Aniket Deo is a generalized specialist who has worked towards improving farmerâs incentives. He has expertise in analytics, food systems, algorithm design, operations research, techno-economic analysis, decision support systems, value chain analysis, agriculture economics, and resource budgeting. His vision is to digitize the agricultural sector for effective and data-driven decisions.
The conflict in Ukraine has had a deeply destabilizing effect on the global wheat trade, causing unprecedented price volatility and uncertainty. As my colleagues and I have previously highlighted, the unintended consequences are likely to have outsized impacts on livelihoods in the Global South.
As the G7 group of nations recently acknowledged in a joint statement, the conflict is leading to steep price rises and increasing global food insecurity for millions, especially those most vulnerable, such as women and children.
In a new paper published in Nature Food, scientists and partners of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) present a package of applied solutions to respond to the crisis and ensure future wheat stability.
To stem the potential food crisis, food is needed in more places, and faster.
Recently announced talks between Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations, among other negotiations, are already underway as part of this international effort to develop short-term solutions.
However, at present we are seeing the brakes applied in several places. For example, in India century-high temperature extremes have recently reduced official wheat production estimates by 6 percent, leading to reduced export potential. This shows the compounding effect of climatic instability on global wheat markets, an impact that is expected to worsen over time.
In our solutions agenda, we propose a package of short-, medium- and longer-term actions and urge immediate and sustained support for shockproofing major food security staple crops, including wheat.
Conflict is being waged on wheat on multiple fronts: on battlefields, in the political arena and by our changing climate. Together these factors interact and amplify the threat to staple wheat production. To address this complexity, we now need to move beyond defining the problem to implementing practical action to ensure stable supply.
As the Russia-Ukraine war continues to degrade global food security, a new analysis lays out concrete actions that governments and investors must do now to mitigate near-term food security risks and stabilize wheat supplies, while transitioning toward long-term resilience.
The guidance, published in Nature Food by scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and partners, lays out short-, medium- and long-term steps to respond to the global food crisis and ultimately lead to a more resilient global agrifood system.
âThe Russia-Ukraine war will impact global food security over months â if not years,â said CIMMYT Global Wheat Program Director and lead author Alison Bentley. âWe now need to move beyond defining the problem to implementing practical actions to ensure stable supply, safeguard the livelihoods of millions of vulnerable people and bring resilience to our global agrifood system.â
The war in Ukraine and trade sanctions against Russia are triggering a level of volatility that could easily overwhelm existing mitigation mechanisms. More than 2.5 billion people worldwide consume wheat-based foods; those in lower- to middle-income countries dependent on imports from Russia and Ukraine are particularly affected. Some of the worldâs poorest countries, such as Bangladesh, Sudan and Yemen, rely heavily on Russian and Ukrainian wheat. Given the highly interconnected nature of contemporary agrifood systems, few will remain unaffected by this new global food shock.
Mitigate the immediate crisis
The first priority, according to the authors, is to mitigate the immediate crisis by boosting wheat production in existing high- and low-productivity areas, ensuring grain access and blending wheat flour with other low-cost cereals. Bundled agronomic and breeding improvements and sustainable farming practices can reduce dependence on imported grain and fertilizer, while coordinated, multilateral policies can help conserve grain stocks for human consumption and avert trade restrictions.
Increase the resilience of wheat supply
In the medium term, the authors emphasized the need to increase the local, regional, and global resilience of the wheat supply. This can be done by expanding production within agro-ecological boundaries, supporting national wheat self-sufficiency and providing technical assistance, to increase the production of high-yielding disease-resistant wheat and to mainstream capacity for pest and disease monitoring.
Transition to system-level resilience
Finally, to reach crucially needed resilience in the worldâs agrifood system, long-term measures must be taken that encompass agroecosystem diversity, address gender disparities in agriculture and rural communities and sustain increased investment in a holistic, agrifood transition.
âThe current global food crisis underscores and compounds existing inequalities in our global food system,â Bentley said. âA transition to agrifood system resilience requires us to urgently balance global food supply needs with the multi-layered challenges of climate change, achieving gender equity, nutritional sufficiency and livelihood security.â
RELATED RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS:
Near- to long-term measures to stabilize global wheat supplies and food security
This research is supported by CGIAR Trust Fund Contributors.
INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES:
Alison Bentley â Director, Global Wheat Program, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR TO ARRANGE INTERVIEWS, CONTACT THE MEDIA TEAM:
Marcia MacNeil, Head of Communications, CIMMYT. m.macneil@cgiar.org, +52 5558042004 ext. 2019.
Rodrigo Ordóñez, Communications Manager, CIMMYT. r.ordonez@cgiar.org, +52 5558042004 ext. 1167.
Ricardo Curiel, Communications Manager, CIMMYT. r.curiel@cgiar.org, +52 5558042004 ext. 1144.
ABOUT CIMMYT:
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is an international organization focused on non-profit agricultural research and training that empowers farmers through science and innovation to nourish the world in the midst of a climate crisis.
Applying high-quality science and strong partnerships, CIMMYT works to achieve a world with healthier and more prosperous people, free from global food crises and with more resilient agrifood systems. CIMMYTâs research brings enhanced productivity and better profits to farmers, mitigates the effects of the climate crisis, and reduces the environmental impact of agriculture.
CIMMYT is a member of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food secure future dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resources.
For more information, visit staging.cimmyt.org.
Analysis of evidence by scientists of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and CGIAR concludes that the scientific risks of genome editing are similar to those of traditional breeding: all new varieties, however developed, need to be tested for agronomic performance in a range of environments.
Social risks are mainly that these powerful technologies may be rendered inaccessible to less-commercial crops and farmers if intellectual property (IP) and regulatory policies make them expensive or difficult to use.
Genome editing has demonstrated potential to contribute to food security, improved nutrition, and value addition for farmers and consumers.
Many countries are still uncertain about whether to grow, or if and how to regulate genome-edited crop varieties. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has stated that genome-edited crops should be considered as transgenics in the EU for regulatory purposes, a decision that could limit their use in Africa. On the other hand, several countries, including USA, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Kenya, Nigeria, Israel, India, and Japan have determined that genome-edited crops should not be regulated like transgenics if they do not contain foreign DNA.
Policies should enable choice and avoid the risk that genome editing technologies for crops benefit only those who can pay premium price. Smallholder farmers should have equal access to advanced technologies, should they wish to use them, as well as relevant and objective information about their value and how to use them.
Read the full study: Genome-edited crops for improved food security of smallholder farmers
CIMMYT Position Statement on Novel Genome Editing Technologies in Crops
Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are conducting a study in the state of Bihar, India, to improve our understanding of women’s and men’s contributions to decision-making around wheat crop management. The results will help reach women with new varieties that meet their needs and priorities.
The study seeks to overcome a big challenge for research organizations and national policymakers: to design a better framework for faster turnover of improved varieties and increased access to women and marginalized farmers.
Wheat is the second-largest crop grown in Bihar after rice, with a production of 5-6 million tonnes of it every year. Despite women’s contributions to farming activities, from sowing to harvesting, traditional gender norms can undermine their access to productive resources and influence household decisions. Additionally, women’s workload in wheat agriculture is increasing, due to men’s departure to non-agricultural jobs, but women are still not necessarily recognized as capable farmers.
Gender exclusion in agriculture
Given social norms and household-and-farm labor division based on gender, women are often confined to specific roles in the agricultural production system. In smallholder farming communities of South Asia like Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, men’s increasing involvement in non-agricultural activities has increased women’s workloads in every sphere of agricultural production. However, these long-held assumptions of their role can lead to exclusion from decision-making, limiting their control over what, how, and how much a crop is produced, their economic wellbeing, including household food security.
The CIMMYT study on “Intra-household gender dynamics in decision-making for wheat crop management in India (Bihar)” investigates women’s and men’s roles in production decisions. Led by Hom Gartaula, Gender, and Social Inclusion Specialist at CIMMYT, it covers eight villages â four in Darbhanga and four in Madhepura district â with 25 houses considered in each village.
As part of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for improved livelihoods in Asia and Africa (AGG) Â project, the research study will help gain deeper insights into the intra-household gender dynamics. It will also help in untangling who does what, how wheat cultivation and management decisions are organized within the households and the perceptions of the male and female farmers around why decisions are made in such a way.
Storytelling through household decision-making scenarios
In traditional rural societies, survey-based data collection might not be the best way to evaluate women’s agency, as the deeply rooted cultural restrictions might not allow them to talk openly about sensitive issues, like their relationship with a spouse. This study uses an innovative storytelling approach to data collection: using vignettes, farmers are given short stories to relate to their household circumstances. Stories are also easier to remember and help build a connection with the characters quickly.
