Working with smallholders to understand their needs and build on their knowledge, CIMMYT brings the right seeds and inputs to local markets, raises awareness of more productive cropping practices, and works to bring local mechanization and irrigation services based on conservation agriculture practices. CIMMYT helps scale up farmers’ own innovations, and embraces remote sensing, mobile phones and other information technology. These interventions are gender-inclusive, to ensure equitable impacts for all.
Mohammad Shahidul Islam is an agricultural development officer with CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program in Bangladesh.
After graduating in agricultural science, Islam completed a masters in agronomy. He started his professional life with the Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) as a technical officer focusing on poverty reduction, rural service market development, and capacity development.
Islam has been with CIMMYT since 2014 and has a decade worth of experience in agricultural research and development, providing technical and/or management to support the design and implementation of project strategies considering agriculture mechanization, livelihoods, food security, and the empowerment of women. In addition, he has expertise in knowledge management, capacity building, integrated development communications and advocacy to develop and scale-up innovations, using people-centered and community-based development approaches to sustain against climate change penalties that develop their socio-economic condition.
A. N. M. Arifur Rahman is a machinery development officer with CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program in Bangladesh. He is currently working within the agricultural machinery and light engineering sector and is proud to be a member of the CIMMYT family.
Before joining CIMMYT, Rahman worked with Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) Bangladesh under European Union funded projects and with ACI Motors on agricultural machinery, research and development, extension, scaling up mechanization, value chains and market systems.
Rahman is a proud agricultural engineer, graduated from the Bangladesh Agricultural University with a major in farm power and machinery. He has three national publications on agricultural machinery and additional experience in training, climate smart mechanization, people with disabilities, gender, and emergency responses on floods or natural disasters.
K.M. Zasim Uddin is an agricultural development officer with CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program in Bangladesh. He has a masters in agronomy from Rajshahi University
He is part of projects including the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), Fall Armyworm R4D and Management (FAW), Big data analytics for climate-smart agricultural practices in South Asia (Big Data² CSA), and Climate Services for Resilient Development in South Asia (CSRD). His main responsibilities are research and development on agricultural mechanization for the CSISA Mechanization and Extension Activity (CSISA-MEA). He has participated in versatile training, workshops and conference programs across Asia.
Uddin has worked in different national and international non-government organizations and companies for more than 13 years, including in research and development at Syngenta Bangladesh Limited and on the Borga Chasi Unnayan Program at BRAC. He also worked as an agriculture officer under the Char Livelihood Program, funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development.
María Florencia Rodríguez García (cereal pathologist)
Ernesto Solís Moya (wheat breeder)
Jorge Iván Alvarado Padilla (wheat breeder)
The award recognizes the team’s long-term contribution to Mexican wheat cultivation and their efforts to expand impacts worldwide. They have released many varieties with resistance to leaf rust, which has led to the stabilization of the disease in bread wheat.
Presented annually, the award is bestowed upon a team of researchers serving a national breeding program or other nationally based institution. Winners receive an inscribed bronze statue of Norman Borlaug.
Huerta has been hosted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico since the late 1990s.
Julio Huerta, wheat pathologist and recipient of the BGRI Gene Stewardship Award 2022, giving a talk to students introducing CIMMYT’s wheat breeding program. (Credit: CIMMYT)
BGRI Technical Workshop
Receiving the prize at the 2022 BGRI Technical Workshop on September 9, Huerta said, “The award means a recognition from the global rust scientific community for the hard work (flesh, mind, soul and spirit) over the years, carried with many colleagues around the world to keep rust disease under control.”
Alison Bentley, director of the Global Wheat Program, also participated in the event with a presentation on the connection between conflict and vulnerability in global food systems. She explored reasons why wheat has been dramatically impacted by the conflict in Ukraine and summarized the proposed response agenda by CIMMYT.
Moksedul Alam Arafat is a hub coordinator for CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program in Bangladesh.
He seeks to improve the adaption and scaling of agricultural mechanization through use of agricultural machineries and local manufacturing companies. He spans disciplines and brings technical knowledge ranging from system agronomy, mechanization and inter-cropping systems for maize.
Subash Adhikari is an agricultural machinery engineer in CIMMYT’s Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project in Nepal, which aims to strengthen cereal systems through using improved technology in seed variety, management and mechanization. The project is currently working on its Covid response, helping returned migrants and vulnerable and marginalized groups to access the financial and technical assistance necessary for their livelihood in agriculture production.
