculture, Environment and Landscapes from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Italy, including research in Aarhus University, Denmark.
After defending his thesis, in 2012, he was working on greenhouse gas measurement in the University of Manitoba, Canada, when he saw an opening at CIMMYT. He joined the organization as a post-doctoral fellow and has been a scientist since 2017. Sapkota considers himself a team player and enjoys working with people from different cultures.
His global experience has enriched his personal perspective and his research work. Through time, he has been able to see the evolution of agriculture and the “dramatic changes” in the way agriculture is practiced in least developed countries like Nepal. “When I was a kid agriculture was more manual … but now, a lot of technologies have been developed and farmers can use them to increase the efficiency of farming”.
SACAU’s Majola Mabuza at COP24: How soil can help meet climate targets
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Majola Mabuza, Program Officer, The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions. (Video: UNFCCC)
KATOWICE, Poland (CIMMYT) — Agricultural scientists attending U.N. COP24 climate talks in Katowice, Poland are discussing a wide range of potential solutions to slow global warming and meet targets laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change.
The agreement, which has been under intense discussion by negotiators, requires keeping global temperatures in check — to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Delegates participating in a side event session on agriculture, which produces about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, discussed the role of soil, presenting scientific evidence of the value of recarbonization. Much of the carbon that was formerly stored in soil, which acts as a carbon sink, has been released into the atmosphere, contributing to global temperature increases.
Majola Mabuza, program officer responsible for policy at the non-profit Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU), participated in the panel on Monday evening and discussed various risks farmers face and hurdles that need to be overcome.
Mabuza, an agricultural economist, whose research interests span institutional economics of farmers’ organizations, food security and the economics of non-conventional agricultural enterprises, shared some views with CIMMYT about recarbonization.
Q: What is the scale of the role soil plays in climate change?
A: The global carbon pool in soils — at a depth of 2 meters — is three times that of carbon found in the atmosphere. As such, both increases in soil organic carbon and protection against losses from this pool are important strategies for environmental protection. Management practices that raise soil organic carbon have co-benefits such as increased productivity and resilience and can in turn improve food security and sustainable rural development.
Land use changes such as intensification of agriculture or converting grasslands into plow lands often turn them into carbon sources, releasing huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere. The time scales of the source and sink function of soils are fundamentally different: whereas building up belowground carbon stocks takes hundreds or thousands of years, depleting these stocks can be measured in decades or even days, [for example in the case of] forest or grassland fires.
Q: Will soil be the silver bullet to meet food security and climate change goals?
A: Not necessarily a silver bullet. To address climate change and improve food security, a lot is required from various actors. For instance, at this conference, we have learned of food that is produced, but almost a third of it is lost or goes to waste along the chain. Lost or wasted food also contributes to emissions in various forms. So, fixing the issue of soils alone will not win the battle, a lot more issues need to be fixed.
At the production stage, soils have an important role to play in reducing carbon emissions. Soil acts as a sink for carbon, the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Agricultural management approaches such as conservation agriculture and agroforestry simultaneously improve soil carbon, soil fertility and water conservation. More food will be produced on the same land to meet the needs of the growing population.
Q: What will you speak about at the COP24 side event Soils Advantage: Transforming Agriculture by Recarbonizing the Earth’s Soil?
A: Farmers are essentially the managers of land and soils and are by far responsible for whatever happens to the soil. Are farmers, including smallholders, aware of the connection between soil activities and climate change? Do they know the carbon content in their farms? What incentives are there for farmers to build soil organic carbon within their farm plans? What lessons have we learnt with the promotion of such programs as organic farming, conservation agriculture and/or climate-smart agriculture that we can tag along in the drive to transform agriculture by recarbonizing the soil? While some advocate for rewarding better practices or performance on soil carbon in financial markets by attracting higher land values, lower interest rates on loans, or lower insurance premiums, how practical will this be in developing countries where most smallholders do not own the land they produce from?
