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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.

Zero tillage for smallholder wheat farmers in Balochistan, Pakistan

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Participants in zero tillage wheat field. Photos: Naveed Ahmed Sheikh from Balochistan.
Participants in zero tillage wheat field. Photos: Naveed Ahmed Sheikh from Balochistan.

Under the Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan and in collaboration with Balochistan Agriculture Research, CIMMYT has begun testing and spreading with farmers the practice known as “zero tillage” to sow wheat in Balochistan, a province in southwest Pakistan that accounts for more than 40 percent of the country’s land area but only five percent of the population.

Jaffarabad and Nasirabad are major rice- and wheat-growing districts in Balochistan. The predominant cropping systems are either fallow or rice, followed by a crop of wheat. Soils after rice are poorly-drained and hamper tilling for wheat, so wheat is not sown soon enough to avoid the high temperatures that arrive in spring, when the crop is filling grain. This seriously reduces yields.

Participants in field day at Usta Muhammad.
Participants in field day at Usta Muhammad.

On 10 January, more than 100 participants gathered for a field day organized by AIP in Balochistan province to promote zero tillage for wheat. Involving the direct sowing of wheat seed into residues of the preceding rice crop, with no plowing, the practice has multiple benefits for farmers, soils and water use. These include more timely wheat planting, reduced land preparation costs, higher wheat yields and increased cropping system intensity (hence, productivity), according to agricultural experts Mr. Asmatullah Taran and Mr. Mehdi Hassan.

Intended for smallholder farmers, the event also drew progressive farmers, agricultural extension specialists and researchers from the Directorate of Agriculture Research Usta Muhammad Farm, Jaffarabad District, as well as renowned parliamentarians Mr. Khan Muhammad Khan Jamali, Mr. Changaiz Khan Jamali and Mr. Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali, Speaker, Balochistan Provincial Assembly.

Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali addressing the farmers.
Mir Jan Muhammad Jamali addressing the farmers.

Dr. Muhammad Javaid Tareen, Director General of Balochistan Agriculture Research, praised AIP and partners’ efforts to promote conservation agriculture practices such as zero tillage, said the practices would improve farmers’ livelihoods in the Nasirabad Zone and called on scientists to address the Province’s crop productivity constraints. Mr. Changaiz Khan Jamali, former Federal Minister for Science & Technology, said that agricultural research must address small farmers’ concerns and provide new techniques to the farming community.

Mr. Jamali was grateful for the efforts of USAID and CIMMYT to improve smallholder famers’ incomes and assured the farmers and agricultural professionals that efforts would be made to improve research facilities and access to new technologies in Balochistan.

Gates Foundation predicts agricultural extension will have a big impact on Africa

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In their seventh annual letter Bill & Melinda Gates look 15 years into the future to predict the steps needed to improve the lives of poor people faster than in any other time in history. Technology advancements in agriculture, education and global health are key to this vision, with particular reference to the importance of new vaccines, mobile phone technology and online education. “Poverty has been halved because of innovation,” Bill Gates emphasized at the Davos World Economic Forum last week. “Economic miracles start with agriculture, education and then [countries] can participate in the world economy.”

The Gates Foundation has placed their agricultural bets on Africa being able to feed itself in 15 years. This will be achieved through training in crop rotation, no-till farming, fertilizer use and planting techniques. “Investing in extension…is the only way to reap the full benefit of innovation,” Bill and Melinda Gates emphasized. It is predicted this will lead to a 50 percent yield increase across Africa, reducing famines through more nutritious crops and a reduced dependence on imports. Mobile phones will also be a game-changer, giving farmers access to information on improved seed and fertilizer, proper techniques, daily weather reports and market prices.

The notion that scientists should work closely with farmers is central to CIMMYT’s approach. There is a great deal of information out there today and farmers have choices to make. Selecting the right seed varieties and technologies alone is not enough. It is also crucial to combine this knowledge with an understanding of how to develop an integrative agronomic system that connects farmers to a working value chain. In this respect agricultural extension can help farmers achieve their agricultural goals.

Nonetheless, agricultural extension alone will not be sufficient to help African farmers increase agricultural productivity. Extension must go hand in hand with developing new varieties – why use an Altair Basic if you can get a Surface Pro 3? Tanzanian farmer Joyce Sandiya’s success with new drought tolerant maize seed is featured in the annual letter. “That seed made the difference between hunger and prosperity,” she said, eloquently reflecting on the importance of a single seed.

CIMMYT projects in Africa that are funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation show how to develop and deploy new seed varieties. In eastern and southern Africa, up to 2 million farming households have benefited from improved drought tolerant maize seed emerging from joint work by CIMMYT scientists and seed companies, government exten-sion programs and national research organizations.

Research alone is academic, unless it is informed by awareness of problems on-farm and supported by extension. Agricultural research is essential to develop new seed varieties, technologies and innovations, while extension is crucial to ensure that farmers can use these technologies.

Improved maize to boost yields in nitrogen-starved African soils

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Sub-Saharan African farmers typically apply less than 20 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare of cropland — far less than their peers in any other region of the world. In 2014, partners in the Improved Maize for African Soils (IMAS) project developed 41 Africa-adapted maize varieties that respond better to low amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and are up for release in nine African countries through 24 seed companies.

A farmer applies nitrogen fertilizer to her hybrid maize. Photo: CIMMYT/IMAS

After water, nitrogen is the single most important input for maize production; lack of it is the main constraint to cereal yields in Africa, in areas with enough rain to raise a crop. Year after year, infertile soils and high fertilizer prices (in rural areas as much as six times the global average) combine to reduce harvests of maize, sub-Saharan Africa’s number-one cereal crop and chief source of calories and protein for the poor. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), an initiative launched in 2010 has made dramatic progress to address this by exploiting natural genetic variation for nutrient-use efficiency in tropical maize. “Partners have been breeding maize varieties that respond better to the small amounts of nitrogen fertilizer African farmers can afford to apply,” said Biswanath Das, CIMMYT maize breeder and coordinator of the Improved Maize for African Soils (IMAS) project. “We’re aiming to raise maize yields by 50 percent and benefit up to 60 million maize farmers in eastern and southern Africa.”

