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Theme: Innovations

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.

Sustainable intensification in China: doing more with less

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Transplanting rice seedlings into ZT wheat stubble in Litong, China. Photo: Yuan Hanmin

As part of CIMMYT’s ongoing collaboration with the Ningxia Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences and the building of an innovation platform there, we have refurbished our site and undertaken a number of trials that reflect the concepts of sustainable intensification, which increases food production from existing farmland while minimizing pressure on the environment.

The site at Litong just outside the city of Wuzhong in Ningxia Province has been modified and now boasts a paved parking area, all-weather access roads and field paths, and an array of signage that explains CIMMYT’s activities and the history of conservation agriculture undertaken by CIMMYT-China in this part of the country.

Zero-till rice transplanting

On the left, an irrigated ZT field; on the right, a conventionally prepared field (yet to be irrigated), 35 days after transplanting. Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT
On the left, an irrigated ZT field; on the right, a conventionally prepared field (yet to be irrigated), 35 days after transplanting.
Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT

CIMMYT recently tested a zero-tillage (ZT) rice transplanting operation with a 9 row transplanter from Jiangsu province. The idea came from viewing a short video taken some years ago of a conventional transplanter being used under ZT conditions in Bangladesh. In Ningxia, recently harvested wheat fields were irrigated and rice seedlings were planted into standing wheat stubble without any further modification to the planter. In contrast, rice was conventionally transplanted in an adjacent field, which required two days of field preparation including inversion plowing, leveling and puddling at an extra cost of USD $375 per hectare.

Zero-till rice transplanting not only saves time, labor and fuel, but also minimizes soil disturbance, maximizes residue retention, and mitigates moisture and nutrient loss. Results from these trials will demonstrate the effectiveness of transplanting rice into ZT winter wheat standing stubble.

Relay and intercropping

Monocropping farming systems are predominant in Ningxia, with the same crop planted year after year. The region has very cold winters and short summers, but with the use of short season varieties and relay cropping, double-cropping and crop rotations can be realized in the region. Double-cropping is a form of sequential cropping in which two crops are grown in sequence within a year on a piece of land by seeding or transplanting one before or after harvesting the other.

Winter wheat and peanut intercropping followed by relay-cropping maize into immature winter wheat. Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT
Winter wheat and peanut intercropping followed by relay-cropping maize into immature winter wheat.
Photo: Jack McHugh/CIMMYT

To that end, five maize cultivars were relay-planted into winter wheat on 17 June, around two weeks before harvest; the plot was previously intercropped with 24 peanut varieties. The advanced winter wheat lines were harvested in late June and yielded quite well for the region. We expect to harvest the maize from late September to early October 2015.

Zero-till and early maturing grain crops are key to double-cropping in the region; however, the current wheat variety – Ningdong 11 – is late in maturing. Next year, the earlier maturing Ningdong 10 will be used, with emphasis on residue retention and increased stubble height during harvest, before seeding maize directly and/or transplanting rice. However, the current Chinese-made Turbo Happy Seeders will need to be modified to cope with the rougher soil surfaces encountered under ZT to ensure better seeding depth control.

Impacts of international wheat improvement research: 1994 – 2014

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Improved wheat varieties developed using CGIAR breeding lines, either in cross-pollinations or as direct releases, cover more than 100 million hectares — nearly two-thirds of the area sown to improved wheat worldwide, new research (Lantican et al., in press) shows. Benefits in added grain from CGIAR wheat research range from $2.8 to 3.8 billion each year — a very high return for the work’s annual, public funding of only $30 million, according to the full-length study. Consistent and secure funding is crucial to maintain the research and institutional capacities required to deliver such impact, particularly given the mounting challenges facing wheat food security and farm livelihoods in developing countries.

According to the study, the impacts derive largely from research and development activities conducted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), both members of the CGIAR Consortium of agricultural research centers, with support from the CGIAR Research Program on Wheat (WHEAT) and partners worldwide including national research programs, advanced research institutes, and private companies.

Findings show that since 1994, farmers globally have enjoyed access to 4,604 improved wheat varieties and that there is continued and significant use in the developing world of CIMMYT and ICARDA wheat lines, which are bred and shared freely through international partnerships. CIMMYT-derived varieties alone cover as much as 80% of the wheat area in South Asian countries and, in sub-Saharan Africa, more than 90% of the area in Kenya and in Ethiopia.

More than a quarter of all wheat varieties and 40 percent of all spring wheat varieties released in this century contain CIMMYT germplasm.

In addition to profiting farmers in the developing world, where CIMMYT and ICARDA’s efforts are focused, the surplus grain produced also benefits wheat consumers — particularly the poor who spend a large portion of their income on food — according to evidence cited.

Specifically, the authors made reference to the study of Stevenson et al. (2013), published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which showed that, in the absence of CGIAR wheat improvement, global wheat prices would have been 29-59% higher in 2004 than they actually were.