Q: What is the purpose of recarbonizing?
A: The purpose is essentially to take carbon back to the soil. A lot of human activities, including deforestation, repeated soil tillage — industrial agriculture — and burning of fossil fuels have disrupted the carbon cycle, taking it out of balance. Too much of the carbon that was once in the soil has been released to the atmosphere, hence a lot of it is now in the atmosphere and some in the ocean, but not enough where it once was and where it is more beneficial for sustainable food production and food security — in soil.
Q: How is recarbonization achieved?
A: The most feasible route is to cover the soil with plants and trees, promote organic farming, conservation agriculture, agroforestry, and climate-smart agriculture practices. Plant photosynthesis has the remarkable ability to capture atmospheric CO2, release the oxygen back into the atmosphere, and convert the carbon into sugars, which are used by plants for growth. A considerable proportion of the captured CO2 is released through the plant’s roots to feed soil microorganisms, which in turn assist the plant in acquiring nutrients. Soil microorganisms use this energy to make soil carbon and humus. If left undisturbed, soil humus can lock carbon into place for an average lifetime of hundreds to thousands of years.
Q: Are there efforts underway to do this?
A: Current programs include organic farming, conservation agriculture and climate-smart agriculture.
Q: In terms of wheat and maize, will this have an impact?
A: A great impact. Maize and wheat are the main staples for the poor in Africa and Asia respectively. If we build our soil recarbonizing program around such staple crops.
Q: What is the impact of crop rotations on soil?
A: Crop rotation is an important practice of any sustainable agricultural system. Crop rotation has the following major benefits: It improves soil fertility — as legumes such as groundnuts and beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the benefit of cereals such as maize. Farmers use less chemical fertilizer because legumes in the soil fix the nitrogen naturally. It helps to reduce weeds, diseases and pests by breaking their lifecycles as crops are rotated. It reduces the risk of crop failure in case of drought or disease and improves crop yield.
Soils Advantage: Transforming Agriculture by Recarbonizing the Earth’s Soil was held on Dec. 11, 2018 at 6:30-9:00 p.m. in the Bieszczady side event room in section G at the COP24 venue.
The impact of climate inaction on food security
While in Australia, Matthew Morell, director general of IRRI, and I spoke to Devex about the limits of agricultural research to solve food crises in a fast-changing environment.
Read the full story on Devex: https://www.devex.com/news/the-impact-of-climate-inaction-on-food-security-94015
New publications: Climate change impact and adaptation for wheat protein
Globally, wheat provides around 20 percent of the calories and protein in human diets. By mid-century, crop production must increase by 60 percent to meet global food demand and help reduce hunger, a challenge made even harder by climate change. “Climate Change Impact and Adaptation for Wheat Protein,” a study published in Global Change Biology in September 2018, examines why wheat grain protein concentration — a determinant of grain quality — is often overlooked in relation to improving global crop production in the face of climate change challenges.
“The impact of climate change on crops typically focuses on productivity; however, there are nutritional implications too,” says key contributor to the study Matthew Reynolds, wheat physiologist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). “Since wheat also provides a significant proportion of protein in the diets of millions of resource-poor people, the negative impact of increased atmospheric CO2 on protein concentration in the grain is a disturbing fact,” stated Reynolds. “If not addressed, it could have a devastating impact on the health and livelihoods especially of marginalized people who cannot easily afford diverse sources of protein in their diet.”
Multi-location field trials, in addition to model testing, were used to systematically analyze the effects of increasing temperature, heat shocks, elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration, nitrogen, water deficiency and the combination of these factors on yield and wheat grain protein in the world’s main wheat producing regions. This study marked the first time that heat shock and high temperature interaction with elevated CO2 concentration was tested through an impact model. As noted in the study, “This is the most comprehensive study ever done of the effect of climate change on yield and the nutritional quality of one of the three major sources of human food security and nutrition.”
Read the full study here.