Adhikari started his career as a field research technician and conducted several research projects on the validation of agricultural machinery in Terai, Nepal. He later worked in the promotion and scaling of the machinery.
Adhikari is currently working to involve the private sector as a major partner in promoting technology and developing mechanics for repairing machinery with minimum help from the development project. He is interested in mapping machinery, photography and work management.
CGIAR researchers and partners outside the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the workshop took place. (Credit: Enawgaw Shibeshi/CIMMYT)
The Initiative aims to deliver agronomic gain at scale for millions of smallholder farming households in prioritized farming systems, with emphasis on supporting women and young farmers, to demonstrate measurable impact on food and nutrition security, income, water use, soil health and climate resilience.
Co-creation of agricultural solutions with farmers is integral to the Initiative through the engagement of modern tools, digital technologies, and behavioral science.
At the workshop, participants created a shared understanding of the Initiative’s goals for the region, laid groundwork for in-country planning and implementation, and increased visibility of the Initiative. Attendees agreed on the need to reevaluate beyond the boundaries of traditional agronomic practices and microeconomic challenges, considering policies at national and regional levels.
Roundtable discussions between participants highlight priorities and opportunities for the Excellence in Agronomy Initiative in east and southern Africa. (Credit: Enawgaw Shibeshi/CIMMYT)
Combining expertise from across CGIAR research centers, private sector actors and government agriculture departments, the Initiative takes a data-based approach to offer demand-driven solutions. This was of particular appeal to Eyasu Elias, deputy minister at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture, who described the approach as “truly commendable” in comparison to conventional supply-driven approaches.
Elias, who was represented by a delegate at the event, highlighted Ethiopia’s current three priorities: managing acid soils; managing Vertisols so they utilize their natural productive potentials; and adopting practices that mitigate the formation of salt-affected soils.
“Attaining food security will be a tremendous challenge under current conditions,” explained Elias’ representative. “More than ever, we need innovative agronomic solutions that enhance nutrient use efficiencies; we need solutions that can be crafted from locally available alternatives. Collaborations that allow co-creation, co-design and participatory technology generation along these lines are appreciated from our end.”
Published in Nature Scientific Reports, a new study describes an innovative method to assess the reach and impacts of knowledge and partnerships created as part of the work of research-for-development organizations.
It uses text mining and the analysis of social networks and hyperlinks to draw inferences from publicly available digital sources, including institutional repositories, scientific databases, and social media.
“The method can uncover narratives, dynamics, and relationships that are hidden from traditional bibliometric analyses,” said Tek Sapkota, a cropping systems and climate change specialist at the International Maize and Wheat improvement Center (CIMMYT) and co-author or the study, which also involved the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and the University of Molise, Italy.
“Nearly 90 percent of CIMMYT’s research is related to climate change and its impact on food systems and vice-versa, so we assessed that to illustrate our new, web-based analytical framework. This novel approach can help research-for-development organizations to leverage online data and measure their impact.”
Cover photo: Twitter mentions network for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center official account (@CIMMYT). (Credit: Nature Scientific Reports)
Ethiopian wheat farmers will soon benefit from the CRAFT tool. (Credit: Bioversity)
The negative impacts of climate shocks have undermined the food security of millions of people in Ethiopia, where predominantly rain-fed agriculture and cereals comprise 82% of the crop area and are particularly susceptible to extreme climate events like drought or flooding. Predictions that can account for potential climate events can facilitate efforts of governmental agencies to proactively engage in climate mitigation efforts.
The five-day training workshop exposed select national experts involved in data collection and analysis of crop performance to the CRAFT tool, which is expected to improve accuracy, efficiency, and speed of forecasts.
The participants of the training were experts from the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), National Meteorology Agency (NMA), and Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission (EDRMC).
CRAFT has been developed in collaboration with CIMMYT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), and the University of Florida through the Capacitating African Smallholders with Climate Advisories and Insurance Development (CASCAID-II) program. CRAFT is a flexible and adaptable software platform, relying on a crop engine to run pre-installed crop models and on the Climate Predictability Tool (CPT) to utilize seasonal climate predictions to produce crop yield forecasts. The tool has been calibrated, evaluated, and tested under Ethiopian ecological conditions.