Smallholder Farmer Conditions: A Maize “Reality Check”

A public-private partnership that, along with CIMMYT, involves national research organizations such as the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council (ARC), African seed companies and DuPont Pioneer, IMAS has advanced quickly in part because participants share breeding lines and technical knowhow, according to Das.

“But a real key to success – and a significant legacy of the project – is that IMAS has established in eastern and southern Africa the world’s largest low-nitrogen screening network for maize,” Das explained. “There are 25 sites in 10 countries and a total of over 120,000 experimental plots. Partners can test breeding lines and quickly and reliably spot the ones with superior nitrogen-use efficiency under smallholder farmers’ conditions.” According to Das, nearly a quarter of the plots are managed by seed companies, which recognize the value of nitrogen-use efficiency as a key trait for their farmer clients.

In an exciting 2014 development, regulatory agencies in eastern Africa began evaluating maize national performance trials — which varieties must pass as a prerequisite for release — under nitrogen stress in the IMAS network. “This is a clear recognition by policymakers of poor soil fertility as a critical constraint for African maize farmers,” said Das. “To meet farmers’ needs, IMAS varieties are also bred for drought tolerance and resistance to the region’s major maize diseases.”

Also Yielding Under Well Fertilized Conditions

Partners are augmenting conventional breeding with DNA-marker-assisted selection and use of “doubled haploids,” a high-tech shortcut to genetically-uniform maize inbred lines. Experimental breeding stocks thus developed are field tested under low-nitrogen stress through “high-precision phenotyping,” involving careful measurement of key traits in live plants.

Low nitrogen trials in Kiboko, Kenya, where new maize varieties are tested. Photo: CIMMYT/IMAS.

“In this way, we’ve quickly developed maize varieties that yield up to 50 percent more than existing varieties under low-fertility stress, characteristic of smallholder farming systems,” Das explained. “Crucially for farmers, these varieties also perform well under well- fertilized conditions, whilst several carry resistance to maize lethal necrosis, a devastating viral disease spreading through eastern Africa.” In 2014, 41 such varieties were nominated for release in nine countries in Africa, in partnership with 24 seed companies.

This year IMAS also worked with seed companies to support the production and dissemination of 3,000 tons of seed of nitrogen-use efficient maize hybrids in Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, potentially benefitting more than 120,000 smallholder maize farmers and helping to enhance food security for over half a million household members, according to Das. “Close collaboration with the private seed sector has been instrumental to IMAS since its inception,” Das said. “These partners host over a quarter of the regional nitrogen stress screening network and have helped with the quick increase of seed of nitrogen-use efficient varieties and with managing farmer demonstrations and field days to support the fast release of new varieties.”

A December 2014 report by the Montpellier Panel – comprising agricultural, trade and ecology experts from Europe and Africa – details the economic and ecological threats of degrading soils in Africa, and is highlighted in an 04 December BBC feature.

Q+A: Young scientist wins award for “Taking it to the Farmer”

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Taking-it-to-the-Farmer EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) — Conservation agriculture, which improves the livelihoods of farmers by sustainably boosting productivity, is becoming a vital part of the rural landscape throughout Mexico and Latin America, leading to a major World Food Prize award for Bram Govaerts.

As associate director of the Global Conservation Agriculture Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Govaerts works with farmers to help them understand how minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotation can simultaneously boost yields, increase profits and protect the environment.

Govaerts, winner of the 2014 Borlaug Field Award , played a major role in developing a Mexican initiative known as the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro), and in June 2014 the 35-year-old assumed leadership of the project, spearheading the coordination of related initiatives throughout Latin America.

According to Govaerts, there are two choices – “Either agricultural production is going to grow in unsustainable ways, depleting our resources, or we take action now, investing in sustainable agriculture so that it can be a motor for growth as well as a motor for sustainable development.”

MasAgro is a partnership led by Mexico’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food and CIMMYT involving more than 100 agricultural research organizations. It offers training and technical support for farmers in conservation agriculture and gives them access to high-yielding, conventionally bred seeds.

The overall aims of MasAgro include raising the yield potential of wheat by 50 percent and increasing Mexico’s annual production by 350,000 tons (318,000 metric tons) in 10 years. Goals also include raising the production of maize in rainfed areas.

MasAgro’s “Take It to the Farmer” component was inspired by a statement made by the late CIMMYT scientist Norman Borlaug who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. He believed that scientists should work closely with farmers, an idea central to CIMMYT’s overall approach to agricultural research and practice. Borlaug led the development of semi-dwarf wheat varieties in the mid-20th century that helped save more than 1 billion lives in Pakistan, India and other areas of the developing world. He also founded the World Food Prize .

“Take it to the Farmer” integrates technological innovation with small-scale farming systems for maize and wheat crops, while minimizing harmful impacts on the environment. Farmers on more than 94,000 hectares (232,280 acres) have switched to sustainable systems using MasAgro technologies, while farmers on another 600,000 hectares are receiving training and information to improve their agricultural techniques and practices. Techniques include crop diversification, reducing tilling of the soil and leaving crop residue on the fields.

Govaerts, who has also worked on conservation agriculture projects in Ethiopia and India, discussed his work after winning the award.

Q: What inspired the “Take it to the Farmer” component of the MasAgro project?