Evidence also shows that elite wheat lines from CIMMYT or ICARDA are immediately useful for most wheat improvement programs worldwide and that their use saves a decade or more of cross-breeding for those programs. Moreover, far from representing a bottleneck in diversity, breeding stocks from the two centers have significantly enhanced the genetic diversity of improved wheat, particularly for critical traits like yield potential, grain processing quality, disease resistance, and early maturity, according to research cited by the authors (Warburton et al. 2006; Huang et al. 2015, pp. 13-14).

Finally, in contrast to the commonly-held belief that modern varieties are less resilient than farmers’ traditional varieties, the authors cite the study by Gollin (2006) showing that the increased use of improved wheat varieties over the past 40 years has made grain yields more stable and actually reduced farmers’ risk.

In addition to leading the world’s largest publicly-funded wheat improvement networks, CIMMYT and ICARDA delivering impact through extensive partnerships and longstanding research on productive and sustainable cropping practices. Crucial to their success are initiatives that foster farmers’ access to quality seed of new varieties and capacity-strengthening activities that target individuals and partner institutions. Notably, the two centers maintain, study, and share seed collections of wheat genetic diversity comprising nearly 200,000 unique samples wheat landraces, improved varieties, and wild relatives.

The new study proves that international collaboration on wheat research continues to provide the impressive returns on investments, as occurred during the 1960s-70s. Wheat breeding impacts at that time helped to spark the Green Revolution from which the 15-member CGIAR arose and to keep food prices at historically low levels for decades (Evenson and Gollin in Science, 2003).

Wheat farming in an age of changing climate and shifting markets

Although the costs of basic food commodities have fallen recently, they are still well above the decades-long, stable levels that preceded the 2008 food crisis. Worse, despite low grain prices, global stocks have shrunk 30% from levels at the outset of the millennium (Brown, L.R. 2012. Full Planet, Empty Plates; The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity.). Reverberations of relatively local disturbances, like droughts or crop disease outbreaks, now cause inordinate price spikes and worsen food insecurity for the world’s poorest.

Looking forward, by 2050 the current global population of 7.3 billion is projected to grow 33 percent to 9.7 billion, according to the United Nations. Demand for food, driven by population, demographic changes and increasing global wealth, will rise more than 60 percent, according to a recent report from the Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience. Wheat farmers must meet this rising demand from the same or less land area, while confronting more extreme and erratic rainfall and temperatures and using inputs like water and fertilizer much more effectively.

As the world’s policymakers begin to acknowledge the interconnected nature of food, energy, water, and peace, every effort made to improve global food security is an investment in the future of humanity. Food insecurity drastically affect all sectors of society; either through hunger, high food prices, or social conflicts that send massive waves of desperate refugees in flight.

Farmers have met repeated food security challenges since the Industrial Revolution, with the support of science and focused development efforts, but science and development require investment. Wheat breeding and crop management research have long horizons – typically, for example, it takes much more than a decade for a variety to go from initial crosses to farmers’ fields.

The requisite research and institutional capacities for this work also take years to develop, but can be lost very quickly in the absence of committed policy support and consistent and secure funding. Publicly-funded wheat research barely has the resources to maintain the essential breeding and capacity building activities that underpin the impacts documented in this new publication, which will be released in November 2015 and aims to set the record straight on the magnitude of CGIAR contributions to global food supplies.

As of 2015, CIMMYT and ICARDA have agreed to operate their wheat research as a single joint program. They are struggling to find support for work on new technologies, such as advanced phenotyping platforms for heat and drought tolerance, or advanced global consortia focusing on traits that dramatically raise the genetic yield potential of wheat. Those and other tools and initiatives will be crucial for public wheat breeding research to partner effectively with the private sector and keep step with societal demands for food security and nutrition.

Funded through the CGIAR Wheat Research Program, the study is based on a survey sent to 94 countries that produce at least 5,000 tons of wheat each year. Responses came from 66 wheat-growing countries — 44 of them developing countries that account for nearly all the developing world’s wheat output. Survey data were complemented with information from published wheat varietal guides, figures on wheat varietal area insured or grown, papers in scientific journals, technical bulletins, and on-line sources including the US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Services (USDA-NASS), the Annual Wheat Newsletter, and wheat area, production and yield statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The study updates results of Lantican et al. (2005).

Lantican, M.A., T.S. Payne, K. Sonder, R. Singh, M. van Ginkel, M.Baum, H.J. Braun, and O. Erenstein. In press. Impacts of International Wheat Improvement Research in the World, 1994-2014. Mexico, D.F.: CIMMYT.

Smart mechanization is a continuous improvement process: the case of a conservation agriculture machinery manufacturer

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Martín Sánchez develops machines for conservation agriculture based on CIMMYT prototypes.
Martín Sánchez develops machines for conservation agriculture based on CIMMYT prototypes.

The building of local capacities is one of the objectives MasAgro pursues to achieve the adoption of conservation agriculture in Mexico. As part of this vision, MasAgro helps develop local machine manufacturers with the capacity to supply and service the implements farmers across the country need to implement conservation agriculture systems.

