Agricultural research alleviating poverty in Africa

The Live 8 concerts staged ahead of the G8 summit in Scotland raised a flag about poverty in the developing world but did little else. The aging rock 'n' rollers, sincere though they were, could offer little more than melodious slogans.

Unfortunately the world's disadvantaged need slogans as much as they need drought or disease. Poverty has complex causes but undeniable outcomes. Poverty robs people of their dignity.

Methods to eliminate or at least reduce poverty will depend on a range of actions in the areas where poverty is endemic and crippling. We know the ends we want: a vibrant, viable education system that gives opportunities to girls and boys; good governance to reduce corruption and increase public participation; access to quality health care services, markets, and service infrastructure; and food and nutritional security for all.

Most people of the developing world depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. In much of Africa, farmers cannot meet the demands of the growing populace even when climate and politics are stable. The land is infertile and degraded. Farming systems and the very crops they produce are antiquated.

Climbing the charts with improved crop varieties

Agricultural research has historically performed what looked like miracles and continuously provided new ways to enhance farm productivity and feed a growing world. For example, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT, by its Spanish-language abbreviation) was built on the shoulders of the researchers who created the "green revolution" of the 1960s.

This revolution occurred when high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat varieties developed by Nobel Peace Laureate, Norman E. Borlaug, and his team in Mexico were delivered to India and Pakistan. They brought food self-sufficiency to the Indian subcontinent when it had faced mass famine and also sparked a global movement toward science-based agriculture.

In a changing world, with continuously growing populations and less available land, yesterday's solutions are not enough. Nevertheless, three lessons from the green revolution stand out for policy makers in all countries, rich or poor.

First, agricultural research is a fundamental building block for progress in food production and global food security. Second, rapid access for farmers to advances from the research labs and experimental fields depends on the functioning in concert of many actors along complex research and impact pathways. Third, the farmer is king. In the end, the decisions of millions or hundreds of millions of farmers across the world determine whether the new varieties and technologies are adopted, impacts registered, poverty reduced and livelihoods improved.

Bachelors take note: better farming is attractive!

By way of illustration, consider the case of Indian researcher Arun Joshi and farmer Anil Singh. Joshi is an agricultural researcher at Banaras Hindu University in northern India and a CIMMYT research partner. Anil Singh is a farmer from Karhat Village in Mirzapur District (Uttar Pradesh, northern India). Singh was once an impoverished smallholder before he began experimenting with zero-tillage and new wheat varieties in 1997. He received support from CIMMYT and its partners, funding from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, and donations from others.

"When Anil's future father-in-law first saw the village of Karhat, he told everyone that women shouldn't marry its men, because they wouldn't be able to support a family," says Joshi. "When Anil had success with zero-tillage and other farmers adopted the practice, his father-in-law changed his tune completely, and now says that all young ladies should marry men from Karhat!"

Singh, his brother, and the 11 other family members used to scrape by, growing only a rice-wheat rotation on a small farm. Adoption of direct seeding without tillage for wheat has increased harvests and brought savings in seed, labour, diesel, farm equipment, and irrigation water.

With less time taken in preparing the land, they can plant their wheat earlier, so the brothers have introduced okra, tomato, gourd, potato, mung bean, and other crops, and are growing "green-manure" legumes that can fix nitrogen from the air to enrich the soil. Through a selection program supported by the Department for International Development (DFID-UK) and co-ordinated by Joshi with CIMMYT input, farmers themselves judged and selected the best new varieties and gained access to the seed.

Singh used part of his increased earnings to sink a new well, put an upper story on his home, purchase a used car, and launch a rice and wheat seed company - all steps in the impact chain, as each small success enables further farm and livelihood improvements.

"Previously we had no linkages with agencies or persons to obtain knowledge or information," he says. "We used to grow only the old varieties - we sowed the same seed for ten years. Now we are looking to diversify and intensify farming to get more cash."

An understanding of impact pathways like Anil Singh's, which improved crop varieties and systems, can help CIMMYT and its partners to create diverse, relevant solutions for farmers in varied settings of the developing world. This includes sub-Saharan Africa, home to some of the world’s worst rural poverty.

In harmony with markets

With proper assistance, Singh and his peers were able to save resources and boost productivity. But increasing productivity when there are no markets for what you produce is like singing to the wind. Well-functioning markets generate growth and provide opportunities for the poor.

Attractive prices for crops and livestock, for example, can enable and encourage rural development, thereby improving food security and household incomes. Good markets make it appealing to invest in land and relevant infrastructure. They also foster adoption of resource-conserving farm practices.

CIMMYT and its partners focus on improved germplasm and crop management practices, as well as resource conservation, but study and work in the context of value chains where smallholder farmers can improve their livelihoods. This is a particular concern in Africa, where markets and infrastructure are poorly developed.

Farmer participation in markets and adoption of new technologies involves a complex inter-locking system where they gain access to agricultural inputs, technical extension, packing, processing, and outlets. To participate fully in today’s changing markets farmers must innovate, intensify production, and invest.

Paradoxically, developing country farmers face these demands precisely at a time of structural adjustment and cuts in fiscal deficits. Access to credit is constrained. Subsidies have been removed and classical agricultural extension and research services are dismembered so that they no longer serve the needs of farmers in complex, diverse, risk-prone environments.

Furthermore, growing urban markets demand quality produce and of adequate quantities to interest buyers. Improved crop varieties and farming systems can supply both consistently but the key is making them available to the farmers who most need them.

The role of international agricultural research

To secure and improve their livelihoods, farmers need to build up four sets of assets. Natural capital includes land, water, and vegetation. Social capital includes systems of social organisation that facilitate co-operative enterprises, inter-household relationships, and networks. Human capital - levels of education, knowledge, and health - empower people to solve their problems and pursue gainful livelihoods. Physical capital comprises basic infrastructure - equipment, transportation, shelter, energy, and access to financial resources.

Clearly agricultural research alone does not address all of these areas. Organisations like CIMMYT work through partners, including governments in developing countries, to build on and take full advantage of research products.

None of this is easy. The playing field for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa is decidedly un-level and constantly shifting. They face ever-drier climates, inhospitable to older crop varieties, increasingly degraded soils, aggressive weeds, and crop diseases that evolve and defeat plants’ resistance mechanisms.

CIMMYT and its partners are developing, testing, and spreading hardier, more productive and nutritious varieties of maize and wheat for farmers in Africa and other of the world’s toughest environments, as well as resource-conserving, productivity-enhancing cropping practices.

Doing so actually takes years of collaborative research and testing. With long-term support from Australia, for example, CIMMYT conserves and uses with partners some 150,000 unique collections of wheat seed, related small grain crops, and primitive and wild relatives of wheat.

In the mid-1970s, centre researchers began innovative work to expand the genetic diversity of wheat through crosses with wild grass species. Australian scientist Richard Trethowan and others at CIMMYT, with funding from several donors including Australia, are using the results to develop wheat varieties that yield more under drought or contain higher levels of zinc and iron in the grain.

Several of the new varieties are performing well in tests by partners in South Asia. Similar long-term efforts involving multiple partners have resulted in the increasing adoption of CIMMYT drought tolerant maize varieties in southern Africa.

To promote the use of these varieties by potential beneficiaries, the centre is taking part in and catalysing the pathways by which farmers gain access to relevant technologies. In this way, co-operative international agricultural research provides crucial support for smallholder farmers to move from subsistence to surplus agriculture.

Not an easy journey, but with dedicated, first-class science at the service of the poor and conducted in a framework of impact pathways, it will happen. Then the entire world will have something to sing about.