A: The strategy stemmed from the fact that there’s a great deal of information out there today for farmers, starting with seed varieties. Farmers have many choices to make about technology to increase productivity, but they need to understand how to integrate it and make it sustainable. We work closely with farmers to develop conservation-based agricultural systems so that they can generate high, stable crop yields over time. Doing this offers farmers the best opportunity for higher incomes, but also lowers environmental impact.

MasAgro helps the farmers develop an agronomic system – including the technology. In that way it’s not so much taken to the farmers, but it’s developing a system together with the farmer. We innovate with the farmers and connect them to a working value chain and we then combine what we call our hub approach. We’re connecting research platforms with farm innovation modules and from there we develop systems influenced by farmer knowledge.

Q: Is it possible for this to work on any farm in any location?

A: The key is to adapt to the specific locations of each of the farmers. We have to make the strategies work for specific farming and then on top of that we need to include other technologies to make it work. Technology might simply be hand-planting, not necessarily high-tech huge machinery. It is really about establishing basic conservation agriculture principles and working together to make those basic principles work.

Q: Are you trying to help farmers achieve their agricultural goals by helping them save money by not spending on fertilizers?

A: It depends; if you’re in an area where farmers are over-fertilizing it helps to reduce costs if they don’t use fertilizers as much. On the other hand, some farmers are not using fertilizers at all so there we recommend using them in an integrated manner. There might be areas where production costs go up slightly because farmers were not investing in any inputs or technologies, but because productivity is increased in the end they have a higher return on investment.

Q: Can you give an example of a farmer who has changed practices?

A: Some smallholder farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico, are improving their production practices as they raise the local [indigenous] maize landraces. We connected them with a niche maize market in New York City. They are now exporting and selling their specialty maize to chefs in New York who use them in high-end restaurants. So they are not only increasing productivity, they are also connected to markets to sell their extra produce. The challenge now is to take this effort to scale. What we realized is that by only increasing productivity, we’re actually bringing the farmers into a risky situation unless they can find bigger markets.

We helped a novice wheat farmer who is renting land. He’s been adjusting his farming system and is now using conservation agriculture technology. As a result, because he has a slower turnaround time, when he planted his summer crop, instead of planting only 100 hectares, he jumped to 350 hectares. In a strict sense, he was not a smallholder farmer, but we work with big and small farmers.

Another example is the use of mobile phones – farmers can subscribe to a short message service, or SMS text-messaging system. Once subscribed, the farmer receives information on different topics, including technical recommendations or warnings. For example, one of the warnings we sent out during the wheat-growing season was that there was going to be an imminent frost. That led to some of the farmers irrigating their crops because that helped mitigate the damage and saved part of their crops.

Q: What challenges do you face?

We’re working with more than 150 institutions and organizations and we’re connected to more than 200,000 farmers. When Dr. Borlaug was working the world was simpler, we not only have to increase yields but we also have to work in an environmentally friendly manner. We also have to provide environmental services via agriculture and we have to make sure that farmers have sufficient income and this in a complex, institutional.
We can no longer accept that we’re just doing the science and then leave it up to others to apply the science. That’s not how it works – we scientists need to ensure that the technology is actually implemented and that it is expanded by new ideas from farmers, technicians and others along the value chain. We need to take responsibility that our knowledge and science is used and is responding to a real need. Public and private investment in agriculture should increase, especially in Latin America because it’s going to be a motor of transformation.

Q: How do you encourage farmers to change their practices?

A: We do a lot of training. In some areas our first step is bringing new seeds – connecting seed companies with a new variety CIMMYT has developed, making sure the seed system is working. There are some interventions that are rather linear – one-shot interventions. There are methods that from the beginning are going to be complicated and the farmer has to wait five years before changes are seen. That’s quite difficult, but if you can show an intervention where the farmer can store maize better and instead of losing 40 percent he’s only losing 10 percent during storage, that’s an intervention that can then start the dialogue to a more complicated system change. Much of our focus is on knowledge exchange, as well as in training and innovation.

Q: What is the significance of your award for Mexico?

A: The award has a special significance for Mexico. It recognizes Mexico’s bold decision to invest in agricultural innovation and to take responsibility not only for the country but for the region. We are proud of CIMMYT’s achievements within its host country.
Before CIMMYT’s collaboration with the Mexican government there was a real disconnect between agricultural science and the reality of farmers on the ground. As a result, this award is not only a recognition of scientific excellence, but the importance of getting the results out to the farmers. Mexico is a complex country.

Here we have all types of farmers – from large commercial farmers who exploit market opportunities for export to smallholder farmers who do not have access to markets. Mexico also hosts a wide range of unique agro-ecological environments. These circumstances offer CIMMYT scientists a unique laboratory to conduct their research and gives us an opportunity to explore new ways of doing science and connecting with farmers to ensure that science has impact.

Q: This year the World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue was titled “Can we sustainably feed the 9 billion people on our planet by the year 2050?” What are your thoughts on the topic?

A: This is not just a numbers game. We will need to feed more than 9 billion people while working in a more complicated institutional and political environment and at the same time safeguarding natural resources. These global challenges are moving at a fast pace, so CIMMYT needs to move fast and expand its scientific excellence. We are at a turning point where we have to take advantage of these rapid changes in science and technology, which are becoming increasingly interlinked.

Working to help provide nutritional food for 9.5 billion people will be a collective effort. There won’t be one Norman Borlaug but a consortium of people working together with different expertise to achieve this goal. This will require new collaborations, especially public-private partnerships. CIMMYT is one of the best institutions to create these partnerships but we need to be better equipped for what is needed at this time. Complacency and living in the past is not an option.