In the opening of the training workshop, Esayas Lemma, Director of the Crop Development Directorate at the MoA, emphasized institutions must be equipped with the necessary analytical and decision support tools to enable decision makers to make critical decisions at the right time due to increasing challenges to food security. He added the training organized by CIMMYT through the AICCRA-Ethiopia project was timely and important for enhancing the capacity of the experts drawn from the three institutions and building national capacity in using modern decision support tools.
Kindie Tesfaye, senior scientist at CIMMYT, stated the training was organized to help experts in national institutions in applying decision support tools to equip decision makers with information to help them minimize costs, save lives, and enhance long-term climate risk management and policy options in Ethiopia. “We hope to bring this technology to other countries following this roll-out in Ethiopia,” Tesfaye said.
“The training is an eye-opener for me, and this is the type of tool that we have been looking for,” said Mss. Berktawit, a trainee from EDRMC.
“The CRAFT tool has several applications in the MoA, and we are lucky to have this training. With some additional training, we at the ministry should be able to use it to support our crop monitoring and early warning works,” said Mr. Zewdu, a trainee from the MoA.
A follow up training session will be organized to certify participants as they continue working with CRAFT. “Feedback from these users will be vital to optimize inputs for CRAFT and to develop an intuitive user interface,” Tesfaye said.
Saiful AKM Islam is a monitoring, evaluation and learning manager with the Innovation Science for Agroecosystems and Food Systems in Asia research theme in CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program. He has almost 18 years of experience with different organizations in the monitoring and evaluation field. He completed his master’s in social science from Dhaka University, Bangladesh, and post-graduation diploma in development planning.
Islam has a good understanding of monitoring and evaluation and knowledge management systems especially the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) system and compliances. Prior to beginning this position, he worked with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a program specialist and Save the Children International as manager in research, monitoring and evaluation, and learning.
Mustafa Kamal is a GIS and remote sensing analyst in CIMMYT, leading the GIS, remote sensing and data team in Bangladesh as part of the Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program’s Innovation Sciences in Agroecosystems and Food Systems theme across Asia.
Kamal’s core expertise is in earth observation and geospatial data science, scientific and cloud computing, webGIS, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), advance landcover-landuse classification, and tool development. He contributes to research and innovation of irrigation and agro-meteorological advisory, crop identification and yield prediction, disaster and crop monitoring, landscape diversity, and climate analytics. He has published many peer-reviewed papers, reports, and training manuals, and provided teaching/training.
Kamal’s interdisciplinary background in urban and rural planning and disaster management helps him to integrate and lead an interdisciplinary team to provide solutions for sustainable agrifood systems.
How does CIMMYT’s improved maize get to the farmer?
CIMMYT is happy to announce a new, improved tropical maize hybrid that is now available for uptake by public and private sector partners, especially those interested in marketing or disseminating hybrid maize seed across rainfed tropics of South Asia and similar agro-ecologies. NARS and seed companies are hereby invited to apply for licenses to pursue national release and /or scale-up seed production and deliver these maize hybrids to farming communities.
The deadline to submit applications to be considered during the first round of allocations is 26 Aug 2022. Applications received after that deadline will be considered during subsequent rounds of product allocations.
The newly available CIMMYT maize hybrid, CIM19SADT-01, was identified through rigorous trialing and a stage-gate advancement process which started in 2019 and culminated in the 2020 and 2021 South Asia Regional On-Farm Trials for our South Asian Drought Tolerance (SADT) and Drought + Waterlogging Tolerance (SAWLDT) maize breeding pipelines. The product was found to meet the stringent performance criteria for CIMMYT’s SADT pipeline. While there is variation between different products coming from the same pipeline, the SADT pipeline is designed around the product concept described below:
Product Profile
Basic traits
Nice-to-have / Emerging traits
Target agroecologies
SADT (South Asian Drought Tolerance)
Medium maturing, yellow, high yielding, drought tolerant, and resistant to TLB and FSR
FER, BLSB, FAW
Semi-arid, rainfed, lowland tropics of South Asia, and similar agroecologies
Cooperative farmers receive training on operation of a mobile seed cleaner in Oromia, Ethiopia. (Credit: Dessalegn Molla/GIZ)
It’s a familiar problem in international agricultural development – a project with external funding and support has achieved impressive early results, but the money is running out, the time is growing short, and there’s not a clear plan in place to continue and extend the program’s success.
