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.
Dr Qu Dongyu, Vice-President, CAAS China and Dr M.E. Tusneem, Chairman of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, learn about CIMMYT’s conservation agriculture research work from Bram Govaerts during a visit to El Batan this week (see photo below). In addition CIMMYT welcomed visitors from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the principal and 16 teachers from the Liceo Mexicano Japonés.
On 09 August, the government of Bihar State, India, announced a 25% subsidy for the purchase of zero-tillage seeders, bed planters, and maize threshers. According to Raj Gupta, facilitator of the Rice-Wheat Consortium (RWC) for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, the decision emerged in part from a meeting in March 2005 that involved the Chief Minister of Bihar, the Minister of Agriculture, the DG of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and other relevant actors.
“I also participated,” says Gupta. “Among other things, we discussed the promotion of quality protein maize and resource-conserving technologies as a strategy for transforming agriculture in Bihar. Now they have also decided to replace some of the winter wheat area with winter maize, whose productivity is nearly double that of wheat.”
With a population of 100 million, Bihar is one of India’s most densely populated and disadvantaged states and has been a particular target of RWC efforts to offer viable alternatives for resource-poor farmers in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains. Land-use studies by Parvesh Chandna, CIMMYT affiliate scientist and expert in geographic information systems and remote sensing, have also contributed. This outcome shows the effectiveness of concerted, science-based efforts to influence policy.