CIMMYT prepares to launch second phase of SIMLESA in Kenya and Tanzania

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Dr. Fidelis Myaka, director of research and development with the Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives, officially opens the meeting in Arusha, Tanzania.

Representatives from the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), Queensland Alliance for Agricultural and Food Innovation (QAAFI), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the national agricultural research systems (NARS) of Kenya and Tanzania, and CIMMYT scientists from Ethiopia, Kenya and Zimbabwe met between 14-17 October in Arusha, Tanzania, to finalize activities to meet the objectives of the second phase of CIMMYT’s Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume Cropping Systems for Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) project.

The joint meeting for the Kenya and Tanzania country teams was the third and last launch and planning meeting. It was also a follow-up of two previous operational meetings held in Lilongwe, Malawi, and Hawassa, Ethiopia.

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Young researchers trained to develop resilient farming systems

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From 27 September to 4 October, scientists from India’s national agricultural research systems attended the “Conservation Agriculture: Developing Resilient Systems” training program at the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI) in Karnal, India. Participants learned about crop management technologies based on conservation agriculture (CA) and acquired skills to plan strategic CA research trials.

The training program was organized by CIMMYT’s Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and CSSRI. Eighteen researchers from the Division of Natural Resource Management, International Rice Research Institute and CIMMYT attended the course.

Opening the course, ICAR Assistant Director General (Seeds) Dr. J.S. Chauhan, highlighted the importanc eof CA training for improving the productivity of crops and cropping systems in different agro-ecological regions of India. Conservation agriculture can sustain the livelihood of smallholders while maintaining and improving the quality of the environment and natural resources. CSSRI Director Dr. D.K. Sharma explained that CA has the ability to slow the depletion of underground water, declining soil fertility associated with multiple nutrient deficiencies, pest outbreaks and increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He also focused on how to design diversified and resilient cropping systems that use resources more efficiently, as an alternative to intensive rice-wheat systems.

Globally, the positive impact of CA-based techniques on natural resources, adaptation and mitigation of climate change effects has been widely acknowledged. In India, strategic research on CA such as precise nutrient application, water, cultivars and weed management has been initiated. However, CA still remains a relatively new concept in the country. Andrew McDonald, CSISA project leader, talked about how continuous cultivation of rice-wheat cropping systems for almost five decades in the Indo-Gangetic Plains has caused the degradation of natural resources such as water and soil, thus affecting climate and biodiversity. He said, “This training program offers a unique opportunity for members of the country’s scientific community who are working in the area of natural resource management to help address the issues of water, labor and energy through the use of advanced crop production technologies.”

The training covered basic principles of CA, included field exercises and modern CA techniques for efficient climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, impact assessment of CA technologies and sustainable management of natural resources to ensure food security, profitability and productivity. Participants were given hands-on training on the use of different technologies including the laser land leveler, turbo seeder, multi-crop planter, limit plot planter, bed planter and mechanical transplanter. They also learned how to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

Attendees also participated in strategic research trials at Kulvehri and Taraori in Karnal. H.S. Sidhu, farm development engineer of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) and M.L. Jat, CIMMYT Senior cropping system agronomist, talked about the longterm strategic research trial on CA for intensive cereal systems, shared their experiences and outcomes related to BISA research and commented on the development work at Ladhowal, Ludhiana. Jat also spoke about using conservation agriculture and climate-smart agriculture, to achieve food sufficiency by 2050 through input-based management systems in diverse production systems and environments.

Scale-appropriate mechanization: the intercontinental connection

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CIMMYT aims to improve the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world by providing practical solutions for more efficient and sustainable farming. Among the options to improve efficiency, scale-appropriate and precise planting machinery is a crucial yet rarely satisfied need.

Mechanization efforts are ongoing across CIMMYT’s projects, with a strong focus on capacity building of functional small- and medium-scale engineering and manufacturing enterprises. Projects involved include ‘Farm Power and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification’ in eastern and southern Africa, funded by the Australian Center for International AgriculturalResearch (ACIAR) and the Cereal Systems Initiative in South Asia (CSISA), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. CSISA collaborates closely with the machinery research and development work done on the farms of the Borlaug Institute for South Asia in India, CIMMYT conservation agriculture (CA) projects funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, the Agri-Machinery Program based in Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, and the MasAgro Take It to the Farmer machinery and intelligent mechanization unit based in Mexico.

Applied research scientists and technicians assisting these projects work specifically to tackle problems in diverse farming conditions and for varying production systems. Despite their geographically diverse target areas, this team strives to reach a common focal point from which they can learn and compare technical advancements. These advancements are achieved through mutual machine technology testing programs, exchanging machines and expertise and evaluations of best solutions for scale-appropriate mechanization to boost sustainable intensification for resource poor farmers.

Recently, this collaboration model led to the export of several units of a toolbar-based, two-wheel tractor implement for bed shaping, direct seeding of different crops and precise fertilizer application. They will be tested by CIMMYT projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal. This multi-purpose, multi-crop equipment was developed to be CA-compatible and has been fine-tuned in Mexico, with design priorities that kept in mind the implement’s usefulness for smallholder farmers in other parts of the world. The machinery will be tested next in Zimbabwe and possibly India and Pakistan.

The team’s goal is to help developing countries and viable business models of local enterprises in specific regions to have access to good quality implements and tools at reasonable prices. This open-source prototyping strategy is based on the free sharing of technical designs and machinery construction plans. The strategy combines patent-free, lowcost replication blueprints of promising technologies with strong agronomical testing as the ultimate ‘make or break’ criterion. This crucial interaction sets CIMMYT’s engineering platforms apart from commercial options that determine research and development priorities based mainly on sales projections and marketing objectives.

The mechanization team strongly believes in the power of cross regional collaboration – a multidisciplinary work environment, connected intercontinentally with social stewardship and the potential to bring transformative changes to farmers’ fields across the developing world.