Martín Sánchez Gómez welcomed us to Sembradoras TIMS, the shop where he manufactures farm machinery, located in San Joaquín Coapango, Texcoco, State of Mexico. When we arrived, Sánchez and his family were in the middle of checking the details in preparation for an event to show the implements they have developed for conservation agriculture systems. They set up tents, chairs and a demonstration plot. This is the first demonstration Sánchez and his family have organized to show the machines they manufacture, and they invited several partners, such as CIMMYT, to attend.

Sembradoras TIMS is a family business that used to be a car repair shop before transitioning into the manufacture of farm implements five years ago, when the family started working with CIMMYT and learned about farm machine prototypes.

Multiuse-multicrop machine, the first model developed by Sembradoras TIMS. Photo: Luz Paola López Amezcua/CIMMYT
Multiuse-multicrop machine, the first model developed by Sembradoras TIMS. Photo: Luz Paola López Amezcua/CIMMYT

It all began when CIMMYT staff in charge of El Batán Experiment Station asked them to replace a harvester’s four-cylinder engine with a six-cylinder one.

“I have always liked the idea of building things, but I didn’t know how these machines work,” says Sánchez. The first seeder they developed was the multiuse-multicrop seeder. During the process, “we would go to CIMMYT, make changes in the shop, test the machines, make new changes and then tried to find ways of improving them. If we were told ‘this doesn’t work,’ we would change it. Later, CIMMYT started to give technicians our contact information and we started to get calls from other states of Mexico,” says Sánchez. Due to these requests, they had more work at the shop, so Sánchez asked the whole family to join in. That’s when they decided to make a complete change and focus on manufacturing machinery.

Members of the Sánchez-Gómez family, Sembradoras TIMS. Photo: Luz Paola López Amezcua
Members of the Sánchez-Gómez family, Sembradoras TIMS. Photo: Luz Paola López Amezcua

After the “big” seeders, TIMS began manufacturing manual and animal-drawn machines.

“I can’t say we’ve done everything ourselves, because we learned a lot from CIMMYT staff like Gabriel Martínez, Jesús López, Javier Vargas, Jelle Van Loon, and Dr. Bram Govaerts, who never lost faith in us, and that counts for a lot.”

That’s how the Sánchez-Gómez family started a business where innovation and continuous improvements have allowed them to market different types of seeders. Just recently they started manufacturing hermetic metal silos for post-harvest management.

GCAP to become Sustainable Intensification Program (SIP)

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Conservation agriculture has been a major focus of CIMMYT research, positioning the Center as a world scientific leader in the area. Following a recent internal consultation and discussions with Program Director Bruno Gerard, CIMMYT has decided to change the name of the Global Conservation Agriculture Program (GCAP) to “Sustainable Intensification Program (SIP).” This change reflects the broader research-for-development agenda that CIMMYT and the Program have progressively embraced in maize and wheat farming systems over recent years, which includes social, economic, and environmental issues beyond the strict principles of conservation agriculture. We also feel that the name should represent the Program’s objectives, rather than the means by which it works to reach them. Finally, the new name will align perfectly with those of Flagship Projects 4 of the CGIAR Research Programs MAIZE and WHEAT, which CIMMYT leads.  Change will be effective on 1 October 2015.

Replacing gender myths and assumptions with knowledge

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CIMMYT Director General Martin Kropff speaks on the topic of ‘Wheat and the role of gender in the developing world’ prior to the 2015 Women in Triticum Awards at the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Workshop in Sydney on 19 September.

If we are to be truly successful in improving the lives of farmers and consumers in the developing world, we need to base our interventions on the best evidence available. If we act based only on our assumptions, we may not be as effective as we could be or, even worse, actively cause harm.

One example is the common perception that women are not involved in the important wheat farming systems of North Africa and South Asia. By recognizing and engaging with these myths, we are beginning to build a more sophisticated understanding of how agriculture works as a social practice.

Currently, there are only a few published studies that take a closer examination of the roles played by women in wheat-based farming systems. These studies have found that, in some cases, men are responsible for land preparation and planting, and women for weeding and post-harvest activities, with harvest and transport duties being shared. Between different districts in India, huge variations may be found in the amount of time that women are actively involved in wheat agriculture. This shows that some careful study into the complexities of gender and agricultural labor may hold important lessons when intervening in any particular situation.

We must also never assume that, just because women are not as involved in agriculture in a particular context, they can not benefit from more information. In a survey carried out by CIMMYT researcher Surabhi Mittal in parts of rural India, it was found that women used a local cellphone agricultural advisory service just as much as men, and that this knowledge helped them get more involved in farming-related decision-making.

Gender is not just about women

For all that it is important to include women, along with other identity groups in project planning, implementation and data collection, it is important not to get into the trap of thinking that gender-integrated approaches are just about targeting women.

For example, the World Health Organization estimates that micronutrient deficiency affects at least two billion people around the world, causing poor health and development problems in the young. The effects of micronutrient deficiency start in the womb, and are most severe from then through to the first two years of life. Therefore it would make sense to target women of childbearing age and mothers with staple varieties that have been bio-fortified to contain high levels of important micronutrients such as zinc, iron or vitamin A.