The vignettes approach was first applied in the context of smallholder maize production in Kenya under the AGG project. According to Rachel Voss, the leader of the Kenyan study, âUsing vignettes to explore decision-making in both East Africa and South Asia allows us to learn and compare across these regions and across crops. Gender relations in Indian wheat and Kenyan maize production might look similar in some ways, but very different in other ways, and our research and programming will need to respond to those differences.â
In this study, five vignettes with fictitious husband and wife characters are presented to participants to represent the different ways production and consumption decisions are made in the household. These vignettes describe how they engage in key decisions like seed procurement, labor hired, and harvest used for consumption or sale. With guidance from evaluators, respondents identify which scenario best aligns with the decision-making process in their household.
Researchers feel this qualitative data, gathered through a storytelling approach, could guide the reach of gender interventions in a more effective way. Gartaula and the team explained that the participants can build connections to a character in the story without biases, expressing their experiences in household decision-making through vignettes. They also observed that sometimes what the participant shared is the opposite of their assumption of women being excluded from decisions.
Rethinking gender roles
Traditional gender roles are deeply entrenched in the region. In the farming communities of rural Bihar, one might assume that who does what in wheat-rice cultivation is obvious, and it has been well studied in the past. However, investigating the stereotypes around gender to understand practices within households is an innovative aspect of this study.
For example, landless couple Pappu Paswan and Kamini Devi of village Kamtaul in Darbhanga district have been cultivating wheat on leased farm plots for many years. Devi is engaged in every aspect of decision-making. “We cultivate in leased plots of different sizes, spread across, requiring more effort and time in attending to them. We discuss additional labor during harvest and if there is money enough to pay them,” said Devi pointing her finger at the vignette illustrating ‘cooperation’ in household decision-making. They produce enough for their consumption, but when possible, “I advise my husband to sell some for income,” she added.
Despite contributing to decisions jointly with Pappu when it comes to farm labor and household finances, Devi has little or no knowledge of seed varieties and access. Her husband informs that it was UP262 (wheat seed variety) they have been cultivating for the last two years.
In Rishikesh Ram’s household, land ownership and livelihood specialization were factors in decision-making. He owns the land and makes all farming decisions, including how much will be saved for consumption at home. His wife, Kiran Devi, a nurse at the village primary health center, is hardly involved in any farming work. “As the income from her job contributes to expenses at home, decisions about loans or payment for labors on the farm are joint decisions,” Ram said.
“In these two households of the diverse decision-making process, different approaches to messaging and relevant extension services must be explored to address the issues of exclusion, access, and knowledge gaps in these households,” Gartaula observed.
Bridging the gender gap in agri-food systems
With the feminization of agriculture in the region, women’s contribution to agricultural production is likely to increase. Policy and research interventions must recognize this growing population and support their full economic and social contributions as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and laborers. However, whether women’s growing role in wheat production leads to increased decision-making authority and empowerment is still unknown. But hope is that AGG-supported gender research in South Asia and East Africa will help guide actions on gender and social inclusion in agri-food systems and support cross-learning between the regions.
The Transforming Smallholder Food Systems in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (Rupantar) project aims to define the processes and practices (technical options, scaling interventions, policy settings and implementation) that can be applied to achieve sustainable, efficient, diversified food systems at scale in the Eastern Gangetic Plains of Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
Home to 450 million people, this region has the world’s highest concentration of rural poverty and strong dependence on agriculture for food and livelihoods. Productivity remains low and diversification is limited due to poorly developed markets, sparse agricultural knowledge and service networks, inadequate development of available water resources, and low adoption of improved, sustainable production practices.
Rupantar builds on existing work and partnership networks to link research outputs and development goals through the demonstration of inclusive diversification pathways, definition of processes for scaling to the millions of smallholder farmers in the region, and generating a better understanding of the policies that support diversification.
Research objectives
Project outcomes
Partners of CGIARâs new regional integrated Initiative in eastern and southern Africa held a kick-off meeting in Nairobi on March 2â3, 2022. Eighty-five people participated, including national agricultural research extension programs, government representatives, private sector actors, funders and national and regional agricultural research and development organizations.
Entitled Ukama Ustawi, the Initiative aims to support climate-smart agriculture and livelihoods in 12 countries in eastern and southern Africa: Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe (in Phase 1); Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda (in Phase 2); and Eswatini, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa (in Phase 3).