CIMMYT Ethiopia expands its agronomy work in wheat-based systems

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CIMMYT Ethiopia joined the Ethiopian Highlands project of Africa RISING ‘Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation’ in June. Using a strong participatory research methodology, researchers and farmers co- identify technologies and management practices for the sustainable intensification of the crop livestock systems of the Ethiopian highlands.

Wheat and barley are the dominant cereals in these farming systems. CIMMYT brings its expertise to the project in four research areas: soil and water conservation (CA and raised bed systems); small-scale mechanization (seeding, threshing and water pumping using two-wheel tractors); participatory variety selection of wheat; and community seed multiplication.

CIMMYT young agricultural scientist receives 2014 Borlaug Field Award

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BGovaerts_bioOn 15 October, Dr. Bram Govaerts, Associate Director of the Global Conservation Agriculture Program of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), received the 2014 Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application Endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation during the World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa.

The 2014 Borlaug Field Award, as the prize is known, acknowledges “researchers under 40 who emulate the scientific innovation and dedication to food security demonstrated by the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug.” Bram was recognized for his leadership in developing sustainable intensification strategies in Mexico where he leads the MasAgro project and its “Take it to the Farmer” component, an innovative research and capacity building extension model that borrows its name from the late Nobel Laureate’s inspiring words.

To further celebrate this achievement, CIMMYT is making available a selection of Bram’s peer-reviewed articles. Consult the articles here.

The 2014 World Food Prize Laureate Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram, former director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program, who received the “Nobel Prize of Agriculture” on 16 October, described Bram as “one of the new generation of hunger fighters who brings innovation, passion and an incredible dedication to the field.”

CIMMYT celebrates Bram’s achievement and is proud to make the most important findings of his research available to the agriculture and development community.

Will yield increases continue to feed the world? The case for wheat

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Tony Fisher is Plant Industry Honorary Fellow with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). Any opinions expressed are his own

The release of the bread wheat variety Borlaug100 earlier this year in the irrigated Yaqui Valley of northwest Mexico was both apt and reassuring.

The 100th anniversary of the late scientist Norman Borlaug’s birth was also celebrated in 2014. The performance of his namesake wheat variety represented a notable jump in potential yield, lifting bread wheat up to the potential of the best durum wheat variety, currently dominant in the valley.

Borlaug, who is credited with saving more than 1 billion lives, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and its predecessor organization, the Office of Special Studies, where he began breeding wheat in the 1940s. Scientist Sanjaya Rajaram took over leadership of breeding in 1972, followed by Maarten van Ginkel in 1995, and Ravi Singh as breeder for irrigated areas in 2005. Between 1950 and 2014, potential yield of the approximately 160,000 hectares (400,000 acres) of wheat in the valley increased from about 5 metric tons (5.5 tons) per hectare to 9 metric tons per hectare, while farm yield rose five-fold, from 1.3 metric tons per hectare to 6.5 metric tons per hectare as varieties and agronomic management improved hand in hand.

These technologies have also had an impact on many developing countries with similar or related wheat agro-ecologies.

Many people are quick to point out that yield is not everything in global food security, that other issues are also important, including grain nutritive value, yield stability in the face of pests and diseases, crop input requirements, and more broadly, access of the poor to food (income and price), diversion of grain to animal feed and biofuel, and losses due to wastage.

However, nutritive value of the staples has not greatly changed, nor have yields become less stable, while input use per kilogram of grain produced has decreased, so that none of those issues are as fundamental to food security as farm yield increase.

Indeed yield increase has contributed more than 80 percent of the huge global consumption increase over the last 50 years (incidentally supplying of the burgeoning world population with more calories per capita). The increase in arable land area contributed only about half of the remaining supply increase, since cropping intensity (crops per year per hectare of arable land) also increased. This yield increase has saved vast areas of land from the plow. It is for these reasons that the subtitle of my recent book, Crop yields and global food security: will yield increase continue to feed the world?, asks whether yield increase will continue to feed the world.

While the book looked at past and prospective farm yield change across many crops, here space permits only a brief look at the global wheat yield situation.

The importance of wheat as a food calorie and protein source has already been pointed out in this “Wheat Matters” series of blogs: suffice to say wheat, being produced equally in developing and developed countries, is the top global source of calories (rice is actually the top source for poor consumers) and the top traded food grain, a position it is unlikely to lose.

Estimates of wheat-demand increase from 2010 to 2050 vary considerably: if prices are to be kept no greater than 2010 average real prices, I estimate a supply increase of about 50 percent is needed. Thus production needs to grow at 1.25 percent a year linear relative to the 2010 yield in order to meet estimated demand growth, but currently world wheat yield is growing at only 1 percent a year (relative to the 2010 trend yield of 3.0 metric tons per hectare).

While the potential yield of wheat has been lifted remarkably by breeding, as was seen in the example above, current rates of potential yield progress have slowed, averaging only 0.6 percent a year (range 0.3 to 1.1 percent) across 12 case studies around the world.

Experience suggests that the newest varieties are adopted relatively quickly by farmers and should as a consequence lift farm yield by about the same relative amount (i.e. 0.6 percent a year).

A separate source of progress in farm yield comes from farmers adopting new management practices, which close the gap between farm and potential yield. Actually, the current gap averaged only 48 percent (of farm yield itself), ranging from 23 percent to 69 percent across the case studies, with little difference between developing and developed countries, or irrigated and rainfed environments.