However, to do so risks ignoring the process in which the decision to change the crop grown or the food eaten in the household is taken. Both men and women will be involved in that decision, and any intervention must therefore take the influence of gender norms and relations, involving both women and men, into account.

The way ahead

To move forward, each component of the strategy for research into wheat farming systems at CIMMYT also has a gender dimension, whether focused on improving the evidence base, responding to the fact that both women and men can be end users or beneficiaries of new seeds and other technologies, or ensuring that gender is considered as a part of capacity-building efforts.

Already, 20 of our largest projects are actively integrating gender into their work, helping to ensure that women are included in agricultural interventions and share in the benefits they bring, supplying a constant stream of data for future improvement.

We have also experienced great success in targeting marginalized groups. For instance, the Hill Maize Research Project in Nepal, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) alongside the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), focused on food-insecure people facing discrimination due to their gender or social group. By supporting them to produce improved maize varieties in community groups, the project managed not only to greatly increase their incomes, but also to improve their self-confidence and recognition in society.

CIMMYT researchers are also among the leaders of a global push to encode gender into agricultural research together with other international research partnerships. In over 125 agricultural communities in 26 countries, a field study of gender norms, agency and agricultural innovation, known as GENNOVATE, is now underway. The huge evidence base generated will help spur the necessary transformation in how gender is included in agricultural research for development.

Further information:

The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, chaired by Jeanie Borlaug Laube, has the overarching objective of systematically reducing the world’s vulnerability to stem, yellow, and leaf rusts of wheat and advocating/facilitating the evolution of a sustainable international system to contain the threat of wheat rusts and continue the enhancements in productivity required to withstand future global threats to wheat. This international network of scientists, breeders and national wheat improvement programs came together in 2005, at Norman Borlaug’s insistence, to combat Ug99. The Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project at Cornell University serves as the secretariat for the BGRI. The DRRW, CIMMYT, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the FAO helped establish the BGRI a decade ago. Funding is provided by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information, please visit www.globalrust.org.

CIMMYT is the global leader in research for development in wheat and maize and related farming systems. CIMMYT works throughout the developing world with hundreds of partners to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat to improve food security and livelihoods. CIMMYT belongs to the 15-member CGIAR Consortium and leads the Consortium Research Programs on wheat and maize. CIMMYT receives support from national governments, foundations, development banks and other public and private agencies.

Follow the #BGRI2015 hashtag on social media

Twitter: @CIMMYT, @KropffMartin and @GlobalRust

Value of CGIAR wheat estimated at up to $3.8 billion a year, research shows

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A field at El Batán research station. CIMMYT/Julie Mollins

SYDNEY, Australia (CIMMYT) – About 70 percent of spring bread and durum wheat varieties released globally over the 20-year period between 1994 and 2014 were bred or are derived from wheat lines developed by scientists working for the 15-member CGIAR consortium of agricultural researchers, according to new research.

Benefits of CGIAR wheat improvement research, conducted mainly by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), range from $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion a year, states a new policy brief, which highlights the economic benefits of international collaboration in wheat improvement research.

The research featured in the policy brief, which follows a series of global wheat impact assessments initiated by CIMMYT, was the focus of a keynote address at the 9th International Wheat Conference (IWC), hosted in Sydney, Australia from September 20 to 25, 2015.

“The policy brief shows the vital contribution CGIAR and CIMMYT have played in delivering international public goods in the form of improved maize and wheat varieties for resource poor consumers,” said Hans Braun, director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program and the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on Wheat.

“Values reflect the increasing use of high-yielding modern varieties on more land area and higher mean wheat prices during the period under review,” Braun said.

A primarily publicly funded breeding pipeline established by CIMMYT in the 1960s and 1970s to help stave off famine in Asia and other regions in the developing world, distributes about 600 elite lines a year worldwide through its international wheat improvement network.

About $30 million is invested in international wheat improvement research annually, mainly through publicly funded research conducted with CIMMYT, national partners, ICARDA and the Wheat CRP.

“Our findings indicate that international wheat improvement research continues to generate high returns,” Braun said.

“The influence of CIMMYT’s publicly funded research resounds throughout the developed world and in private industry. The private sector benefits from CIMMYT’s work, ultimately profiting from a trustworthy, streamlined wheat breeding system which eliminates the need for costly duplication of efforts.”

Globally, about 150 to 160 million tons of wheat are traded a year at a value of roughly $250 a ton.

“Agricultural sectors in wealthy donor countries also benefit from CIMMYT’s work,” said Martin Kropff, CIMMYT’s director general, referring to investment in research and development for the poor as a “triple win.”

“The effectiveness and the return on public sector investment are extremely high,” Kropff said. Investment leads to more food and income for the rural poor, lower prices for the urban poor and extra stability and income for farmers.”

Wheat currently provides 20 percent of calories and 20 percent of protein to the global human diet. However, in some countries, such as Afghanistan, wheat provides more than half the food supply.

By 2050, the current global population of 7.3 billion is projected to grow 33 percent to 9.7 billion, according to the United Nations. Demand for food, driven by population, demographic changes and increasing global wealth will rise more than 60 percent, according to a recent report from the Taskforce on Extreme Weather and Global Food System Resilience. This demand can only be met if global investments in wheat improvement are significantly increased.

