The world needs better management of water, soil, nutrients, and biodiversity in crop, livestock, and fisheries systems, coupled with higher-order landscape considerations as well as circular economy and agroecological approaches.
CIMMYT and CGIAR use modern digital tools to bring together state-of-the-art Earth system observation and big data analysis to inform co-design of global solutions and national policies.
Our maize and wheat genebanks preserve the legacy of biodiversity, while breeders and researchers look at ways to reduce the environmental footprint of agriculture.
Ultimately, our work helps stay within planetary boundaries and limit water use, nutrient use, pollution, undesirable land use change, and biodiversity loss.
Food entrepreneur Jorge Gaviria had the idea to small-scale farmers one by one who had surplus corn, buy it from them at market price and then import it to the United States. He partnered with CIMMYT to build up relationships with farmers, working out intricate systems that would determine fair prices and ensure that they were only buying surplus corn.
Read more here.
One major reason why maize productivity in sub-Saharan Africa is very low is poor soil health. Soil acidity is often mentioned because of its impact on crop yields and the extent of acid soils in the region. A recent soil mapping exercise, conducted by the Ethiopian Soil Information System (EthioSIS) under the administration of the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), estimated that 43% of arable lands were affected by acid soils and that 3.6 million people, about 10% of the total rural population, live in areas with acidic soils.
Very acid soils — those with a pH below 5.5, roughly one hundred times more acidic than neutral soils — are associated with certain toxicities, like aluminum and iron excess, and some nutrient deficiencies. Soil acidity pushes soil nutrients out of reach of the plant, leading to stunting of root system and plant. As a result, the plant becomes also less tolerant to drought.
Soil acidification depends on soil nature, agroecology and farming systems. It happens through natural leaching of CO2 after rainfall and excess application of nitrogenous fertilizer or organic matter, for instance.
As a result, soil acidity significantly affects maize yields. In Ethiopia, studies have revealed substantial impacts on crop productivity related to acid soils and the importance of acid soil management for Ethiopia’s food security. The Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) estimated that soil acidity on wheat production alone costed the country over 9 billion Ethiopian Birr, about $300 million per year.
Acidic soils in the limelight
Preliminary analysis led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) suggests that yields of major cereal crops, such as wheat and barley, could increase by 20 to 40% with the application of lime in acidic areas of the country.
While these preliminary results are significant, we need to know more about local farmers’ experience with acidic soil and their mitigation strategies. Such impact assessments are however typically determined at either the national or experimental plot level and do not map where mitigating against acid soils would be the most profitable.
To improve acid soils, farmers may apply lime on their fields to raise the pH, a practice known as liming. How much lime to apply will depend on the crop, soil type but also on the quality of lime available. Liming has multiple beneficial effects like improving nitrogen fixation of legume nodules, boosting yields of legume crops.
But liming has a cost. It can quickly become a very bulky affair as we need to apply 3 to 4 tons per hectare for sandy soils and up to 8 tons per hectare for clay and humifere soils.
Furthermore, existing lime markets are quite limited or even non-existent in many areas, even those where acidic soils are prevalent. Developing supply chains from scratch is difficult and costly. Understanding the costs and potential returns to such investments is important. There are many questions to ask at different levels, from the farm and farming system to the lime supply chain. What are the available lime sources — calcitic, dolomite or blend — and lime quality? Where are the lime processing units and how could you assess the transport cost to the farms? What could be the crop yield response depending on the lime application?
User-friendly and scalable dashboard
IFPRI, in collaboration with EIAR, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the German aid agency GIZ, developed a pilot in Ethiopia’s Amhara region to help better target lime interventions for a greater impact. Amhara region was chosen because of the importance of acid soils, and access to extensive soil data.
Combination of several spatial datasets on soil quality, agroecological, weather, long-term agronomic trials and crop modelling tools enabled to generate at scale, georeferenced estimates of crop yield responses for different lime applications. Calibration of this spatial model for wheat estimated a yield increase of approximately 30% increasing the pH from 5.5 to 6.5, which is relatively consistent with general research data and expert opinion.
Mapped estimates of the grain prices and the delivered costs of lime, based on the location of the lime crushers in the region and transport costs, enables then to map out the spatial profitability of lime operations.
Initial calculations revealed a great variability of lime costs at the farmgate, with transportation representing at least half of total lime costs. It showed also that farmers often do not use the most cost-effective combination of inputs to tackle soil acidity.
Another possible application is to determine maize growing areas where lime benefits outweigh the costs, which would be ideal sites for demonstrating to farmers the positive impact lime applications could have to their livelihoods.
This Amhara lime dashboard prototype demonstrated its scalability. A national dashboard is currently being developed, which includes lime sources GPS location, grain prices and district-level soil quality mapping. This approach is tested also in Tanzania.
CIMMYT and its partners plan to package such tool in a user-friendly open-access web version that can be rapidly updated and customized depending on the area of intervention, for instance integrating a new lime source, and applied for different crops, and across the Eastern African region. Such dashboards will help development organizations and government make better informed decisions regarding lime investments.
Step into supermarkets or restaurants in Mexico City and surrounding towns and you might see products made from blue maize — food which would not have been available just a few years ago. Some of Mexico’s favorite dishes are taking on a new hue with blue corn chips, blue tortillas or blue tamales. But should breeders, millers, processors and farmer organizations invest in expanding the production of blue maize and blue maize products? Are consumers really interested, and are they willing to pay more?
These are some of the questions researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico set out to answer. They set up study to test consumer preferences and willingness to pay for this blue maize tortillas.