Interested in this subject? Find out more information here:

Fischer R.A., Byerlee D. and Edmeades G.O. 2014. Crop yields and global food security: will yield increase continue to feed the world? ACIAR Monograph No. 158. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research: Canberra. Access at http://aciar.gov.au/publication/mn158

Since the minimum yield gap, due to considerations of costs and risk, is around 30 percent (of farm yield), the scope for further yield gap closing is more limited in wheat than in the other major cereals, which, in contrast to wheat, showed many larger yield gaps, especially in developing countries.

Besides, the gap-causing constraints in the cases of wheat are generally multiple, related to small deficiencies in soil fertility, weeds and disease management and in the timing of operations. This puts special pressure in the case of wheat on lifting potential yield progress, and justifies substantial increases in research in this area. There is certainly no sign that a biological limit in wheat potential yield has been reached, and several new tools and strategies of sufficient promise are available to justify such investment.

Finally, although increasing carbon dioxide is probably lifting both potential and farm yields of wheat about 0.2 percent a year, it is suggested that out to 2050, this will be cancelled by the negative effect of mean temperature increase, which is now becoming more evident.

 

CSISA: Making a Difference in South Asia

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Anu Dhar, Cynthia Mathys, Jennifer Johnson

Staff members of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) are developing and implementing projects aimed at improving agricultural production and standards of living for farmers in South Asia, with excellent results. At their “Seed Summit for Enhancing the Seed Supply Chain in Eastern India” meeting in Patna, Bihar on 14-15 May they worked to design solutions to improve the delivery of high-yielding seed varieties in eastern India, a region that has traditionally suffered from lack of access to these varieties and low seed replacement rates. The meeting, which included over 60 seed experts from the government, research and private sectors, focused on topics such as better-targeted subsidies on seeds, improved storage infrastructure and stronger extension systems to increase accessibility and adoption of improved seed varieties.

The roundtable “Sustainable Intensification in South Asia’s Cereal Systems: Investment Strategies for Productivity Growth, Resource Conservation, and Climate Risk Management” was held on 19 May in New Delhi. It brought together 20 firms and entrepreneurs to build collaborative action plans and joint investment strategies under CSISA to identify new product tie-ins, joint ventures, technical collaborations and shared marketing channels in order to bring high-tech farming ideas to India’s risk-prone ecologies.

In India, CSISA seeks to increase crop yields through the provision of more accurate, location-specific fertilizer recommendations to maize and rice farmers with the “Crop Manager” decision-making tool. The web-based and mobile Android application uses information provided by farmers including field location, planting method, seed variety, typical yields and method of harvesting to create a personalized fertilizer application recommendation at critical crop growth stages to increase yield and profit.

CSISA-Nepal has initiated a series of participatory research trials in farmers’ fields, in order to promote maize triple cropping, the practice of planting maize during the spring period after winter crop harvesting, when fields would usually be fallow. The practice, while proven to be highly remunerative, is not widely popular. The trials seek to determine optimum management practices for maize in order to encourage triple cropping and to generate additional income for farmers.

Greater gender equality in agriculture is also an important goal of CSISA, supported through the creation of Kisan Sakhi, a support group to empower women farmers in Bihar, India by “disseminating new climate-resilient and sustainable farming technologies and practices that will reduce women’s drudgery and bridge the gender gap in agriculture.” A CSISA-Bangladesh project has already had a positive impact on the lives of rural women, providing new farming and pond management techniques that have helped them to greatly increase the productivity of their fish ponds and gain new respect within their families and communities.

Recent activities and accomplishments of the Agricultural Innovation Project (AIP) for Pakistan

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The Agricultural Innovation Project (AIP) for Pakistan, led by CIMMYT and funded by USAID, has accomplished a great deal since its inception in March 2013. Among this year’s most notable AIP achievements by partner institutions were numerous training sessions and workshops, important vaccine developments, progress in baseline surveys and advances in seed improvement and distribution.

In May, 25 stakeholders involved in dairy production received training on the seven rapid assessment (RA) tools developed and modified by the International Livestock Research Institute (IRLI). Another 25 stakeholders involved in small ruminant production were given training on the small ruminant value chain rapid assessment (SRVC RA) tools by scientists from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). On 4 June, a wheat seed value chain workshop organized by CIMMYT in collaboration with the Cereal Crops Research Institute (CCRI) and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) was held at CCRI in Nowshera, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPP).

Nearly 50 actors in the wheat seed value chain participated in the workshop, in order to analyze gaps and identify opportunities in the KPP wheat seed system. A “training of trainers” was organized by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on developing and validating a local rice crop check system at Engro Eximp, Muridke, Sheikhupura for seven field staff of the private sector on 24 June.


The World Vegetable Center held a series of customized training workshops with its partners in order to identify gaps, exchange experiences and to further streamline the Center’s activities among public and private partners. Advances have also been made in improved maize seed under the AIP maize component, which evaluated the performance of about 220 recently introduced maize varieties against locally available checks in spring 2014. Preliminary results from the harvested sites show the good selection potential of introduced maize varieties, which consisted of early to intermediate maturity, climate-resilient and bio-fortified white and yellow kernel hybrids and open pollinated varieties.

Best or comparable varieties identified will be further tested to fulfill variety release procedures. With the help of ILRI, the production of the Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) vaccine in Pakistan will soon be improved. The version of the vaccine currently produced in Pakistan is thermo-stable at 35˚C, while the version of the vaccine produced by IRLI is thermo-stable at 45˚C and is therefore more resistant to damage and able to be kept at a wider variety of temperatures.

Dr. Jeff Mariner, a former ILRI employee, visited Pakistan in June and conducted a technical audit of the production process in the two laboratories that produce the PPR vaccine. An action plan that includes training and production of a first batch of vaccine based on ILRI’s vaccine composition was created based on this audit, and will be implemented in August in order to help Pakistan create a more heat-resistant variety of the PPR vaccine.