Lantican, M.A., T.S. Payne, K Sonder, R. Singh, M. Van Ginkel, M. Braun, O. Erenstein and H.J. Braun. (in press). Impacts of International Wheat Improvement Research In the World, 1994-2014. Mexico, D.F.: CIMMYT

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Julie Mollins
News Editor & Media Manager
Global Wheat Program
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
E-mail: j.mollins at cgiar.org
Skype: juliemollins
Twitter:@jmollins

Related Research:

Braidotti, Gio. The international nature of germplasm enhancement [online]. Partners in Research for Development, Nov 2013: 27-29. Availability:<http://search.informit.com.au/ ISSN: 1031-1009. [cited 08 Sep 15].

Brennan, John P. and Kathryn J. Quade. Evolving usage of materials from CIMMYT in developing Australian wheat varieties. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research, 2006, 57, 947-952.

SIMLESA-Mozambique learns more about conservation agriculture technologies in Brazil

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Three agriculturalists from the Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Cropping Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA)–Mozambique made a training visit to Brazil on 3-13 June 2015.

The objective of the visit was for the three researchers to acquire conservation agriculture (CA) skills, with a special focus on soil health and climate change. The training sessions were also expected to give participants the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience with their Brazilian counterparts at Brazilian Corporation of Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA) sites.

“By visiting and interacting with farmers, observing trials and having discussions with CA advisors, researchers, policy makers and agriculture industry representatives, we gained new knowledge of CA technologies,” said team leader Domingos Dias, SIMLESA-Mozambique National Coordinator.

During the 11-day visit, participants were presented with real-life CA challenges so they could solve them interactively. Having learned the required theory and facts through demonstrations, question-and-answer sessions and multimedia presentations, they are now expected to apply these technologies in their respective countries.

Smallholder farmers in Mozambique are affected by the poor farming methods they practice, such as late weeding and inefficient residue application, and the lack of farm mechanization. The participants learned to use and maintain agro-machinery, such as direct seeders and rippers, as well as when to plant forage crops such as Brachiaria, which produces much biomass and whose deep root system plays a critical role in improving soil properties.

“We learned very useful practices and will test some of them under our conditions. The training in Brazil presented alternative uses of residues and rotations based on soil properties suitable for Southern African countries,” said SIMLESA-Mozambique participant Custodio Jorge.

Both farmers and extension staff who participated in the first phase of SIMLESA (2010-2014) lacked basic skills and knowledge of CA farming systems. The second phase of the project (2014-2018) is focused on filling this gap through training.

 

SIMLESA-Mozambique National Coordinator Domingos Dias observes Brachiaria ssp., an African grass that is rotated and intercropped with soybean, maize and wheat under conservation agriculture at EMBRAPA, Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul. Photo: Custodio Jorge

CIMMYT farm mechanization project attracts wide coverage by Ethiopian media

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It is not often that conservation agriculture, the subject of numerous scholarly articles and dissertations, gets wide coverage from the mainstream media in Ethiopia.

It is thus remarkable that the media gave particular attention to a training event held last June at the ILRI-Ethiopia campus and organized by CIMMYT through the USAID-funded “Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation” project (Africa RISING project, www.africa-rising.net). A focus of CIMMYT’s work in Ethiopia and other countries of East and Southern Africa is to improve smallholder farming practices by exploiting the synergies between small-scale mechanization and conservation agriculture.

Lead trainer Joseph M. Mutua shows service providers how to drive a two-wheel tractor. Photo: Frédéric Baudron/CIMMYT

Reporters representing two major daily English language newspapers in Addis Ababa attended and wrote extensively about the five-day training event that the project organized for service providers from different states in Ethiopia with the objective of promoting farm mechanization and sustainable productivity.

The Ethiopian Herald gave the most coverage through a lengthy article titled “Advancing farming systems improve food, nutrition and income security.” The article describes the advantages of increasing smallholder production through the adoption of modern agricultural practices and proven new technologies such as the two-wheel tractor, which can help increase the efficiency of seed and fertilizer use, reduce labor, time and post-harvest losses, and improve grain quality and farm income. The article also recommends that “all stakeholders should identify the challenges of promoting mechanization and deliver appropriate technologies to farmers.”

The Monitor gave the story a prominent place under the headline “Two-wheel tractors to improve agriculture in Ethiopian highlands.” The story in particular mentions the role of the project in light of a draft national strategy developed in 2014 by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency with the aim of increasing farm power available to Ethiopian farmers by as much as 10-fold by 2025.

The article also reports the testimonies of participating service providers on the suitability and ease of using two-wheel tractor technologies, vis-à-vis traditional tools. One farmer noted, “Compared with using traditional tools like oxen power… this machine will help increase my income while also saving my time.”

At the end, the article quotes FACASI project coordinator Frédéric Baudron, who noted that the trainees are expected to share their knowledge of two-wheel tractor technologies with their local communities to achieve more impact and productivity in the future.