Check out other recent publications by CIMMYT researchers here:
- Association of Lr 34 gene complex with spot blotch disease resistance at molecular level in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Suneel Kumar, Singh, R.P., Joshi, A.K., Roder, M.S., Chhuneja Parveen, Mavi, G.S., Kumar, U. In: Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding v. 78, no. 3, p. 302-308.
- Base temperatures and degrees days development of 10 Mexican corn accessions. Arista-Cortes, J., Quevedo-Nolasco, A., Zamora-Morales, B.P., Bauer Mengelberg, J.R., Sonder, K., Lugo-Espinosa, O. In: Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agricolas v. 9, no. 5, p. 1023-1033.
- Genetic analysis of resistance to stripe rust in durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. Var. Durum). Xue Lin, N’Diaye, A., Walkowiak, S., Nilsen, K., Cory, A.T., Haile, J., Kutcher, H.R., Ammar, K., Loladze, A., Huerta-Espino, J., Clarke, J.M., Ruan, Y., Knox, R., Fobert, P., Sharpe, A.G., Pozniak, C.J. In: PLoS One v. 13, no. 9, art. e0203283.
- Pre-harvest management is a critical practice for minimizing aflatoxin contamination of maize. Mahuku, G., Nzioki, H., Mutegi, C., Kanampiu, F., Narrod, C., Makumbi, D. In: Food Control v. 96, p. 219-226.
- Variations in food-fodder traits of bread wheat cultivars released for the Ethiopian highlands. Bezabih, M., Adie, A., Ravi, D., Prasad, K.V.S.V., Jones, C., Abeyo Bekele Geleta, Tadesse, Z., Zegeye, H., Solomon, T., Blummel, M. In: Field Crops Research v. 229, p. 1-7.
Farmers cite climate change as biggest challenge, says World Farmers Organization at COP24 talks
KATOWICE, Poland (CIMMYT) — Controversies over fossil fuels, indigenous rights and the intricacies of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which was designed to keep global temperatures from rising no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, are just some of the key topics in focus at U.N. COP24 climate talks.
A vital thread in the climate change narrative, much debated in the corridors of the conference center in Katowice, Poland, is agriculture — a fragile yet vital sector of the global economy which produces about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The member-driven World Farmers Organization (WFO), a group of 1.5 billion farmers from 54 countries, represents the farm community at the United Nations on climate change and other topics, including the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda.
A new “Climakers” initiative, launched on the sidelines of the COP24 talks, will help address the biggest threat farmers say they fear, according to Luisa Volpe, head of policy development at WFO in an interview. Volpe, who has been with WFO since 2014, formerly worked on farmers programs with the International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD).
“I decided I wanted to move to the other side of the coin and work directly with those who are the targets of big multilateral governmental organizations and government policies,” Volpe said, adding that farmers, tasked with producing more with less for a growing population, are also among those most affected by climate change.
Q: What is the biggest challenge farmers face?
A: The view of the farmers that I represent is that climate is the most important challenge because climate may have an impact on the harvest, on the seeds, on the area where they want to harvest, whether they should move, migration of young farmers to the city, on the kind of products they can produce. Climate change also has an impact on market prices. Of course there are others — they include access to infrastructure, access to financing, having proper insurance and availability and access to financing mechanisms. Farmers say that among this range of issues they may face, climate is probably the most intense because it’s probably the one that they cannot control. They’re just influenced by it and there is little that they can do. Foreseeing weather patterns is very limited — with technology they’re able to predict weather patterns one week before, but not longer. It’s really challenging for them.
Q: How are farmers managing the challenge of climate change?
A: This is something that represents the common ground for all the farmers of the world despite differences in terms of geographical area, in terms of type of business that they manage. Last May in Moscow, during the WFO general assembly, WFO got a unanimous mandate from all of our constituency — made up of national farmers organizations from all over the world — to initiate, establish and propose a new agenda for climate, driven by the farmers themselves. Basically, our members realized that the impact of climate change on farming is something that’s common to all farmers around the world. Their proposal is to first create a broad alliance with the farmers organizations worldwide who may have either a regional voice or a global voice in order to represent all the areas of the world and work together — to join their hands in a new initiative on climate change.