AIP staff members have also worked this year to address the issue of quality fodder for livestock in Pakistan by promoting the growth of spineless cactus on range-land. AIP Livestock, in collaboration with the Rangeland Research Institute (RRI) of the National Agricultural Research Council (NARC), held a farmer’s field day at NARC on 15 May to train farmers in the advantages and methodology of growing spineless cactus. Forty farmers participated, and many have since planted spineless cactus on their lands. IRRI, in collaboration with Engro Exemp, distributed 600 kilograms (kg) of certified, high-yielding Basmati-515 rice seed to 30 farmers in the Punjab region to scale up the adoption of this variety. Basmati-515 has good quality attributes and a comparatively short growing duration, and is an excellent supplement to super basmati, which has lost its yield potential and is also prone to damage by insects and diseases.

One hundred kg of high-yielding, salt-tolerant seed of low phytate rice variety NIAB IR-9 was also distributed to farmers in Usta Muhammad in Balochistan. In addition, IRRI is working to promote mechanized dry rice seeding in Pakistan; a method which uses significantly less water than rice cultivated using the conventional planting method and is much easier to harvest. IRRI scientists, with the help of local farm machinery manufacturer Greenland Engineering, have identified a proper seed drill for direct dry seeding, which they are popularizing through the creation of public and private partnerships.

In addition, AIP reports that baseline surveys for wheat and conservation agriculture as well as vegetables and mung bean value chains are in progress in Pakistan’s four provinces. A maize baseline survey will be launched in August, and will interview more than 500 maize growers. The CIMMYT socio-economics team is also preparing to initiate durum wheat value chain studies in Pakistan, which will target producers, millers, food processors, seed companies, dealers, consumers and restaurants. A total of US $82,829 in funding was awarded to 14 research and extension projects, including: three projects related to grape and mango processing from PMAS Arid Agricultural University, Rawalpindi; seven projects on citrus from a research group at Citrus Research International; and four projects focusing on mangoes from faculty at the Institute of Horticulture and Institute of Food Science and Technology at the University of Faisalabad.

UC-Davis and the AIP Perennial Horticultural Project in-country coordinator will conduct the first review of these funded projects in September. Looking to the future, AIP partners chaired by UC-Davis met in Islamabad in June and created a working group for vocational training, which collaboratively planned cross-institute vocational training activities. The top priorities are to implement a short course on proposal writing that will enable the collaborators to prepare highquality proposals for upcoming competitive grant submissions on AIP call, as well as statistics courses that cater to the specific needs of trials and breeders.

Sustainable intensification (GCAP)

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Go back to Conservation Agriculture

The primary purpose of the CIMMYT Global Conservation Agriculture Program (GCAP) is to co-develop sustainable intensification options for and with smallholder farmers in maize- and wheat-based farming systems in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Doing so contributes to CGIAR intermediate development outcomes on food security and poverty reduction. GCAP initially focused on conservation agriculture (CA) principles and high-quality, site-specific field agronomy research in a wide range of agro-ecosystems. Over the past few years, GCAP broadened its research portfolio in close collaboration with the CIMMYT Socio-Economics Program (SEP) to more holistically address sustainable intensification pathways and tackle adoption and adoptability of technical innovations.

In short, sustainable intensification of agriculture seeks to increase farming enterprises’ productivity in regard to land, water, labor and input productivity of farming enterprises in a socially equitable manner while preserving the natural resource base and the environment. This is easier said than done as the sustainable intensification paradigm requires understanding of the complex interactions (synergies and trade-offs) between bio-physical, environmental and socio-economic/market/policy factors at different scales/levels (field, farm, landscape, regions) in order to develop viable options in changing rural environments.

Not being ‘lost in, but dealing with complexity’ is GCAP staff members’ primary concern in order to achieve impact at scale and propose site- and farm-specific integrated adoptable solutions. This requires the use of systems research approaches and the development and use of conceptual frameworks. An example of this is the partnership with Wageningen University funded by the MAIZE and WHEAT CRPs.

Reaching impact at scale also requires strategic partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders – from advanced research institutions to government and private extension agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector. GCAP’s flagship projects in South Asia (CSISA), Africa (SIMLESA) and Mexico (MasAgro/TTF) were all designed specifically to use agricultural research for development (AR4D) to intensify farming systems. At the same time, these projects implement innovative approaches with effective methodological use of gender and innovation. A specific program to backstop gender and innovation in GCAP projects is led by the Royal Institute of the Tropics (KIT) of the Netherlands and funded by the MAIZE and WHEAT CRPs.

GCAP operates on the principles that technical innovations and scientific progress have great potential to help smallholder farmers when properly put in context. Therefore, a large part of the GCAP research portfolio is still focused on technical innovations and on the following themes:

  • Conservation agriculture and its contribution to sustainable intensification (i.e. the Nebraska Declaration).
  • Small-scale mechanization and labor saving technologies (i.e. the FACASI project).
  • Decision support tools (DSTs) for site-specific nutrient/water management and precision agriculture/remote sensing for smallholders farmers.
  • Effective use of information and communication technologies.

For more information, please contact: Bruno Gerard (b.gerard@cgiar.org)

Strategic research theme leaders for sustainable intensification:

In East and Southern Africa: Peter Craufurd (p.craufurd@cgiar.org)
In South Asia: Andrew McDonald (a.mcdonald@cgiar.org)
In Latin America: Bram Govaerts (b.govaerts@cgiar.org)

 

When rural farmers are given a voice: successful farmers share their experience with sustainable intensification

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When traveling from Chimoio to Tete along one of the main roads in central Mozambique, one inevitably passes through Malomue, a small rural village in Báruè District. Since 2008, conservation agriculture (CA) technologies and improved drought-tolerant maize varieties have been promoted to farmers through various donor-funded projects, including a USAID-funded Feed the Future initiative.