The Initiative aims to help millions of smallholders intensify, diversify and de-risk maize-mixed farming through improved extension services, institutional capacity strengthening, targeted farm management bundles, policy support, enterprise development and private investment.
Ukama Ustawi is a bilingual word derived from the Shona and Swahili languages. In Shona, Ukama refers to partnerships, and in Swahili, Ustawi means well-being and development. Together, they resemble the vision for the Initiative to achieve system-level development through innovative partnerships.
The meeting brought together partners to get to know each other, understand roles and responsibilities, identify priorities for 2022, and review the cross-cutting programmatic underpinnings of Ukama Ustawi â including gender and social inclusion, capacity strengthening and learning.
Baitsi Podisi, representing the Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA), said he is excited to be part of the Initiative: “CCARDESA, in its cooperation and coordination mandate, can learn a lot from CGIAR in restructuring to respond to the changing times.â Podisi supported the partnership with CGIAR in the Initiativeâs embedded approach to policy dialogue, working with partners such as CCARDESA, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN).
Similarly, FANRPANâs Francis Hale emphasized the need not to re-invent the wheel but to work with partners who already have a convening power, to advance the policy agenda for diversification and sustainable intensification.
What were key issues discussed?
One of the features of Ukama Ustawi is the use of four interconnected platforms: a scaling hub, a policy hub, an accelerator program and a learning platform. These will provide spaces for exchange and learning with partners across all CGIAR Initiatives in the region. Partners conducted a series of âfishbowlâ interactions across work packages to review the planned activities and provide a clearer understanding of deliverables, identify synergies, potential overlaps, common partners and countries, and set timelines.
The Initiative will work with innovative multimedia platforms to change knowledge, attitudes and practices of millions of farmers in eastern and southern Africa. One key partner in this area is the Shamba Shape Up TV show and the iShamba digital platform. Sophie Rottman, Producer of Shamba Shape Up, said she is looking forward to the work with Initiative partners, that will help expand the show to Uganda and Zambia.
Jean Claude Rubyogo, representing the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) said: âIt is time we move away from CGIAR-initiated to country-initiated development activities. This is what Ukama Ustawi is all aboutâ.
Martin Kropff, Global Director of Resilient Agrifood Systems at CGIAR, explained CGIARâs regional integrated initiatives are designed to respond to national/regional demands. âThe initiatives will start by working with partners to assess the food and nutritional challenges in the region, and tackle them by bringing in innovative solutions.â
The event was concluded by agreeing on the implementation of the inception phase of the Ukama Ustawi Initiative, and follow-on discussions to finalize key activities in 2022.
Learn more about the Ukama Ustawi Initiative.
Materials from the meeting are available online:
This article was originally published on CGIAR.org.
A change in policy by the Nepalese government in February 2022 opens up space for private seed companies to be involved in seed variety development, evaluation and distribution to farmers.
Read more: https://www.agrilinks.org/post/new-seed-policy-ushers-new-era-hybrid-seed-business-nepal
A panel of experts convened by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on April 13, 2022, discussed the effects that the Russia-Ukraine war could have on global supply chains of critical resources including staple crops, oil and natural gas, and strategic minerals.
Bram Govaerts, director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), joined three experts representing a security consulting firm, a mining investment company and the academic sector. They analyzed the complex ramifications of the armed conflict and put forward policy recommendations to mitigate its impact on global food and energy systems.
âWe have immediate action to take in order to boost the production of crops with fewer resources available, such as fertilizers,â Govaerts said, reflecting on how to help food-insecure countries in the Middle East and North Africa that import most of their wheat supplies from the Black Sea region. âWe also need to look at where we are going to be supplied with alternate sources,â he added.
Govaerts took this opportunity to position Agriculture for Peace, the CIMMYT-led call for secure, stable and long-term investment in agricultural research for development, to transform global food systems by shifting their focus from efficiency to resilience.
More information: System Shock: Russiaâs War and Global Food, Energy, and Mineral Supply Chains
For the past month, researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have analyzed the expected impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war on global food security.
The war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia will disrupt wheat supply chains, fertilizer exports and other components of food systems. Their combined effect, along with other factors, could unchain a major food security crisis as well as increased inequality.
Explore our analysis and coverage on major media outlets and journals. To get in touch with our experts, please contact the media team.