Maize is a main staple crop in Mexico and tortillas form the base of many traditional dishes. Blue maize varieties have existed for thousands of years, but until recently they were mostly unknown outside of the farming communities that grew them. In addition to its striking color, the grain has gained popularity partly due to its health benefits derived from anthocyanin, the blue pigment which contains antioxidants.
“Demand for blue maize has skyrocketed in the past few years,” said Trent Blare, economist at CIMMYT and the leader of the research.” Three years ago, white and blue maize sold at the same price. One year ago, blue maize cost just a few Mexican pesos more, and now blue maize is worth significantly more. However, we still lack information on consumer demand and preferences.”
According to Blare, the end goal of the study is to explore the demand for blue maize and try to better understand its market potential. “If we want farmers who grow blue maize to be able to get better market value, we have to know what the market looks like.”
This research received funding from Mexico’s Agency for Commercialization Services and Agricultural Market Development (ASERCA), which has been working with farmer organizations on post-harvest storage solutions for their maize. As blue maize is softer than typical white or yellow varieties, it requires special storage to protect it against insects and damage. In order to help provide farmers with the correct maize storage technology, ASERCA and others in Mexico will benefit from a deeper understanding of the market for blue maize in the region. In addition, researchers were interested to know if there is a premium for growing blue maize, or for making tortillas by hand. Premiums could help convince farmers to invest in post-harvest technologies and in the production of blue maize.
“There is this idea that demand should come from producers, but there are many steps along the maize value chain. We’re basically going backwards in the value chain: is there demand, is there a market, going all the way from the consumer back to the farmer,” Blare explained.
A matter of taste
The study was conducted in Texcoco, just outside of Mexico City, where CIMMYT’s global headquarters are based. This town in the State of Mexico was chosen because of its long history growing and consuming blue maize. Interviews were held in three different locations, a local traditional market and two local shopping malls, in order to ensure that different socioeconomic groups were included.
The team interviewed 640 consumers, asking questions such as where do they buy different types of tortillas, in which dishes they use different types of tortillas and if they faced difficulties in purchasing their preferred tortilla. The team also conducted sensory analysis and attributes, and gave study participants a choice between handmade blue maize tortillas, handmade white maize tortillas, and machine-made white maize tortillas.
The interviewees were given three different scenarios. Would they be willing to pay more for blue tortillas compared to other tortillas if eating quesadillas at a restaurant? To serve during a special event or visit from a family member? For everyday use?
The answers allowed researchers to quantify how much more consumers were willing to pay and in what circumstance, as they were given different price points for different types of tortillas in different scenarios.
True colors
The researchers found that preferences for blue and white maize were distinct for different dishes, and that there was a particular preference for blue maize when used in traditional dishes from this region, such as tlacoyos or barbacoa. A majority of consumers was willing to pay more for higher quality tortillas regardless of the color, as long as they were made handmade and fresh from locally grown maize. Interviewers also saw a noticeable difference in preference for blue tortillas depending on the situation: blue tortillas are demanded more for special occasions and in traditional markets.
“I found it fascinating that there is a difference in blue maize consumption based on the circumstance in which you are eating it.” Blare said. “This is one of the innovations in our demand study — not analyzing the demand for a food product in general but analyzing differences in demand for a product in different contexts, which is important as food is such an important component for celebrations.”
“We think there is potential to replicate this in other places in Mexico, to see consumer preference and price willingness for blue maize and other value-added maize products,” said Jason Donovan, senior economist at CIMMYT. “This will not just inform farmers and markets but also how to do this kind of research, especially in middle-income economies. This study is the first of its kind.”
Still got the blue
Overall, the results revealed that women were willing to pay 33% more for blue maize tortillas while men were willing to pay 19% more. For every additional year of education, a consumer was willing to pay 1% more for blue maize tortillas. Interestingly, a person’s income had no effect on her or his willingness to pay for more blue maize tortillas. Many people interviewed expressed a preference for blue maize, but commented that they cannot always find it in local markets.
The information collected in these choice experiments will help farmers, breeders, and other actors along the maize value chain make more informed decisions on how to best provide blue maize varieties to the public — and give consumers what they want.
“It was a very interesting experience, I’ve never participated in a survey like this before and I think it is important to take the time to think about our decisions about food,” said Brenda Lopez, one of the interviewees in the choice experiment. Lopez preferred the handmade tortillas, especially those made with blue maize. “I think they have more flavor,” she said. “I just bought handmade tortillas in the market before participating in this survey, but I had to buy white because there was no blue available.”
Another interviewee, Luis Alcantara, agreed. “I prefer blue because of the flavor, the texture, even the smell,” he said. “At home we eat machine-made tortillas because it is hard to find handmade tortillas, and even if you do, they are not blue. We would buy blue if we could.”
Cover photo: Blue maize tortillas (Photo: Luis Figueroa)
Latin America is the birthplace of maize and home to much of its genetic diversity. Maize is a main staple food across the continent and plays an important role in local culture and gastronomy. However, maize faces many challenges, from climate change related stresses such as drought and heat to emerging pests and diseases. Maize experts, as well as scientists from other key crops, from around the world came together to discuss these challenges and how to solve them at the 23rd Latin American Maize Reunion and 4th Seed Congress, held October 7-10 in Monteria, Colombia.
The reunion began with a welcome address from Luis Narro, a senior maize scientist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). Narro thanked participants for coming from throughout the region and discussed the history of the event. “Why are we here today? Because maize is one of the most important crops of this century. This should be both a challenge and incentive for us to continue our work with maize, as it is a crop with huge demand,” he said.
In the inaugural session, Deyanira Barrero, general manager of the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA) and Jorge E. Bedoya, president of the Society of Colombian Farmers, highlighted the importance of seeds and strategies to ensure the quality and future of Colombia and Latin America’s agri-food systems.