Q: How will the initiative take shape?
A: The outcome of the initiative will be an overarching document with which we as a farmers organization can advocate at the international level and our members can advocate at the national level. What we’re planning to do is to organize a series of regional workshops to meet the farmers themselves and collect case studies and best practices of what farmers are already doing to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Farmers, as all other sectors of the world, are contributing to the causes of climate change. This agenda would not work if we don’t add other actors to the alliance. It’s farmers first, but then a close dialogue with CGIAR.
We’ve started with CCAFS, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. We want to work closely with them to make sure that the practices we propose to governments as examples to follow and to scale up when they propose their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) — country level contributions to reducing emissions as part of the Paris Agreement — are effective and science based. Here, we propose to close the gap with science and improve cooperation between farmers and science, so that science really responds to the questions farmers pose — to which they align their practices. In this sense, the scientific research can be more aligned to what farmers actually need, while the farmers may improve their own practices by also responding to the needs of the research.
To really tackle climate change challenges, we need innovation and technologies that are science-based and sustainable, because the main principle of all these agendas is sustainability. What we propose is that farmers contribute by improving their access to innovation research and technology to make their production more sustainable.
Q: Could you explain how you intend to take this practice to a global scale?
A: The other actors we plan to involve are those belonging to the food value chain, because we think that farmers alone cannot be the only solution. That’s why we’re establishing a partnership, for example, with the International Fertilizer Association as well as the International Seeds Federation. We’re in a partnership with Crop Life because they represent a huge element in the food chain. It has to be a global movement if you really want to achieve something that’s effective and efficient. We’ll expand also to other actors in the food chain. We’re also negotiating with multilateral governmental organizations because we need their support for advocacy work we want to do. Governments will become the targets instead of being those who will just propose and impose policies to the farmers. In our view, farmers have the solution in their hands already. What we have to do is to put them in a condition to really influence and feed the political documents that governments will adopt and that will become national policies.
Q: What is Climakers and the farmer-driven climate change agenda you launched at COP24?
A: Climakers are those who become part of the global alliance for this new initiative. The alliance is global, the agenda is farmers-driven. Farmers expressing their needs and their challenges and their best practices — together with science and the multilaterals and the private sector is that of supporting the agenda, supporting the farmers and take it to the governments. Climakers is the name we have chosen for those who are on the farmer side because we think that farmers may make the climate.
Q: In terms of the COP24 negotiations, are you getting any sense of what could be happening that could benefit farmers or are more demands being put on farmers?
A: I see it [as] a very slow process. We were very happy when we saw the concept of food security and food production in the Paris Agreement because although there is no mention of agriculture, at least they mentioned food production. It means that probably some little political will to address the farming sector is there. There is a will to implement the Paris Agreement in the agricultural sector. The negotiation is very slow between north and south regarding the mitigation and adaptation issue, and also the fact that financing for climate change is there, but probably the way it is managed is not really supporting the communities because the channels are too complicated and too long… There are probably some seeds up there, but it’s still a long way. That’s why farmers want to propose an icebreaking agenda.
Q: Are there any other key points you would like to make in the context of climate change?
A: One element that is a little bit controversial for me is critical in the development of agriculture and also in tackling climate change, which is innovation — innovation in terms of practices, in terms of technology, in terms of research, but also in terms of creating financing for farmers and to support rural areas. These have to come from the government side, from the value chain actors, from the farmers themselves and also from the science, from the research centers.
If we close the gap between the farmers and the science, it’s probably the way out for boosting development for the rural areas. We don’t have to be scared of being innovative. Innovation doesn’t mean GMOs. Innovation may also mean an innovative way to treat soils. It may be a new way to access markets, create access to finance for farmers, but also an innovative way to interact between governments and the farmers themselves. To me, innovation is the way out really, that can give a boost to this process.