It is worth noting that CIMMYT employs a range of methodologies to accelerate delivery of two-wheel tractor-based technologies to smallholders in selected sites in SSA countries, including: on-station and on-farm participatory evaluation of two-wheel tractor technologies; business model development; market and policy analysis; and establishment of a permanent knowledge platform as well as a common monitoring and evaluation system that includes gender-disaggregated data.

From the eye in the sky to the cell phone in the field: technologies for all

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Think of all the things you do with your cell phone on any given day. You can start your car, buy a coffee and even measure your heart rate. Cell phones are our alarm clocks and our cameras, our gyms and our banks. Cell phones are not just relevant for urban living but offer an opportunity to transform the lives of smallholders beyond compare. Even the most basic handset can empower farmers by providing them with instant information on weather, crop prices, and farming techniques.

For many farmers in the developing world, cell phones are the most accessible form of technology, but are only one of many technologies changing agriculture. Innovations such as the plow, irrigation and fertilizer have shaped the history of humankind. Today, technologies continue to play an essential role in agricultural production and impact the life of farmers everywhere.

Enter the era of hyper precision

Precision farming has been around for more than 30 years, but cheaper and more robust technologies are ushering in an era of hyper precision. With increasing climate uncertainties and price fluctuations, farmers can’t afford risk, and precision agriculture enables them to increase production and profits by linking biophysical determinants and variations in crop yield. A variety of farm equipment is being equipped with GPS and sensors that can measure water needs in the crop and nutrient levels in the soil, and dispense exactly the right amount of fertilizer and water as needed.

Precision agriculture may originate from large-scale, well-resourced farms, but its concept is highly transferable and it is scale independent. The pocket-sized active-crop canopy sensors, is already a game changing technology with the potential to bring precision agriculture within the reach of smallholders. Using such sensors to read crop health provides farmers with basic information that can be used for recommended nitrogen application. This has a dual purpose, both for smallholder farmers in areas where soils typically lack nitrogen, and those that over-fertilize while simultaneously reducing profitability and causing environmental pollution.

In Bangladesh, CIMMYT researchers are developing an irrigation scheduling app that predicts a week ahead of time whether a particular field requires irrigation. Based on satellite-derived estimates of crop water use, a soil water model and weather forecasts, the underlying algorithm for the app is also being tested in the north of Mexico.

The eyes in the sky

The human eye is a remote sensor, but on a farm there are many things that cannot be seen with the unaided eye, including surface temperatures and crop changes caused by extreme weather. At CIMMYT, remote sensing devices are allowing researchers to obtain information about a large area without physical contact that would otherwise be difficult to monitor. Indeed, last month I joined researchers at CIMMYT Headquarters in El Batan, Mexico, to learn more about the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with built-in GPS and thermal and multispectral sensors that captures aerial photography to an image resolution of 3 cm. This device is being used to capture the canopy temperature and nitrogen status of crops.

Remote sensing alone is not going to teach a farmer how to properly sow a field, take the best care of his crops or optimize returns. Remote sensing explores spatial and temporal dimensions to provide a diagnosis but the next crucial step is to turn this into recommendations on nutrient management, irrigation and crop protection. The next question is how to bring these recommendations to small farms. In a low-tech setting, this depends on knowledge transfer to provide recommendations to farmers.

 

Learning about the use of UAV with CIMMYT scientists including (L-R) Francelino Rodrigues, Zia Ahmed, Martin Kropff, Lorena Gonzalez, Alex Park, Kai Sonder, Bruno Gérard and Juan Arista. (Photo: CIMMYT)
Learning about the use of UAV with CIMMYT scientists including (L-R) Francelino Rodrigues, Zia Ahmed, Martin Kropff, Lorena Gonzalez, Alex Park, Kai Sonder, Bruno Gérard and Juan Arista. (Photo: CIMMYT)

Show and tell: when technology adoption becomes farmer-driven

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What does the CASFESA project have to show for two-and-a-half years in Kenya?

Many poor smallholder farmers in Africa bear the brunt of infertile soils. Research offers a partial solution: Conservation Agriculture (CA) helps farmers improve soil productivity through sustainable intensification.

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Farmers evaluating maize stand on the conventional versus conservation agriculture plots during field days organized in Embu.

Participants of the project closing workshop held on March 5, 2015.
And some smallholders in Africa are already reaping CA benefits. For example, the Conservation Agriculture and Smallholder Farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa (CASFESA) Project worked with farmers and other partners in Kenya and Ethiopia since 2012. CASFESA’s aim was to buffer small-scale farmers by enhancing farm resilience through better natural resource management in maize based systems.

In Kenya, CASFESA ran for two-and-a-half years in Embu County. At a summative closing workshop held at Embu on 5 March 2015, farmers shared their CASFESA experience. For some of them, the project transformed their farming with remarkable benefits, due to their commitment, as well as the commitment of other key actors in CA dissemination such as the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization.