The event was organized by the Colombian Corporation for Agricultural Research (Agrosavia), the Colombian Seed and Biotechnology Association (Acosemillas), the National Federation of Cereal and Legume Growers (Fenalce), the Latin American maize network, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). Four CIMMYT scientists presented at the reunion, sharing their experience with and perspectives on agronomy, seed systems, native maize and strategies to increase resilience to climate change.
Nele Verhulst, senior scientist at CIMMYT, presented on the development of management practices for conservation agriculture as well as post-harvest technologies in Latin America, particularly Mexico and Central America. She emphasized the importance of crop management in maize so that improved seeds can reach their maximum potential in terms of yield and profitability. The seed systems lead for Africa and Latin America with CIMMYT’s Global Maize Program, Arturo Silva, shared his experience in these regions strengthening maize seed systems and working to accelerate variety replacement with newer, better seeds. Terry Molnar, maize breeder at the Center, studies native maize varieties to identify characteristics such as disease resistance that can be used to develop improved maize varieties for smallholder farmers. Kai Sonder, head of CIMMYT’s Geographic Information System (GIS) unit, presented on the potential impact of climate change on global and regional maize production.
The reunion closed with the award session for the winners of the MAIZE Youth Innovators Awards 2019 – Latin America. The awards, an initiative of the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE), seek to recognize the contributions of young women and men who are implementing innovations in Latin American maize-based agri-food systems.
Eduardo Cruz Rojo, Mexico, won in the “Farmer” category for his work using biological control agents to protect maize from fall armyworm. Carlos Barragán and José Esteban Sotelo Mariche, both from Mexico, won in the category of “Change Agent” for their work helping farmers increase their maize yields through inter-cropping and for helping farmers better commercialize their native maize, respectively. In the “Researcher” category, Yésica Chazarreta, from Argentina, won for her research on the effect of maize planting dates on grain filling and drying. Omar Garcilazo Rahme of Mexico was recognized for his work helping farmers grow high-value edible maize fungus in traditional maize production systems. Viviana López Ramírez of Colombia won for her work on bacteriosis in maize, and Lucio Reinoso of Argentina for his contribution to the development of a maize seeder that helps farmers adopt conservation agriculture techniques. In a video message, B.M. Prasanna, director of the CIMMYT global maize program and the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE), congratulated the young winners and expressed his hopes that they would inspire other young people to get involved in maize based systems. This was the first time the awards were held in Latin America, following Asia in 2018 and Africa in spring of 2019.
Two additional awards were given at the close of the reunion, one to Alberto Chassiagne, maize seeds systems specialist for Latin America at CIMMYT, who received first place in the scientific poster competition at the reunion for his work “Proposed model to generate seed production technology for maize hybrids”. Another award went to Luis Narro for his contributions to maize in Latin America throughout his career.
The conference was followed by a field day held October 10 at the Agrosavia Turipaná Research Center in Cereté, Colombia. The field day began with a speech by Colombia’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Andrés Valencia, who discussed the importance of agriculture to his country’s economy as well as plans to increase maize production to decrease reliance on imports. This announcement follows the launch of Maize for Colombia, a strategic plan to help improve maize production in the country while increasing sustainability.
New research by an international team of scientists, including International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) Director for the Integrated Development Program, Bram Govaerts, outlines a proposed accounting system for organic carbon in soils that could encourage farmers to adopt better land management practices and increase levels of organic carbon in their soil.
Reported this month in the journal Carbon Management, the study highlights how increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) would build agricultural resilience and fertility and reduce greenhouse gas emissions — but we need to be able to measure it.
Soil is a huge carbon reservoir — in fact, soils contain one of the largest organic carbon stocks on the planet. With proper land management, soils have the potential to store even more. Improved SOC levels have also been connected with improved soil quality, reduced susceptibility to erosion and greater agricultural yields and yield stability, particularly under drought. This makes them a crucial player in climate change mitigation and agricultural resilience.
Policy makers and environmental groups are becoming increasingly interested in soil health and its effect on climate change. The 4 per 1000 initiative, launched at the COP 21 climate talks in Paris in 2015, argues that an annual growth rate of 0.4% in soil carbon stocks would significantly reduce human activity-related CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment highlights carbon sequestration as one of the options, alongside massive fossil fuel reduction, to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Increasing organic carbon content in soils also has another very important function: crop nutrition. Last year, researchers from CIMMYT and the Nature Conservancy found that wheat grown on soils rich in organic matter had more essential nutrients like zinc and protein.
However, increasing levels of organic carbon in the soil can be costly in the short term, so farmers need to see improvements in the performance of their soils as a result of their efforts.
Quantifying soil carbon
That’s where a global soil information system comes in. By integrating empirical models, expanded measurement and monitoring networks, remote sensing and crowdsourced management data, SOC stocks can be assessed efficiently and reliably. Farmers and policy makers would get a clear picture of how much soil organic carbon is increasing and at what rate.
The global soil information system would work by pulling different sources of existing information together to provide a comprehensive account of soil organic carbon stocks worldwide.
As SOC content can vary over time, an important component of the system would involve using monitoring networks at precise locations which can then be resampled regularly. Alongside this information, empirical models would be used to predict SOC changes based on already observed results from lab- and field-based experiments, and to predict the impacts of different soil and climate conditions. Remote sensing data can provide information on land cover, crop species and land management practices at a very low cost, to supplement and verify management activity data reported by land users.
The international team of scientists pointed out that greater coordination and transparency among scientists, remote sensing specialists and land managers is crucial to the success of a global soil information system.