CIMMYT scientists have also made available a summary of key facts and figures about the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on wheat supply (PowerPoint, 32MB): changing patterns of consumption and effect on food prices, geographic export supply concentration, global wheat imports, and specific vulnerabilities particularly in the Global South.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict will cause massive disruptions to global wheat supply and food security. Agricultural research investments are the basis of resilient agri-food systems and a food-secure future.
War highlights the fragility of the global food supply â sustained investment is needed to feed the world in a changing climate, Alison Bentley explains on Nature.
A new Bloomberg op-ed urges nations to steer more money to organizations like CIMMYT that are advancing crucial research on how to grow more resilient wheat and maize crops in regions that are becoming steadily less arable.
Crisis in Ukraine underscores the need for long-term solutions for global food security, Alison Bentley and Jason Donovan explain.
The war in Ukraine, coupled with weather-related disruptions in the worldâs major grain-producing regions, could unleash unbearable humanitarian consequences, civil unrest, and major financial losses worldwide, say Sharon E. Burke (Ecospherics) and Bram Govaerts (CIMMYT) on The Boston Globe.
In an analysis piece on Nature, the director of CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program, Alison Bentley, highlights the expected income of the Russia-Ukraine war on food security.
In low-income nations, the ability of governments to continue to subsidize bread will be strained; the knock-on effects on overall government spending and provision of public services will reach far beyond wheat. The last time wheat prices increased sharply, in 2008, it precipitated food riots from Burkina Faso to Bangladesh.
An unprecedented level of international political and economic action is now required to safeguard the immediate food supply of those who are already vulnerable, including in the global south. At the same time, a range of agricultural interventions must be deployed to make the supply of wheat more resilient in the years ahead.
Read the full analysis:
Broken bread â avert global wheat crisis caused by invasion of Ukraine
Over the past several decades, maize breeders have made considerable strides in the development and deployment of new hybrids. These offer higher yields compared to older varieties and reduce the risks farmers face from the vagaries of a changing climate and emerging pest and disease threats. But, for small-scale farmers to adopt new, improved climate-resilient and stress-tolerant maize hybrids at scale, they must be first available, accessible and their benefits need to be widely understood and appreciated. This is where vibrant national seed industries potentially play an important role.
Prior to the 1990s, government agencies tended to play the lead role in hybrid production and distribution. Since then, expectations are that the private sector â in particular locally owned small-scale seed enterprises â produce maize hybrids and distribute them to farmers. When successful, local seed industries are able to produce quality new hybrids and effectively market them to farmers, such that newer hybrids replace older ones in agrodealer stores in relatively short periods of time. If small seed enterprises lack capacities or incentives to aggressively market new hybrids, then the gains made by breeding will not be realized in farmersâ fields. By monitoring seed sales, breeders at CIMMYT and elsewhere, as well as seed business owners, gain insights into smallholdersâ preferences and demands.
A recent publication in Food Security assesses the capacities of 22 small and medium-sized seed enterprises in Mexico to produce and market new maize hybrids. The study draws on the experience of the MasAgro project, a decade-long development whereby the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in partnership with Mexicoâs Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER), engaged with dozens of locally owned seed businesses to expand their portfolio of maize hybrids.
The authors, led by CIMMYT senior economist Jason Donovan, highlight the critical role the MasAgro project played in reinvigorating the portfolios of maize seeds produced by small and medium-sized enterprises. MasAgro âfilled a gap that had long existed in publicly supported breeding programsâ by providing easy access to new cultivars, available to local seed companies without royalties or branding conditions, and without the need for seed certification. The enterprises, in turn, showed a remarkably high capacity to take up new seed technology, launching 129 commercial products between 2013 and 2017.
âWithout doubt the MasAgro project can be considered a success in terms of its ability to get new maize germplasm into the product portfolios of small seed companies throughout Mexico,â Donovan said.
The authors also delve into the challenges these maize enterprises faced as they looked to scale the new technologies in a competitive market that has long been dominated by multinational seed enterprises. They observed a lack of access to physical capital, which in turn evidenced a lack of financial capital or access to credit, as well as limited marketing know-how and capacity to integrate marketing innovations into their operations. While most maize enterprises identified the need to expand sales of new commercial products, âsigns of innovation in seed marketing were limitedâ and most of them relied heavily on sales to local and state governments.