In Kenya, CASFESA promoted three main technologies targeting maize farmers. The technologies are maize and legume intercropping, residue retention and zero tillage with permanent furrows and ridges. Thirty farmers in 15 randomly selected villages volunteered their farms for demonstrations showcasing the three technologies in tandem. Practical demonstrations were done during farmer field days in the selected villages to compare the performance of maize and beans using conservation agriculture and using normal practice. Intercropping is not new and is already very common in the area.

Moti Jaleta, CASFESA Project Coordinator, observed, “From a quick adoption monitoring survey, we noticed about 60 percent of the sample farmers have tried at least some of these techniques with keen interest to continue. The success of the CASFESA Project in Embu has been in getting these technologies to the farmers through practical demonstration, and linking them with farm input suppliers. With this, I believe we have accomplished our task in supporting the smallholders to improve their crop management.”

Participants of the project closing workshop held on March 5, 2015.
Participants of the project closing workshop held on March 5, 2015.

Farmers evaluating maize stand on the conventional versus conservation agriculture plots during field days organized in Embu.

Indeed, a good number of farmers in the villages started using zero tillage with permanent furrows and ridges covered with maize residue. But there was a hitch: initially, adopting the full suite of sustainable-intensification practices appeared unpopular. And why was this? Not because of the practices themselves but because most farmers use maize residue for animal feed. This made residue retention for mulching and enhancing soil fertility a big challenge. So how did the farmers themselves – independent of the researchers – get around these unfavorable trade-offs? Let’s hear it from them.

One farmer, Nancy Mbeere, who adopted CA, harvested an additional eight bags of maize from her small farm. And she did not keep her new know-how to herself: “I have trained my three neighbors on this new technique and they have already started using furrows and ridges and residue retention in their maize shamba [farms].”

Nancy and her neighbors found a solution on animal fodder. “We agreed to have one in every three rows remain in the field as residue and use the other two as feed,” explained Nancy.

For Bethwel Kathiomi, another CA farmer, when his farm had two very good seasons, other farmers approached him for tips on his new-found farming technique. “People kept stopping by my farm to ask questions, and I was happy to share this information with them.”

At the closure workshop, farmers attending committed to continue sharing their experiences and successes, and to support each other through small groups to learn, and access inputs like fertilizers, herbicides and improved seeds. This community commitment should lead to greater CA adoption, given the attention CA benefits are drawing going by the experience of Bethwel and Nancy. It would therefore appear that in this particular case, CA has successfully moved from researchers to farmers, who are now the ones propagating CA practices. Good news indeed for impact, reach and sustainability!

14 years of CA research on display

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In 2002, ACIAR and Gansu Agricultural University initiated a rainfed conservation agriculture research project in Dingxi County, Loess Plateau, Gansu Province. Li Lingling and her team have religiously maintained this site, gathering data and training postgraduates, while quantifying the long-term impacts of CA in a very arid environment. CIMMYT-China, in close collaboration with GAU, is developing the site into an innovation platform to demonstrate and promote sustainable farming approaches in the region, which was demonstrated through a farm walk during China Science Week.

The research station has housed and trained 100 students at a time, and is home to 10-15 postgraduates during peak sampling periods. Refurbished laboratories, a collection of field tools and Li Lingling’s 14 years of research results were displayed during the farm walk.

That increased crop water use efficiency can be achieved in this arid zone was a key message from the wheat/pea rotation system under CA, whereas zero tillage with straw removal was one of the worst performing soil treatments. The farm walk effectively demonstrated soil-water interactions under CA, no till, straw removal and continuous grazing, highlighting the benefits of CA and its effectiveness in addressing local and regional resource management issues.

Activities culminated with a postgraduate research walk where the main presenters were two Ph.D. students from Ghana who are working on greenhouse gas emissions, among other subjects.

Livestock key to breaking Zambia’s poverty trap

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Malende is a small village near the town of Monze in southern Zambia, a region that has been a focus of CIMMYT’s major research programs since 2005 and where cropping systems based on the principles and practices of conservation agriculture have been introduced.

Farmers in Malende are typical of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa; they farm relatively small areas, their soils are often degraded and they suffer serious effects of climate variability such as increased heat stress, erratic rainfall and intra-seasonal droughts. Subsistence farming is predominant, as farmers lack access to functional markets for both inputs and produce. Most farmers in Malende rely on manual or animal traction and lack access to alternative farm power, which limits their landholdings to around five hectares.

CIMMYT has been working with partners to implement climate-resilient technologies such as direct seeding, mulching and diversified crop rotation to increase farmer productivity and environmental resilience. A survey conducted during the implementation of an International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) project classified Zambian farmers involved in different farming operations by their household characteristics, i.e., land size, cattle and income. To validate the study of farmer typologies, CIMMYT, in collaboration with Zambia’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, interviewed a smallholder farmer who owned no cattle and a farmer who owned more than 15 head in March 2015.

Jacob Sibanje farms a total of five hectares. His family consists of five adults and five children, all of whom work on the farm. He has practiced conservation agriculture for many years, produces consistently stable yields, and has started rotating maize with groundnuts, cassava, cowpeas and sweet potatoes.