Incentivizing carbon sequestration among land managers is no mean task. The authors argue that existing approaches like direct compensation to farmers for CO2 removal and storage, government subsidies such as the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the option of earning a premium price for producing sustainable agricultural products, need a reliable carbon accounting system to ensure their success. A global soil information system might just hold the key.
Read the full article:
“Quantifying carbon for agricultural soil management: from the current status toward a global soil information system” in Carbon Management, DOI: 10.1080/17583004.2019.1633231
This study was made possible through the support provided by the TomKat Foundation. Additional support was provided by the NASA Harvest Consortium (www.nasaharvest.org), a multi-disciplinary program that empowers informed agricultural decisions through the use of Earth observations.
July 29, 2019, was a remarkable day for Ethiopia. People across the country planted 353,633,660 tree seedlings in just 12 hours, according to the official count, in what is believed to be a world record. This figure also exceeded the target of a nationwide campaign calling citizens to plant 200 million trees in one day. This initiative was part of the Ethiopian government’s “Green Legacy” initiative, which aims to plant 4 billion trees by October.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and other CGIAR centers working in Ethiopia joined the tree-planting campaign. In the morning of July 29, staff members turned out at Adwa park, near Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport, to plant tree seedlings. This activity was coordinated by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) after receiving an invitation from the Bole subcity administration.
Ethiopia’s tree-planting day received worldwide attention. Al Jazeera reported that, “in addition to ordinary Ethiopians, various international organizations and the business community have joined the tree planting spree which aims to overtake India’s 66 million planting record set in 2017.”
A greener future for CGIAR
Ethiopia’s reforestation efforts align with CGIAR’s sustainability strategy.
In its current business plan, CGIAR has five global challenges including planetary boundaries. Food systems are driving the unsustainable use of the planet’s increasingly fragile ecosystem. A stable climate, water, land, forests and the biodiversity they contain are a precious, yet finite, natural resource. Food systems account for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and will be profoundly affected by its impacts. Agriculture is driving the loss of the world’s forests and productive land, with 5 million hectares of forests lost every year and a third of the world’s land already classified as degraded. Agriculture accounts for about 70% of water withdrawals globally, is a major cause of water stress in countries where more than 2 billion people live, and water pollution from agricultural systems poses a serious threat to the world’s water systems.
With Ethiopia’s increasing population, there is a high pressure on farmland, unsustainable use of natural resources and deforestation.
At the Agriculture Research for Development Knowledge Share Fair organized in Addis Ababa on May 15, 2019, CGIAR centers demonstrated how they are working together to improve agriculture production and environmental sustainability, tackling local challenges and generating global impact in partnership with other organizations, communities and governments.
At the fair’s opening ceremony, Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopia’s Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, noted that the country has policies, institutional arrangements as well as human and financial resources to work towards sustainability. As a result, Ethiopia has made remarkable achievements towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals with the continued support and contributions from partners like CGIAR. He also called CGIAR centers to support the efforts to plant 4 billion tree seedlings in 2019, as part of Ethiopia’s climate change adaptation and mitigation goals.
Northwestern India is home to millions of smallholder farmers making it a breadbasket for grain staples. Since giving birth to the Green Revolution it has continued to increase its food production through rice and wheat farming providing food security to the region.
This high production has not come without shortfalls; groundwater tables are falling from excessive irrigation and climate change has brought erratic rainfall. In response, the state governments of Haryana and Punjab introduced separate legislation forcing farmers to delay rice planting to coincide with the arrival of the monsoonal rains in late June.
With rice sowing pushed back to tackle a looming water crisis, the time available between harvesting rice and planting wheat has been reduced. Consequently, the majority of farmers opt to burn the post-harvest rice straw to quickly prepare their fields for wheat. The majority of the 34 tons of rice residues the region produces is burned in a short window of time, throwing a lot of toxic smoke into the air.
New research, by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), delved into linkages between groundwater and agricultural burning policies. The study uncovered that groundwater conservation policies in Haryana and Punjab are exacerbating the nation’s air pollution crisis by concentrating crop residue burning in the late fall.
“Despite being illegal, the burning of post-harvest rice residues continues to be the most common practice of crop residue management, and while groundwater policies are helping arrest water depletion, they also appear to be exacerbating one of the most acute public health problems confronting India – air pollution,” said CIMMYT scientist and author of the study, Balwinder Singh.
Getting to the guts of air pollution’s chokehold on India
Air pollution in India has increased significantly since 2000. Each fall, from late October to November, a toxic fog containing a mixture of dust, carbon and particles covers northwestern India. For the 18.6 million who live in New Delhi the smog not only brings daily life to a standstill but slices years off life expectancy. It kills an estimated 1.5 million people every year, with nearly half of these deaths occurring in the Indo-Gangetic Plains, the northernmost part of the country that includes New Delhi.
The analysis suggests that temporal changes in burning are a prime contributor to the air quality crisis. The limited amount of time to prepare fields for wheat planting has caused fire intensity to increase by 39 percent, peaking in November with a maximum of 681 fires per day. This increase occurs when temperatures in New Delhi are lower and winds are weak. The still conditions trap pollution and limit the amount that can escape.
Recognizing policy tradeoffs is important for sustainable agricultural intensification
Agriculture for development researchers with CIMMYT investigate how best to sustainably intensify food production. This seeks to produce more food, improve nutrition and livelihoods, and boost rural incomes without an increase in inputs – such as land and water – while reducing environmental impacts. Policies can help to shape efforts towards sustainable intensification by encouraging farming practices that save resources and protect the environment. However, it is important that governments strike the right balance between food security, resource depletion and environmental quality.