According to Donovan, âThe MasAgro experience also shows that a strong focus on the demand side of formal seed systems is needed if breeding programs are to achieve greater impact in less time. This implies more attention to how farmers decide on which seed to purchase and how seed companies and seed retailers market seed to farmers. It also implies strong coordination between public sector to make building the local seed industry a national imperative.â
Beyond the Mexican context, the paperâs findings may be of particular interest to development organizations looking to supply local seed industries facing strong competition from regional and multinational companies. One example is the effort to support small seed businesses in Nepal, which face strong competition from larger Indian companies with long histories of engagement in Nepalese seed markets. There are also important lessons for policymakers in eastern and southern Africa, where strict controls over seed release and certification potentially lead to higher production costs and slower rates of introduction of new products by local maize seed companies.
Read the full article:
Capacities of local maize seed enterprises in Mexico: Implications for seed systems development
This paper is complemented by two CIMMYT-led publications in a special issue of Outlook on Agriculture that highlights experiences in sub-Saharan Africa. That special issue grew out of the CGIAR Community of Excellence for Seed Systems Development where CIMMYT led the discussion on seed value chains and private sector linkages.
Cover image: Farmers in Mexico attend a workshop organized by CIMMYT to build their capacity in seed production. (Photo: X. Fonseca/CIMMYT)
India has conferred posthumously upon Sanjaya Rajaram, 2014 World Food Prize laureate and former wheat breeder and Director of the Wheat Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), its prestigious 2022 Padma Bhushan Award in “Science and Engineering” in recognition of “distinguished service of high order.”
Among the most successful crop breeders in history, Rajaram, who passed away in 2021, personally oversaw the development of nearly 500 high-yielding and disease-resistant wheat varieties that were grown on at least 58 million hectares in over 50 countries, increasing global wheat production by more than 200 million tons and especially benefiting hundreds of millions of the resource-poor whose diets and livelihoods depend on this critical crop. In India and the neighboring South Asian nations of Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan, inhabitants consume more than 120 million tons of wheat and wheat-based foods each year.
âDr. Rajaram was a true titan of wheat breeding and an inspiration for young researchers, training and mentoring more than 700 scientists from developing countries worldwide,â said Bram Govaerts, CIMMYT director general. âHe was also a complete gentleman, comporting himself with modesty and grace despite his many honors and accomplishments; his first priority was helping and crediting others. Rajaram is an example today for all of us to keep working with the final stakeholder â the farmer â in mind.â
The rise from rural beginnings
Born on a small farm in District Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1943, Rajaram studied genetics and plant breeding at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Sydney, he joined CIMMYT in 1969, working as a wheat breeder alongside Nobel Prize Laureate and CIMMYT scientist Norman Borlaug in Mexico. Recognizing his talent and initiative, Borlaug appointed Rajaram as head of CIMMYTâs wheat breeding program at just 29 years of age.
The Padma Bhushan Award was announced by President Ram Nath Kovind of India on the countryâs Republic Day, January 26. In 2015, Rajaram received the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman award, the highest honor conferred on Indians overseas. In 2001 he accepted the Padma Shri award from the government of India and, in 1998, the Friendship Award from the government of China.
Though a plant breeder and scientist by profession, Rajaram used the platform of his 2014 World Food Prize to promote an expansive, integrated vision for agricultural development. âIf we want to make a change, research wonât do it alone; we need to work directly with farmers and to train young agronomists, ensuring they have a broad vision to address the problems in farmersâ fields,â Rajaram said at a news conference in Mexico City in 2014.
Rajaram also served as Director of the Integrated Gene Management Program at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) before formally retiring in 2008. In his retirement, he continued as a special scientific advisor to CIMMYT and ICARDA.
Longstanding partners pushing forward for farmers
“Indiaâs agricultural research community is proud of the distinguished achievements of Dr. Rajaram,” said Trilochan Mohapatra, Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Secretary of the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), of India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare. “ICAR greatly appreciates its valuable collaborations with CIMMYT to help farmers grow better crops and conserve resources under increasingly challenging conditions.”
The partnership of India with CIMMYT harks back to the 1960s-70s, when Indian farmers tripled national wheat yields in a few years by growing Borlaugâs high-yield wheat varieties and adopting improved farming practices.
In 2011, India and CIMMYT jointly launched the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) to improve cropping systems and food security, helping farmers to confront climate change and natural resource scarcities, among other challenges.
S. Ayyappan, former ICAR Director General who signed the joint declaration of intent for BISAâs establishment in India, has been honored with the 2022 Padma Shri Award.