Gratitude for soil
On December 5, we celebrate World Soil Day. This year the theme is “Be the solution to soil pollution.” Most of you may not have been aware that such a day even existed or perhaps even question the reason why the world even dedicates an entire day to celebrate soil. The authors of this article are soil scientists; we have devoted our professional careers to studying soil. Perhaps we are biased, but we use this opportunity to enlighten readers with a greater appreciation for the importance of this thin layer of our planet we call soil.
Humankind has a conflicting relationship with soil. In English, “dirt” and “dirty” are synonyms for unclean, calling a man or a woman “dirty” is a terrible insult. A baby’s dirty diapers are said to be “soiled.” But if we dig deeper into human consciousness, we find a different story.
For Hindus, the Panchtatva defines the universal laws of life. Everything, including life, is composed of five basic elements: Akash, space or sky; Vayu, air; Jal, water; Agni, fire; and Prithvi, earth or soil. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the first two human beings on the planet were Adam and Eve. In Hebrew, the original language of the Bible’s Old Testament, the name Adam means “earth” or “soil” and Eve means “life.” These images and symbols portray that human life originally derived from soil.
It gets even deeper: The English terms “human” and “humanity” are rooted in the Greek word “humus,” the fertile black topsoil.
When we use the words “soil” and “dirt” as derogatory terms, we literally define ourselves as soil. Soil is important and here are a few reasons why.
Soil is absolutely critical for the survival of our species and of all living life on the planet. Over 90 percent of all food produced in the world comes from soil and a greater percentage of the world’s freshwater passes through soil.
Arguably, climate change is the greatest threat to our species. Despite mitigation efforts by the global community, soil is frequently forgotten. However, soil holds roughly two and a half times the amount of carbon held in the atmosphere and in all of the plants and animals combined.
Soil is also the greatest reservoir of biodiversity on the planet. In one pinch of soil, there are over 1 billion individual organisms and 1 million unique species, most of which we know almost nothing about. In one handful of soil, there are more living organisms than the total number of human beings that have ever walked on the planet. As all of our antibiotics have been derived from soil microorganisms, the secrets to fighting all kinds of diseases are just under your feet.
In Nepal, soil is deeply interrelated with culture. From birth to death, Nepalese use soil in many rituals: naming ceremonies, birthday celebrations, soiling on Ashar 15, local healing and medicine, etc.
The government of Nepal has set ambitious targets for increasing the levels of organic matter in soil. This is essential to ensure that the soils that have sustained Nepali civilization for centuries will continue to sustain future generations. We need to encourage farmers and land managers in Nepal to maintain terracing on steeply sloped lands to protect against soil erosion. It is also important to appropriately use agrochemicals, such as pesticides and inorganic fertilizers, to improve soil health and crop productivity.
Soil has been polluted by heavy metals, effluents from chemical industries, indiscriminate use of agrochemicals, urbanization without proper planning, networking of roads without considering the carrying capacity of the soil and other factors. So let’s not overlook the importance of soil. We need to value the cleansing properties of soil, particularly riverine soils, and prevent these areas from continuing as the dumping grounds and sewers of Kathmandu and other cities.
On this day, the day when we celebrate soil, take a moment to look under your feet and marvel at the beauty and complexity of soil.
If we take care of our soils, our soils will take care of us.
In pictures: Six agricultural innovations combating climate change
Farmers around the world are at the front lines of climate change. They are directly affected by more frequent and 
severe droughts, rising temperatures, variable rainfall, and emerging pests and crop diseases. In low-and middle income countries, where farming is the main source of income for some of the poorest and more vulnerable people, agriculture must urgently adapt to new climate-induced stresses.
With agriculture on the agenda at this week’s UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland, we highlight some encouraging innovations for improving resilience and productivity for agriculture under climate change. The photo story from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) shows the advantages of joint action by farmers, researchers, governments, not-for-profits and businesses.