The research results shed light on the sustainability challenges confronting many highly productive agricultural systems, where addressing one problem can exacerbate others, said Andrew McDonald, a professor at Cornell University and co-author of the study.
“Identifying and managing tradeoffs and capitalizing on synergies between crop productivity, resource conservation, and environmental quality is essential,” he said.
Policies to promote sustainable intensification can also burst India’s pollution bubble
Surface crop residue retention and incorporation are the promising on-farm management options to address the issue of burning as well as maintaining soil health and long-term sustainability, said M.L. Jat, a scientist with CIMMYT who coordinates sustainable intensification programs in northwestern India.
Apart from pumping toxic smoke into the air, ash left on fields after residue burning can negatively affect soil health in the long term. However, if residue is mulched into the soil, nutrient levels improve and carbon sequestration capacity increases, lowering the release of greenhouse gases. Additionally, residue retention reduces evaporation and increases soil moisture by as much as 10 percent during the wheat-growing season.
“A sensible approach for overcoming tradeoffs will embrace agronomic technologies such as the Happy Seeder, a seed drill that plants seeds without impacting crop residue, providing farmers the technical means to avoid residue burning,” he explained.
“When rice is ready to be reaped, a tractor or a harvester collects the grain, a spreader distributes the straw that remains on the ground and the Happy Seeder drills into the land to seed wheat,” Jat said. “Farmers no longer need to till the land to plant their wheat, instead they practice a form of conservation agriculture.”
Researchers at CIMMYT and Punjab Agricultural University have undertaken extensive trials in farmer fields and the new technology has proven itself as a step forward for developing viable solution to rice crop residue burning.
The Indian government launched a $157 million initiative to discourage burning through agricultural machinery innovations. However, the Happy Seeder is yet to be adopted widely. It is estimated that to cover 50 percent, 5 million ha, of the total acreage under rice-wheat cropping systems in India, about 60,000 Happy Seeders are needed. At present, there are only about 10,000 available.
A recent policy brief suggests rapid adoption needs a major government push to publicize and popularize the technology. The brief suggests delivery of machinery hire services through Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies and private entrepreneurs with ongoing government support is a viable tool to equitably reach farmers.
Access the journal article on Nature Sustainability:
Tradeoffs between groundwater conservation and air pollution from agricultural fires in northwest India
Video demonstration:
The concurrent use of super SMS-fitted combines and Turbo Happy Seeder
Groundwater conservation policies are contributing to the air pollution crisis in northwestern India by concentrating agricultural fires into a narrower window when weather conditions favor poor air quality, according to a new study by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) published on Nature Sustainability.
Facing severe groundwater depletion from intensive crop cultivation, the state governments of Haryana and Punjab introduced separate legislation in 2009 to prohibit early rice establishment in order to reduce water consumption. The study revealed that later rice planting results in later rice harvest, leading to a delayed and condensed period when residues are burned prior to wheat establishment. Consequently, more farmers are setting fire to crop residues at the same time, increasing peak fire intensity by 39%, contributing significantly to atmospheric pollution.
“Despite being illegal, the burning of post-harvest rice residues continues to be the most common practice of crop residue management in northwestern India, and while groundwater policies are helping arrest water depletion, they also appear to be exacerbating one of the most acute public health problems confronting India,” said CIMMYT scientist Balwinder Singh.
“Burning agricultural waste dominantly releases PM2.5 aerosols, a type of fine particulate matter that is particularly harmful to human health,” he explained.
Air pollution in India kills an estimated 1.5 million people every year, with nearly half of these deaths occurring in the Indo-Gangetic Plains, the northernmost part of the country that includes New Delhi.
A holistic view of policies to support sustainable development
The research results shed light on the sustainability challenges confronting many highly productive agricultural systems, where addressing one problem can exacerbate others, said Andrew McDonald, a professor at Cornell University and co-author of the study.
“Identifying and managing tradeoffs and capitalizing on synergies between crop productivity, resource conservation, and environmental quality is essential,” McDonald said.
“To devise more effective agricultural development programs and policies, integrative assessments are required that meld groundwater, air quality, economic, and technology scaling considerations in common frameworks,” he explained.
The current policy environment in India encourages productivity maximization of cereals and very high levels of residue production especially in the western Indo-Gangetic Plains, according to Bruno Gerard, another author of the study and head of CIMMYT’s Sustainable Intensification Program.
“If these policies are changed, companion efforts must facilitate sustainable intensification in areas such as the Eastern Gangetic Plains, where water resources are relatively abundant and closer coupling of crop-livestock systems provides a diverse set of end-uses for crops residues,” Gerard said.
The way forward
Northwestern India is home to millions of smallholder farmers and a global breadbasket for grain staples, accounting for 85% of the wheat procured by the Indian government. Thus, what happens here has regional and global ramifications for food security.
“A sensible approach for overcoming tradeoffs will embrace agronomic technologies such as the Happy Seeder, a seed drill that plants seeds without impacting crop residue, providing farmers the technical means to avoid residue burning,” said ML Jat, a scientist with CIMMYT who coordinates sustainable intensification programs in northwestern India.
“Through continued efforts on the technical refinement and business model development for the Happy Seeder technology, uptake has accelerated,” he added. “Financial incentives in the form of payments for ecosystem services may provide an additional boost to adoption.”
“Additional agronomic management measure such as cultivation of shorter-duration rice varieties may help arrest groundwater decline while reducing the damaging concentration of agricultural burning,” Jat explained.
The researchers suggested that long-term solutions will likely require crop diversification away from rice towards crops that demand less water, like maize, as recently started by the government in the state of Haryana.