CIMMYT is a non-profit international agricultural research and training organization focusing on two of the worldâs most important cereal grains, maize and wheat, and related cropping systems and livelihoods. Wheat varieties derived from CIMMYT and ICARDA research cover more than 100 million hectares â nearly two-thirds of the area sown to improved wheat worldwide â and bring benefits in added grain worth as much as $3.8 billion each year.
Several recent studies document the long-term health and economic benefits from the âGreen Revolutionâ â the widespread adoption of high-yielding staple crop varieties during the last half of the 20th century â and argue for continued investment in the development and use of such varieties.
Analyzing data relating to more than 600,000 births between 1961 and 2000 across 37 developing countries, scientists led by the World Bankâs Jan von der Goltz found that the diffusion of modern crop varieties during the Green Revolution reduced infant mortality by 2.4 to 5.3 percentage points.
âOur estimates provide compelling evidence that the health benefits of broad-based increases in agricultural productivity should not be overlooked,â the authors state. âFrom a policy perspective, government subsidies for inputs leading to a green revolution as well as investments in extension and R&D programs seem to be important.â
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of the global food system and the need to transform it, increasing its environmental and economic resilience to withstand future threats, and underpinning healthier diets. The studies suggest that improved versions of cereal crops such as rice, wheat, and maize can play a key role.
âOur work speaks to the importance of supporting innovation and technology adoption in agriculture as a means of fostering economic development, improved health, and poverty reduction, said author Jan von der Goltz. âIt also suggests that it is reasonable to view with some alarm the steady decline in funding for cereal crop improvement over the last few decades in sub-Saharan Africa, the continent with least diffusion of modern varieties.â
Likewise, a study co-authored by Prashant Bharadwaj of the University of California, San Diego, concluded that farmer adoption of high-yielding crop varieties (HYVs) in India reduced infant mortality dramatically across the country. Between 1960 and 2000, infant deaths dropped from 163.8 to 66.6 per 1,000 live births, and this occurred during the decades of Indiaâs wheat productivity leap from 0.86 to 2.79 tons per hectare, as a result of HYV adoption and improved farming practices.
âWhat both of these papers do is to carefully establish a causal estimate of how HYVs affect infant mortality, by only comparing children born in the same location at different points in time, when HYV use was different, and by checking that mortality before arrival of HYVs was trending similarly in places that would receive different amount of HYVs,â Bharadwaj said.
âIn the absence of a randomized control trial, these econometric techniques produce the best causal estimate of a phenomenon as important as the spread of HYVs during and after the Green Revolution,â he added. These thoughts were echoed by University of California San Diego professor Gordon McCord, a co-author of the global study.
Many knock-on effects
Recent studies indicate that the Green Revolution also had long-term economic impacts, which also affected health outcomes.
In a 2021 update to the 2018 paper âTwo Blades of Grass: The Impact of the Green Revolution,â Douglas Gollin, Professor of Development Economics at Oxford University and co-authors found that, in 90 countries where high-yielding varieties were adopted between 1965 and 2010, food crop yields increased by 44% and that, had this adoption not occurred, GDP per capita in the developing world could be half of what it is today.
Even a 10-year delay of the Green Revolution would, in 2010, have cost 17% of GDP per capita in the developing world, with a cumulative GDP loss of $83 trillion, equivalent to one year of current global GDP.
These GDP and health impacts were boosted by a related reduction in population growth. By observing causal inference at country, regional and developing world levels, and using a novel long-term impact assessment method, the study authors detected a trend: as living standards improved for rural families, they generally wanted to invest more in their children and have fewer.
âOur estimates suggest that the world would have contained more than 200 million additional people in 2010, if the onset of the Green Revolution had been delayed for ten years,â Gollin and his co-authors stated. This lower population growth seems to have increased the relative size of the working age population, which furthered GDP growth.
A long-term investment in system transformation
It takes time from the point of an intervention to when broad health impacts can be observed in the population, the authors note. For example, although the development of modern high-yielding varieties began in the 1950s and 60s, the rate of adoption did not speed up until the 1980s, 1990s, and even into the 2000s, with evidence from sub-Saharan Africa showing that variety adoption has increased by as much in the 2000s as in the four preceding decades.
In addition, any nutrition and food security strategy which aims to reach the second Sustainable Development Goal of feeding 9 billion by 2050 must incorporate wider system transformation solutions, such as zero-emissions agriculture, affordable, diverse diets and increased land conservation.