Over the past seven years, the German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) established Green Innovation Centers in 13 countries in Africa and two in Asia, partnering with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to support projects that introduce mechanization in a way that improves long-term food security and prompts economic growth. Now, as the project enters its final two years of funding, GIZ and CIMMYT are focused on ensuring the gains produced by the Green Innovation Centers are not lost.
Like any complex challenge, there’s not just one solution to the sustainability problem – but CIMMYT is working to address a massive question around why pilots fail in agricultural development by implementing a systematic approach to scalability that recognizes the critical importance of context and puts projects on a sustainable path before the money is gone.
Training the trainers
As the Green Innovation Centers enter a crucial, final stage, a CIMMYT-led team recently completed training for seven GIZ staff from Ivory Coast, Togo, Ethiopia, and Zambia, who are now certified to facilitate CIMMYT’s Scaling Scan tool and train others to put agricultural innovations in their home countries on a solid path for growth. The training team included CIMMYT scaling advisor Lennart Woltering, CIMMYT mechanization support specialist Leon Jamann, and students from Germany’s University of Hohenheim and Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University.
The Scaling Scan is a practical tool that helps users set a defined growth ambition, analyze their readiness to scale using ten core ingredients, and identify specific areas that need attention in order to reach the scaling ambition.
The GIZ staff learned to use the Scaling Scan by applying it to early stage innovations in their home countries, ranging from commercial fodder production in the Southern Province of Zambia to seed value chains in the Oromia and Amhara regions of Ethiopia.
Mohammed, a farmer in Amhara, Ethiopia, with a fistful of wheat on his farm. (Credit: Mulugeta Gebrekidan/GIZ)
What will scale up in Ethiopia?
In Ethiopia, smallholding farmers producing legumes, wheat and maize struggle to increase their yield to a level that can improve food security, generate higher incomes for producers and their families, and promote economic growth and jobs in agricultural communities. To help smallholders develop sustainable solutions, GIZ senior advisor Molla Dessalegn worked with his Green Innovation Center team to brainstorm and launch a range of 20 proposed innovations – from risk mitigation and new contract structures to introduction of new technology – all with the aim of improving agricultural yields.
To date, these innovations have introduced over 200,000 Ethiopian smallholders to new knowledge and practices to improve their output. But with the project exit bearing down, Molla and his team were eager to identify which innovations held the most promise for survival and growth beyond the endpoint. So they put their pilot projects to the test using the Scaling Scan.
The scan involves an intensive, day-long seminar originally designed for in-person delivery, but remote versions have also proved successful as COVID limited global travel. The scan focuses on thorough analysis and scoring of the current state of a pilot project and its potential for growth given the realities of conditions on the ground.
Facilitators lead project managers through evaluation of the ten ingredients required for successful scaling, from finance and collaboration to technology, know-how, and public sector governance. The outcome is a clear data set assessing the scalability of the pilot and directing attention to specific areas where improvement is needed before a project can expect serious growth.
An unexpected outcome
What emerged from the scan surprised Molla. Some of the strategies he saw as most successful in the early stages, such as a contract farming program, scored poorly, whereas the scan identified deployment of mobile seed cleaners as a solution that held particular promise for scalability. These outcomes prompted the team to refocus efforts on this strategy.
About 95 percent of Ethiopian smallholders rely on informal seed systems, either saving and reusing seed or exchanging low quality seed with other farmers. Seed cleaning plays a critical role in helping farmers build a high quality, high yield seed development system. Molla and his team had already worked with smallholder cooperatives in Oromia to distribute three mobile seed cleaners, and they knew these machines were being heavily relied upon by farmers in this region.
The Scaling Scan showed them, among other things, that the successful adoption of the seed cleaners had even more potential – it was an innovation that could be sustained and even expanded by local stakeholders, including the Ministry of Agriculture.
This result prompted Molla to recommend investment in additional mobile seed cleaners – four to serve cooperatives in the Amhara region and a fifth for the West Arsi district in Oromia. These machines are now in operation and helping additional smallholders improve the quality of their seed stock. This initial expansion confirms the Scaling Scan results – and CIMMYT plans to continue supporting this growth with the purchase of another round of seed cleaners.
The Scaling Scan also identified problems with the business model for sustaining the mobile seed cleaners through cooperatives in Ethiopia, and this outcome directed the Green Innovation Centers to partner with a consultant to develop improvements in this area. In this way, one of the most important values of the scan is its ability to guide decision-making.