Access the journal article on Nature Sustainability:
Tradeoffs between groundwater conservation and air pollution from agricultural fires in northwest India
Read Balwinder Singh’s op-ed in The Telegraph:
Groundwater, the unexpected villain in India’s air pollution crisis
For more information or interview requests, please contact:
Genevieve Renard, Head of Communications, CIMMYT. g.renard@cgiar.org +52 (55) 5804 2004 ext. 2019.
Rodrigo Ordóñez, Communications Manager, CIMMYT. r.ordonez@cgiar.org +52 (55) 5804 2004 ext. 1167.
ABOUT CIMMYT
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is the global leader in publicly funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. Headquartered near Mexico City, CIMMYT works with hundreds of partners throughout the developing world to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat cropping systems, thus improving global food security and reducing poverty. CIMMYT is a member of CGIAR and leads the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and Wheat, and the Excellence in Breeding Platform. The center receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies.
Pollution has become a part of our daily life: particulate matter in the air we breathe, organic pollutants and heavy metals in our food supply and drinking water. All of these pollutants affect the quality of human life and create enormous human costs.
India is home to 15 of the world’s cities with the highest air pollution, making it a matter of national concern. The country is the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, where agriculture is responsible for 18% of total national emissions.
For decades, CIMMYT has engaged in the development and promotion of technologies to reduce our environmental footprint and conserve natural resources to help improve farmer’s productivity.
Efficient use of nitrogen fertilizers, better management of water, zero-tillage farming, and better residue management strategies offer viable solutions to beat air pollution originating from the agriculture sector. Mitigation measures have been developed, field tested, and widely adopted by farmers across Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
“Multi-lateral impacts of air pollution link directly it to various sustainability issues,” explained Balwinder Singh, Cropping Systems Simulation Modeler at CIMMYT. “The major sustainability issues regarding air quality revolve around the common question: How good is good enough to be sustainable? We need to decide how to balance the sustainable agriculture productivity and hazardous pollution levels. We need to have policies on the regulation of crop burning and in addition to policies surrounding methods to help reach appropriate air quality levels.”
For more than 50 years, CIMMYT has been dedicated to safeguarding and using maize and wheat genetic diversity for the betterment of millions of peoples’ lives around the globe. To accomplish this mission, CIMMYT relies on the diversity of its staff.
Just as there is no future for our food security and health of ecosystems without plant and animal biodiversity, an organization can only go so far without diversity and inclusion. These are no longer trendy keywords, they ensure success. According to recent studies, as organizations become more inclusive — in terms of age, gender, sexual orientation, race — the performance of their staff can skyrocket by 30% or more.
On the occasion of the International Day for Biological Diversity, we sat down with CIMMYT’s Director of Human Resources, Monika Altmaier, to discuss what organizations can do to become better, more resilient and efficient through investing in the diversity of staff.
Q: How do you see CIMMYT using diversity to support its growth and goals?
Monika Altmaier: As a research organization, we need to be innovative to stay relevant. Hiring diversity fosters just that. Different backgrounds provide different approaches, therefore speeding up the process of locating the best solution. According to experts, inclusive organizations are 1.7 times more likely to be innovation leaders in their market. Combining peoples’ diverse perspectives opens doors to innovation.
Employing diverse staff allows us to be more creative, competitive and improves our best practices. It provides a fresh pair of eyes. For me, diversity is an asset that enables us to learn about ourselves and others and grow, as people and professionals. Figuring out how people think and why is so interesting.
Q: What is CIMMYT doing to attract and retain more diverse talent?
MA: We have just finished sharpening our Gender and Diversity in Research and the Workplace policy. This document outlines how CIMMYT integrates gender and social inclusiveness in its research and innovation for development. Also, it describes what needs to be done to promote gender equality and diversity at all stages of employment, from securing new talent to retaining it.
Creating a 360-degree induction in multiple languages for all of our staff has been high on our agenda ever since hearing opinions of staff from 46 countries that gathered at our Science Week last year. This induction course will outline what is expected from everyone at CIMMYT: respect and dignity for all colleagues and stakeholders, regardless of gender identity and expression, disability or health status.
On a monthly basis, when doing outreach, HR post vacancy announcements that are attractive to people from different countries, that use gender-sensitive language and invite everyone, especially women to apply. We include colleagues of different genders, nationalities, and from various research and administration units in the selection and interview process. We scrutinize shortlists and make sure we are giving everyone the same opportunity.
One thing that is harder to change is the market. Still today, in some countries women do not get the same opportunities as men, not to talk about people from marginalized communities and members from the LGBTQ community. I hope that this will change because equality not only helps companies, but also countries, to have a happier population. CIMMYT works closely with universities across the world to make sure that more and more talent trickles where it is most needed: into research for development.
Q: In line with hiring diversity, how is CIMMYT attracting millennial talent (people who are mainly born between 1980 and 2000)?
MA: Millennials are a vast workforce. In just a couple years they will reach the peak of representation in the labor force. There is no issue with attracting millennials: thankfully, our mission resonates with them and they are already working for us across all of our offices.
With this Millennial-centric shift, however, the key thing is to meet the needs that they express. Studies say, and I see this in all of our offices, that young people want a more collaborative approach to work. They want to embrace relationships, transparency, dialogue and creativity.
At CIMMYT’s HR, we are exploring different approaches to talent management and succession planning. Traditionally, one progresses hierarchically. But the world, even the research world, is moving too fast to be satisfied with that. We are currently putting our focus on training, which helps with functional evolution. We are exploring the geographic mobility of staff both within the organization and outside, within our vast network of partners, including those within CGIAR. We are also putting more emphasis on work-life balance, which is said to improve employee retention by more than 50%. In the future, we plan to explore functional mobility, too, and encourage young people to think outside the box they may have preselected for themselves at the beginning of their careers.
