Kenya: CIMMYT counters drought with new maize varieties

Roger Thurow, a senior fellow for global agriculture and food policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, wrote about the adoption of new maize varieties in Kenya in “Global Food For Thought”:

This growing season in south-central Kenya has been a good test for the new drought tolerant maize varieties being bred in Africa.  This is a semi-arid area, but this year they can drop the “semi”.  Farmers report only three short periods of rain since the February planting time.

“Without this seed, I’d have nothing.  Nothing, like my neighbors,” says farmer Philip Ngolania.  He sweeps his hand to direct the eye first to his maize and then toward a neighbor’s plot.  Philip’s maize stalks, though looking thin and weak, have fairly uniformly produced large ears of corn.  His neighbor’s maize is shriveled and dead, the stalks have toppled in their feebleness and there isn’t a cob to be found.

The neighbor – and many of the farmers in the area – planted the traditional local maize called Mbembasitu, which means “our own maize seed.”  Philip planted the new drought tolerant variety developed by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and other partners under the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa program.  CIMMYT was the long-time home of Norman Borlaug, the Iowa plant breeder whose new wheat strains conquered famine in India, Bangladesh and other Asian countries in the 1960s Green Revolution.  Drought tolerant maize, conventionally bred in and for Africa, could be a significant innovation in holding back hunger on the continent, particularly as climate changes upset traditional planting rhythms.

“The rain is very little here, but even with a little rain, this seed does well,” Philip said.  As the late morning sun intensified, Philip took off his jacket and hung it on one of the maize cobs.  The cob and the stalk held firm, refusing to bend.

The rains were indeed scarce, but they seemed to come at just the right time for Philip’s maize.  He planted the seed in dry soil in February, hoping that the seasonal rain would soon come.  “You can’t wait for it to rain and then plant, because you want to use every single drop of rain on the seeds,” he said.

This is in contrast to the practice of the maize farmers in the more moist and fertile western Kenya area, who wait for three days of rain before they plant.  There, they use the first rain to soften the soil; the three-day wait is to ensure that the rainy season has indeed started and that the first rainy day isn’t a premature start.  These different planting methods in the two regions of the same country, a day’s drive apart, illustrate one of the difficulties of bringing a Green Revolution to Africa; there are a myriad of eco-agricultural zones within each country that each require their own tailored seeds and farming practices.(..)

Read the full article on “Global Food For Thought”
Read more on CIMMYT’s Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa program.

Picture courtesy Peter Casier/CCAFS