As Gollin explained, âThe Green Revolution taught us that we need to approach productivity increases, especially in staple crop yields, differently. The challenge now is more complex: we need to get the same productivity increases, with fewer inputs and resources, more environmental awareness, and in larger quantities for more people.â
In part, this means increasing productivity on existing agricultural land with positive environmental and social impacts, according to Bram Govaerts, director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).
âBreeding and sharing more productive, hardy crop varieties is as important as ever,â Govaerts said, âbut also engaging farmers â in our case, smallholders â in shared research and innovation efforts to bridge yield gaps, build climate-resilient farming systems, and open access to better nutrition and market opportunities.â
Cover photo: Children eat lunch at a mobile crĂšche outside Delhi, India. (Photo: Atul Loke/ODI) (CC BY-NC 2.0)
A five-year partnership being launched by the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI)âa non-profit founded by Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudnaâand CGIAR, the worldâs largest publicly-funded agricultural research partnership, will harness the power of science to help millions of people overcome poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
One in four people globally, and rising, are unable to afford a healthy diet. COVID-19 has exacerbated this trend by disrupting food production and distribution, driving up by 20 percent the number of people threatened by hunger in 2020. The pandemic is unfolding amidst an environmental and climate crisis which is undermining food production and our ability to nourish the world.
But global consensus is building for urgent action. At the COP26 meetings in November, 45 nations committed to shifting to more sustainable ways of farming and accelerate the deployment of green innovations. Similarly, in late September, many government representatives at the United Nations Food Systems Summit committed to accelerating the transformation of how we grow, transport, process, and consume food. Recognizing the centrality of science and innovation for driving that transformation, United Nations Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres called on the world to scale public and private investment in research for food.
According to Barbara Wells, Global Director for Genetic Innovation at CGIAR: âWorld-class science is vital for facilitating farmer adaptation and mitigating our food systemâs contribution to climate change. Plant-breeding innovations can help ramp up food production while making farms more climate resilient, profitable and environmentally friendlyâ.
âTechnologies such as gene editing, which enable scientists to make targeted changes to a cropâs DNA, can accelerate the development of more disease-resistant, water-efficient varieties that can improve food production and nutrition in areas that are especially vulnerable to climate change,â Dr. Wells explained.
CGIAR has produced and promoted innovations that are boosting the sustainable production of nutritious food in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Over the past five decades, CGIAR scientists and national partners have developed and disseminated robust and highly productive crop varieties and livestock breeds tailored to the needs of local men and women. Those innovations have helped hundreds of millions of people across the Global South overcome hunger and poverty.
The IGI is a collaboration of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco with a mission to develop revolutionary genome-editing tools that enable affordable and accessible solutions in human health, climate, and agriculture. The IGIâs Climate & Sustainable Agriculture program focuses on developing crops that are resistant to pests and diseases, resilient to a changing climate, and less dependent on farmer inputs. Whereas the IGI is a pioneer in applied genomic research, CGIAR focuses on translating discoveries into improved crop varieties and cropping systems. This partnership provides an accelerated pipeline from upstream innovation to real-world impact.
âThe IGI is testing technologies with great potential to benefit people in the countries where CGIAR is active, such as a way of removing the cyanide found in cassavaâa staple upon which nearly a billion people dependâand fighting diseases in economically important crops like wheat, rice and bananas,â said Brian Staskawicz, the IGI Director of Sustainable Agriculture.
âThe IGI is also pioneering new ways to reduce methane emissions from rice farming, which accounts for 2.5 percent of humanityâs contribution to global warming, by using genomic approaches to reduce methane production by soil microbes,â he added.
âBy partnering with CGIAR, the IGI can ensure that the products of its research will benefit farmers and consumers in some of the worldâs poorest countries, where CGIAR has been working for 50 years and has extensive partner networks,â said Dr. Melinda Kliegman, Director of Public Impact at the IGI. âTogether we can accelerate the development and delivery of more climate-resilient, productive and nutritious crops for resource-poor farmers and consumers.â
Over the next five years, the IGI and CGIAR will use the latest breakthroughs in genomic science to enhance the resilience and productivity of farmers in low- and middle-income countries and improve the wellbeing and livelihoods of women and men in some of the worldâs poorest communities.
Authored by CGIAR and the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI)
Cover photo: Researchers at work at CGIARâs International Institute of Tropical Agriculture campus in Ibadan, Nigeria. (Credit: Chris de Bode/CGIAR)