Q: What do you think about investing in cognitive diversity?
MA: Cognitive diversity helps teams solve problems faster because it unites people with diverse perspective or information processing styles. Basically, how people think about or engage with new uncertain and complex situations.
It’s not easy to surface cognitive diversity and equally complex to harness its benefits. At CIMMYT, we started with doing psychometric testing when hiring team leaders. These tests are designed to measure candidates’ personality characteristics and cognitive abilities. They show if people would fit in a team. Since then we have expanded to testing research and admin teams. In my experience, such tests are highly trustworthy and interesting, and can help team building.
Maize is more than a crop in Mexico. While it provides food, feed and raw materials, it is also a bloodline running through the generations, connecting Mexico’s people with their past.
The fascinating diversity of maize in Mexico is rooted in its cultural and biological legacy as the center of origin of maize. Landraces, which are maize varieties that have been cultivated and subjected to selection by farmers for generations, retaining a distinct identity and lacking formal crop improvement, provide the basis of this diversity.
As with any cultural legacy, the cultivation of maize landraces can be lost with the passage of time as farmers adapt to changing markets and generational shifts take place.
Doctoral candidate Denisse McLean-Rodríguez, from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Italy, and researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have undertaken a new study that traces the conservation and abandonment of maize landraces over the last 50 years in Morelos, Mexico’s second smallest state.
The study is based on a collection of 93 maize landrace samples, collected by Ángel Kato as a research assistant back in 1966-67 and stored in CIMMYT’s Maize Germplasm Bank. Researchers traced the 66 families in Morelos who donated the samples and explored the reasons why they abandoned or conserved their landraces.
Tracing landrace abandonment
In six cases, researchers were able to interview the original farmers who donated the samples to CIMMYT. In other cases, they interviewed their family members, most frequently the sons or daughters, or alternatively their grandchildren, siblings, nephews or widows.
The study reveals that maize landrace cultivation has diminished significantly within the families. Only 13 of the 66 families are still cultivating the same maize seed lots as in 1966-67 and there was consensus that the current social, economic and physical environments are unfavorable for landrace cultivation.
Among the reasons for abandonment are changes in maize cultivation technologies, shifting markets for maize and other crops, policy changes, shifting cultural preferences, urbanization and climate change.
“By finding out about landrace continuity in farmers’ fields and the factors driving change, we were able to better understand the context in which these landraces are currently cultivated,” said McLean-Rodríguez. “Our study also allowed us to evaluate the importance of ex situ conservation in facilities like CIMMYT’s Germplasm Bank.”
Maize biodiversity conservation
Maize landraces can be conserved “in situ” in farmers’ fields and “ex situ” in a protected space such as a germplasm bank or community seed bank.
“These conservation strategies are complementary,” explained McLean-Rodríguez. “Ex situ conservation helps to secure landraces in case of unpredictable conditions that threaten their conservation in the field, while in situ cultivation allows the processes that generated maize’s diversity to continue, allowing the emergence of mutations and the evolution of new potentially beneficial traits.”
The loss of landraces in farmers’ fields over 50 years emphasizes the importance of ex situ conservation. CIMMYT’s Maize Germplasm Bank holds 28,000 samples of maize and its wild relatives from 88 countries, spanning collections dating back to 1943. Safeguarded seed stored in the Germplasm Bank is protected from crises or natural disasters, and is available for breeding and research. Traits found in landraces can be incorporated into new varieties to address some of the world’s most pressing agriculture challenges like changing climates, emerging pests and disease, and malnutrition.
McLean-Rodríguez recalls an aspect of the study that she found particularly rewarding: “Many of the families who had lost their landrace for one reason or another were interested in receiving back samples of their maize from the CIMMYT Germplasm Bank. Some were interested due to personal value, while others were more interested in the productive value. They were very happy to retrieve their maize from the Germplasm Bank, and it would be very interesting to learn whether the repatriated seed is cultivated in the future.”
A family tradition
One of the families to take part in the study was farmer Roque Juarez Ramirez and his wife, Ventura Oliveros Garcia, whose father was one of the donor farmers from Morelos. “I was so happy to hear the name of my father, [Santos Oliveros],” recalls Oliveros, remembering the moment McLean-Rodríguez contacted her. “He had always been a maize farmer, as in his day they didn’t cultivate anything else. He planted on his communal village land [ejido] and he was always able to harvest a lot of maize, many ears. He planted an heirloom variety of maize that we called arribeño, or marceño, because it was always planted in March.”
Juarez senses his responsibility as a maize farmer: “I feel that the importance [of maize farming] is not small, but big. We are not talking about keeping 10 or 20 people alive; we have to feed a whole country of people who eat and drink, apart from providing for our families. We, the farmers, generate the food.”
Filling vessels of champurrado, a Mexican maize-based sweet drink, and presenting samples of the family’s staple maize — maíz colorado and the Ancho landrace — Oliveros describes what maize means to her: “Maize is very important to my family and me because it is our main source of food, for both humans and animals. We use our maize variety to make pozole, tortillas, tamales, atole, quesadillas, picadas and many other foods.”
The Juarez-Oliveros family substituted the Ancho seed lot from Olivero’s father with another seed lot from the Ancho landrace obtained from her husband’s family. The Ancho landrace is used to make pozole, and continues to be widely cultivated in some municipalities of Morelos, including Totolapan, where the family resides. However, researchers found other landraces present in the 1966-67 collection, such as Pepitilla, were harder to trace 50 years later.