When asked how his farm operations are doing, Sibanje answered, “I am struggling!” Despite progress achieved through conservation agriculture, the high price of farm inputs (specifically fertilizer and herbicides) and the lack of formal markets for his produce erode his profits annually. This means he has to take on off-farm work to get by. Sibanje’s maize harvest is solely for home consumption, and his situation is unstable, since he has to rent livestock to cultivate his land.

Lyson Sakala cultivates six hectares and supports his family of three adults and two children. Unlike Sibanje, Sakala’s approach is clearly market oriented. He practices conservation agriculture on three hectares, where he rotates maize with soybeans, cowpea and sunflower both for the local market and home consumption. The other three hectares are used as pastureland for livestock.

Sakala feeds all crop residues to his animals and applies manure mainly to the grazing area. He produces 15 liters of milk daily; seven are for home consumption and the rest are sold. Cattle are also a source of cash in case of a family emergency. Sakala can count on selling two to four cows every year for an average price of US $197 per cow. Combined milk and meat revenue allows him to purchase fertilizers at a much higher price than his fellow farmers in Malende. As Sakala’s profits increased, he started employing two farm helpers, and is now able to send all his children to school. He also obtains fodder from his neighboring farmers as supplementary feed during the dry winter season in exchange for renting animals during planting time.

How can Sibanje achieve the same success as Sakala?

CIMMYT used farm typologies based on diverse socio-economic and agricultural criteria to define different livelihood strategies in southern Zambia, and owning livestock was identified as one way of breaking the poverty trap many farmers like Sibanje are stuck in. CIMMYT is also demonstrating the added value of manure, defining the trade-offs between leaving residue on the soil and feeding it to cattle; we also identified the agroecological and socioeconomic conditions where crop-livestock integration can bring positive solutions to farmers.

When he was re-visited in June, Sibanje had already bought four heifers with the current season’s produce. He also plans to modify his farm operations to create a mixed crop-livestock system with the goal of maximizing the whole system instead of only one component, which will generate positive trade-offs.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “The choice of mixed farming is not always a sign of improvement of the situation in which people may find themselves.” However, Sibanje and Sakala show that though all smallholders may not become market-oriented livestock farmers, they should at least own enough cattle to avoid having to rent animals for plowing and to have manure and reduce their dependency on expensive mineral fertilizers.

The gola: storing maize to improve livelihoods in Chuadanga, Bangladesh

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Farmers in Chuadanga District of Bangladesh have been using a unique local method to store their maize: the gola.

Maize grains can be stored in a modified gola for several months. Photo: Abdul Momin-CIMMYT

Golas are large rectangular or cylindrical containers used to store seed and animal feed. In Bangladesh, golas are traditionally used to store paddy rice. They are made locally using bamboo for the sides and tin for the roof, can last up to 80 years and hold from 2 to 20 tons of grain.

Many Bangladeshi farmers believe that, unlike rice, maize grain cannot be stored in golas due to its high susceptibility to insects and pests. To keep its quality from deteriorating, farmers normally sell maize grain at a minimum price as quickly as possible after harvest.

Unlike most of the country’s farmers, Chuadanga farmers use golas to store maize grain until its market price goes up, which results in higher profits. According to a recent CIMMYT-Bangladesh survey, the longer they store the seed, the higher the profit. “The profit earned by the Chuadanga farmers through maize grain storage helps to increase the national per capita income, allowing Bangladesh to become a middle income country,” said Prodip Hajong, Senior Officer in Agricultural Economics at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI).

Eighty percent of all maize grain produced in Chuadanga is stored anywhere from 4 to 43 weeks and sold for a higher price. According to the survey, golas were the preferred storage for maize and used by over 60% of respondent households. Each household earned a profit of approximately USD $389.68 in 2012, USD $315.64 in 2013 and USD $130.19 in 2014. During 2014, the overall market price of maize grain was low compared to previous years; that is why farmers’ profit margin was comparatively small.

Farmers in Chuadanga, Bangladesh, modified their traditional golas to be able to store maize longer and earn higher profits. Photo: Abdul Momin-CIMMYT
Farmers in Chuadanga, Bangladesh, modified their traditional golas to be able to store maize longer and earn higher profits. Photo: Abdul Momin-CIMMYT

“High temperatures inside the gola help maintain grain quality by killing insects, their larvae and eggs,” said Abdul Momin, CIMMYT Cropping Systems Agronomist. With assistance from the Cereal Systems Initiative in South Asia in Bangladesh (CSISA-BD) project, Chuadanga farmers have been modifying their golas – for example, by reinforcing the floors with tin to prevent post-harvest losses from rodents and insects – so that they can store maize for longer periods.

The CIMMYT-Bangladesh survey was conducted by CIMMYT researchers Frederick Rossi, Agricultural Economist; Elahi Baksh, Applied Agricultural Economist; Abdul Momin, Cropping System Agronomist; Thakur P. Tiwari, Country Representative in Bangladesh and Prodip Hajong, Senior Officer in Agricultural Economics at BARI. They recommended making an action plan in collaboration with the Department of Agricultural Extension, BARI and local NGOs, to demonstrate and disseminate this low cost technology throughout the country.