In the past, farmers in the area would cultivate their land, clear the surface of all protective cover and burn the residue from the previous cropping season. The main food security crop in the area is maize, and due to lack of access to improved seed, lowyielding landraces were often planted. The introduction of improved agriculture technologies developed and tested by the Platform of Agriculture Research and Innovation (PARTI) and the Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Lab (SANREM) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) implemented in collaboration with the University of Tennessee, have brought significant change to Malomue. Farmers have been exposed to improved seed, fertilizers, improved weed management practices and more sustainable planting techniques based on conservation agriculture principles and practices.

Josè Leuane Dicane, a rural farmer from the community with approximately 15 hectares of cultivated land, said, “The first lesson I learned is that no fire should enter my plots, and I have managed to avoid burning grass from my neighbors.” Dicane also appreciates the reduced labor required when chemical weed control options and direct seeding techniques are used, as well as the increased moisture retention and fertility increases when legume crops are rotated and crop residues are kept on the soil surface. Improved drought-tolerant maize varieties, developed by CIMMYT and extended through Mozambican private seed companies, have further increased the yields on the fields of farmers such as Dicane. Dicane and his large family have become food self-sufficient. He has planted a garden where he produces higher value horticulture crops under small-scale irrigation, and has become an emerging commercial farmer by successfully selling his produce at a profit in the nearby town of Catandica.

The project has identified him as one of the most visionary and successful farmers in central Mozambique, worthy of sharing his experiences with others in the world. With support from USAID, Dicane and his wife were invited to go to the United States to attend a meeting of SANREM/CRSP. On 16 May, Dicane and his wife Judisse boarded an airplane on their way to the U.S. Neither had ever flown, stayed in a hotel or seen the world outside of Mozambique. This was the experience of a lifetime for them. During the SANREM/CRSP meeting on 20 May, they shared their new farming expertise with other participants and farmers. They spoke as if they had presented to an audience many times. Their very impressive report on the lives of rural farmers from Mozambique made a difference to many of the participants. The farmers from Malomue have been given a voice and the opportunity to describe the gradual changes in their lives. The changes might be small, but viewed through another lens, they are also groundbreaking.

CCAFS study finds limited potential of no-till agriculture for climate change mitigation

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By Clare Stirling/CCAFS

A study funded by the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) CRP involving three CIMMYT staff and an international team of scientists has just been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The authors of “Limited Potential of No- Till Agriculture for Climate Change Mitigation” conclude that claims relating to no-till agriculture’s role in slowing climate change may be overstated. No-till and reduced tillage are methods of establishing crops with minimum soil disturbance, in contrast to conventional tillage involving plowing or other cultivation practices.

No-till agriculture can deliver benefits in many, though not all, situations; these benefits include improved soil quality and retention of water in soil for use by crops. Therefore the technologies have a clear advantage in dry regions of the world. No-till usually leads to an increase in the concentration of organic matter near the soil surface. This is often interpreted as an absolute accumulation or “locking up” of carbon in soil, termed carbon sequestration; this has led to no-till being promoted as a form of climate change mitigation. This claim was recently restated in the 2013 Emissions Gap Report of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).

Contrast between maize grown in rotation with wheat, with zero tillage on the flat, and retention of all residues (left), with maize grown without rotation, with conventional tillage and removal of all residues (right), on long-term conservation agriculture (CA) trial plot D5 at CIMMYT’s headquarters, El Batán, Mexico. Photo: CIMMYT
Contrast between maize grown in rotation with wheat, with zero tillage on the flat, and retention of all residues (left), with maize grown without rotation, with conventional tillage and removal of all residues (right), on long-term conservation agriculture (CA) trial plot D5 at CIMMYT’s headquarters, El Batán, Mexico. Photo: CIMMYT

The review found that there was sometimes a genuine, but small, net accumulation of organic carbon in soil under no-till conditions compared with conventional tillage. However, much of the observed effects result from a redistribution of organic carbon with depth – extra organic carbon near the surface but less carbon in deeper soil. In addition, the soil sampling methods normally used tend to exaggerate the effect. Consequently the climate change mitigation achievable from converting to no-till agriculture is likely to be overstated. The authors of the new paper conclude that no-till agriculture has a role to play as one of the strategies contributing to global food security and the protection of soils, and thus to climate change adaptation (through building agricultural systems that are more resilient to climate and weather variability).

In regions where no-till or reduced tillage is agriculturally appropriate it should be promoted on these grounds, but not on the basis of equivocal evidence for climate change mitigation. Climate change mitigation is a small, but useful, additional benefit, not the key policy driver for its adoption. The review also states that those who promote no-till as a means of combating climate change frequently refer to the potential amount of additional carbon that may be stored, or sequestered, in soil. However, in the UNEP report and elsewhere, the barriers to adoption of no-till tend to be ignored.

The authors argue that there are numerous social, practical and infrastructural factors that can make its adoption difficult for farmers, particularly smallholder and resource-poor farmers in developing countries. These issues are being addressed by CIMMYT and others but progress in overcoming the barriers is often slow. Thus, even where there is a real potential for mitigating climate change, it is often difficult to achieve in practice.

Clare Stirling, CIMMYT-CCAFS Project Leader, said, “Overstating the climate change mitigation benefits of no-till is serious because it gives a falsely optimistic message of the potential to reduce climate change through altered agricultural practices.” She added, “Given that the climate change mitigation achievable through adoption of no-till is likely to be far less than claimed, there is even more pressure to decrease greenhouse gas emissions from other agricultural areas. In regard to wheat and maize – the two staple crops CIMMYT focuses on – improved nitrogen management is the key to low-carbon development.”