Scaling up the future
Seed cleaners alone won’t solve every yield problem for Ethiopian farmers, but the scan has now guided the initial implementation – and contextual adaptation – of a new form of agricultural mechanization across two regions of the country, with the promise of more to come.
And there’s more to come from the Scaling Scan as well.
Now that he’s received certification as a trainer, Molla plans to help farmers, officials, and other development workers adopt this rigorous approach to evaluating innovations that show potential. When funding for his project ends in 2024, he will be leaving 300,000 smallholders in Ethiopia with more than machines – he will be leaving them with the knowledge, experience, and practices to make the most of the technological solutions that are improving their yields today and building a more secure future for their communities.
Mobile phones are increasingly shaping the ways information is shared across industries, including in agriculture. The digitization of agricultural systems expedited by substantial efforts to narrow the digital divide and include smallholders means that data ownership and privacy issues are more relevant than ever.
The use of smartphone-based apps to improve accessibility to information for smallholder farmers has previously been under researched. In this publication, scientists from Ghent University and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) investigate incentives for smallholder farmers to use an agricultural advisory app in which data is shared using a designed discrete choice experiment.
Leveraging survey data from 392 farmers in Mexico, a conditional logit (CL) model was used to gain deeper insights into the preferences for attributes related to its usage. Groups and profiles were explored through a latent class (LC) model to investigate heterogeneity.
Farmers across ages were found to support the use of technology-based, site-specific extension services. The CL model results revealed farmers’ positive preference to receive support at first use and access to training, while they felt negatively towards sharing data with private actors. Meanwhile, the LC model demonstrates differences in preferences when farmers’ connectedness to the CIMMYT innovation hub and mastery approach goals variables are considered as a grouping variable. These variables also affect farmer preferences towards data sharing.
This study’s main contribution is in demonstrating the importance of nonfinancial incentives and influence of data sharing on farmer preferences. Through this improved understanding, the potential of technology in improving farmers’ welfare can be further realized.
Cover photo: María del Refugio Galván, a producer of barley from Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, has been involved in the smartphone-app project. (Credit: Francisco Alarcón/CIMMYT)
Participants gather to discuss solutions to low levels of durum wheat cultivation in Ethiopia. (Credit: Enawgaw Shibeshi/CIMMYT)
Despite an increase in the total area used for growing wheat in Ethiopia, the share of durum wheat, the wheat used for pasta, has decreased substantially across the country. Smallholder farmers grow durum wheat on marginal lands for their own use but are not benefitting financially from cultivating the crop.
To understand factors contributing to low area coverage of durum wheat and identify opportunities for reinvigoration and improved marketing, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) hosted a workshop for stakeholders from the entire durum wheat value chain.
“New breeding technologies have great promise for expanding the area of durum wheat production,” said Moti Jaleta, agricultural economist at CIMMYT, “but this achievement remains primarily dependent on the market’s ability to purchase grains at a higher price to stimulate farmer adoption. The market in Ethiopia is not favoring durum wheat, so suppliers and extension workers must promote it very well.”
Rising consumption of durum wheat products such as pasta and macaroni is causing higher dependency on wheat imports. Reducing this reliance requires addressing the challenges facing Ethiopia’s durum wheat farmers in variety development and release, seed supply, crop management, level of productivity, market opportunities, and extension systems.
Kindie Tesfaye, scientist and crop modeler at CIMMYT, explained, “There is a need to improve the durum wheat seed system and extension service, enhance the development of new varieties with desired grain quality and create market linkages to meet the increasing durum wheat demand from the rapidly growing urban population and expanding agro-industrial parks.”
The potential of digital
As Ethiopia’s agricultural systems are highly dependent on rainfall, digital interventions can serve as key decision support tools to manage climate risk and bolster the adaptive capacity and productivity of smallholder farmers. CIMMYT collaborates with value chain-based digital agro-advisory services through the Digital Agricultural Advisory Services (DAAS) project, which runs multiple projects in Ethiopia to advance the use of digital tools in farming.
Taye Tadesse, director of crop research at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, emphasized that the introduction of production technology should be participatory and customer-oriented to achieve the intended outcomes. Ensuring that technology is accessible is vital for strengthening the value chain system, he said.
Agreed actions from the workshop included focusing attention on the bodies responsible for the expansion of infrastructure and raising wheat farmers’ awareness of the value-adding tools available to them through training.
“We must ensure that farmers are the biggest decision-makers,” Tasfaye said.