The study shows that landrace abandonment is common when farming passed from one generation to the next. Older farmers were attached to their landraces and continued cultivating them, even in the face of pressing reasons to change or replace them. When the younger generations take over farm management, these landraces are often abandoned.
Nonetheless, young farmers still value the cultural and culinary importance of landraces. “Maize has an important traditional and cultural significance, and is fundamental to our economy,” said Isaac Juarez Oliveros, son of Roque and Ventura. “I have been planting [maize landraces] since I was around 15 to 20 years old. I got my maize seed from my parents. I believe it is important for families to keep planting their maize, as it has become tradition passed down through many generations.”
The legacy for future generations
Global food security depends on the maintenance of high genetic biodiversity in such key staple food crops as maize. Understanding the causes of landrace abandonment can help to develop effective landrace conservation strategies. The authors suggest that niches for landrace conservation and even expansion can be supported in the same manner that niches have been created for improved maize and other commercial crops. Meanwhile, management of genetic resources is vital, both in the field and in germplasm banks, especially in developing countries where broader diversity exists.
For Oliveros, it is a matter of family legacy: “It means a lot to me that [my family’s seed] was preserved because it has allowed my family’s maize and my father’s memory to stay alive.”
“Farmers who cultivate landraces are providing an invaluable global public service,” state the authors of the study. “It will be key to encourage maize landrace cultivation in younger farmers. Tapping into the conservation potential of the current generation of farmers is an opportunity we should not miss.”
Read the full study:
The abandonment of maize landraces over the last 50 years in Morelos, Mexico: a tracing study using a multi-level perspective
Funding for this research was provided by the CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE), the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and Wageningen University.
A special acknowledgement to the families, focus group participants and municipal authorities from the state of Morelos who kindly devoted time to share their experiences with us, on the challenges and rewards of maize landrace conservation.
Imagine walking through a grocery store, doing your weekly shopping. Everything seems normal, but as you pick up a can, there’s no label. There’s nothing to tell you what the product is, and now you can’t reliably choose anything to eat this week.
Now switch gears and imagine a germplasm bank. Without the right labeling on these different varieties, it’s difficult to tell what’s new and what’s already been discovered when working on new research projects.
That’s where the Molecular Maize Atlas steps into play.
About nine years ago, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) started an initiative called the Seeds of Discovery (SeeD). This initiative facilitates easier access to and use of maize and wheat genetic resources.
SeeD achieves impact through five main components: genotyping, phenotyping, software tools, pre-breeding and capacity building.
“One of the aims of Seeds of Discovery was to best characterize germplasm,” says Sarah Hearne, a molecular geneticist and maize lead of SeeD. “At CIMMYT, our international germplasm bank holds in trust one of the largest and most diverse publicly available maize collections in the world.”
However, Hearne says this germplasm bank used to look like a grocery store without any labels or without labels that would allow someone to select a can of value. To combat this, SeeD decided to work on a labeling process for the germplasm bank: the Molecular Maize Atlas.
The Molecular Maize Atlas is an information platform that brings genotypic data resources and associated tools together. This genotypic data provides unifying information across landraces and acts as a common backbone, which other valuable information, like phenotypic data, can be added to.
Read the full article on SeedWorld.
Deep within southern Ethiopia’s agroforestry landscapes, where farmers grow grain and keep cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys, researchers counted more than 4,100 birds as part of an assessment on agricultural productivity and biodiversity.
The researchers also counted some 4,473 individual trees from 52 tree species in the same study, which they believe is the first to link key indicators of biodiversity to more than one indicator of agricultural productivity, considering three products people in rural communities value most: fodder, fuel and food.
This has led to two important new conclusions: that encouraging biodiversity on and around agricultural land likely increases its productivity, and that measurements of productivity must be broadened to include what matters for local livelihoods.
Too often, agricultural productivity is measured through a very narrow lens, such as “mere” crop yields alone. But, according to the study, that has “disregarded local perspectives of what is actually important to people in terms of ecosystem services.
Take, for instance, trees: in addition to potentially growing food, they also benefit crop yield by controlling erosion; capture nutrients for the soil through their roots; help regulate the climate; and provide habitats for animals and insects, including natural enemies of crop pests. The study found that in this region of Ethiopia, agricultural productivity was higher in areas with heavy tree cover than in landscapes where trees had been removed for more crop space.
“We need to understand what would be the best way to produce food with minimum negative consequences on biodiversity,” says lead researcher Frédéric Baudron, challenging the assumption of trading one for the other in faith that agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation can be achieved at once.
This study comes amid concerns that a rising demand for food and fuel to serve the world’s growing population – projected to reach 9 billion by 2050 – will drive greater agricultural expansion and intensification.
The proliferation of both would likely cause real harm to landscapes and biodiversity, threatening the essential natural constituents of the world’s ability to feed itself, warns Baudron. “That has serious implications for the sustainability of our global food production system,” he says. “We need biodiversity as an essential input.”
He also raises the issue of justice. Biodiversity loss hits hardest the millions of small farmers in developing countries – who make up the majority of farmers worldwide – because they depend almost exclusively on ecosystem services, and not external inputs, for production. And the resulting edible output is crucial for everyone; family farms produce more than 80 percent of the world’s food in value terms, according to FAO statistics.
Baudron says the study’s findings play into how small family farms should be managed through policy and in major restoration efforts, given that tree placement and configuration have enormous implications for biodiversity and ecosystem services it provides.
In other words, biodiversity shouldn’t be a bonus of productive landscapes. The study suggests, rather, that productive landscapes should be designed to make the most of all of the services provided by biodiversity.
The work was part of ‘The Agrarian Change Project’, with funding from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat.
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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.
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.
