27-28th June, researchers and partners from Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB), Livestock and Fish, Dryland Cereals and Grain Legumes CGIAR Research Programs, four of the so-called “commodity” CRPs, discussed ways to tackle the main constraints smallholder farmers face to cultivate and raise these essential staple foods. It was all about defining what the real needs on the ground are for agricultural research to deliver in the short and long term, and about strategies for scaling up promising innovations.
Well targeted research through a demand driven approach
Roots and tubers such as cassava and yam are important “buffering” staple crops, which along with plantains and bananas, are essential for hundreds of millions of people living in developing countries. 250 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa get over half their food energy from cassava. In some parts of Nigeria, women pound cassava and yam to make local dishes. A group of women pounding yams for a wedding feast is a spectacular and intense collective effort (pictured above). ‘Poundability’ of these essential staple crops has not historically been a criteria plant scientists consider for improvement. Yet an improved cassava or yam variety that is difficult to pound will hardly be adopted by the smallholder farming community where pounded dishes are popular.
Graham Thiele, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Banana gave this example of poundability to illustrate the importance for agricultural research to engage farmers and other end-users (e.g. agribusiness for value chain), to make sure that research priorities reflect the true needs on the ground. “Plant breeders usually focus on yield performance and agronomic traits such as pest resistance and may not take into account farmer or consumer preferences such as poundability”, he says. Recently cassava scientists have begun to include poundability in breeding programmes, working with women farmers who test the various varieties against this trait.
Of course the yield of roots and tuber crop is important for farmers but so is the shape, the flavor, the color of pulp and skin, as well as agronomic traits such as the plant’s ability to grow straight to enable intercropping with marrows or beans.
Dona Dakouo, researcher from INERA institute in Burkina Faso, highlighted the problem of low adoption rates for some improved varieties developed by CGIAR Centers because local constraints, including farmer preferences like culinary criteria (e.g. consistency and shelf life of sorghum flour), were not taken into account.
Even though international research has started involving farmers in their research, for instance to test new varieties (Participatory Variety Selection), Dona recommends that farmers, but also other actors along the crop value chain, actively participate at an early stage of the research, such as in early plant breeding decision making.
To ensure crop improvement programs use a more holistic vision, and are able to address the major limiting factors smallholder farmers face, Noel Ellis, director of CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes insists that the breeding efforts have to be organized within a “systems” perspective. The CRP will not only look at biological constraints but also logistics (eg seed production and access), environment aspects and any other dimensions that affect crop production.
Genebanks, the CGIAR Research Program for Managing and Sustaining Crop Collections cuts across a number of CGIAR and external partners. The program feeds into the impact pathways of ten CRPs through its provision of genoplasm distribution and storage.
This demand-driven research is a new paradigm of CGIAR so that research delivers greater impact, as adoptability of innovations will increase.
Getting suitable partners on board from the start
One way to understand impact pathways is to look at the desired outcome and ask what partners need to be on board with researchers to get the expected change.
Professor Wale Adekunle from the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), organizing the upcoming Africa Science Week which gathers all its stakeholders every three years says, “CRPs could be an opportunity to engage with partners working on the ground and gets CGIAR research aligned with national research agendas”.
He hopes CGIAR can make greater use of existing platforms such as FARA, CORAF ASARECA and CCARDESA which gather all local development stakeholders, rather than duplicating consultation processes. Under the Sub Saharan Africa Challenge Program, an innovation platform was able to solve a problem of local sorghum market saturation in Uganda after 5,000 smallholder farmers adopted improved sorghum varieties. After discussion between researchers from Makerere University and CGIAR, farmers, the private sector, NGOs, extension and education services and the government, it was decided to process and market mamera, a traditional sorghum non alcoholic beverage, which until then had only been produced in households. This increased the demand for sorghum as the beverage has become popular all the way to the capital city Kampala.
Tom Randolph, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish stressed that the value chain approach is a good way to gather all stakeholders towards Intermediate Development Outcomes.
Apart from the smallholder farming community, “clients” of each CRP could be the development sector, the agribusiness sector to facilitate a market-oriented development, other CRPs, and government and national research, extension and education services.
By engaging from the start with development partners and decision-makers, this will help scale up CRP’s promising innovations.
Science of Scaling Up or Scaling Up
This issue of scaling up was raised several times during the CGIAR stakeholder workshop sessions.
John Dixon from the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) noted that CRPs could tackle the “critical science of scaling up” and not only focus on scaling up. By testing what approaches could work, what incentives could induce desired behavioural changes (e.g. eating orange flesh sweet potatoes instead of traditional white flesh ones), research could help the development sector to succeed in massive scale-up. This puts emphasis on explaining the arrows and not just the content of boxes within the impact pathways.
“Scalable technology” and “best bets” innovations that could impact ultimately millions of smallholder families, were discussed during the sessions. As Shoba Shivasankar, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Cereals said, “We are not starting from scratch. We already have some previous and ongoing research which has delivered innovations that are proof of concept with clear adoption of innovation.”
Managing research through a results-based approach will then be important, where various strategies will be tested, monitored and evaluated to enable the scaling up to the next stage.
The continuous dialogue between researchers, development sector and donors may reflect a tension between immediate impact and long-term perspectives as some research impact may come many years after.
Jennifer “Vern” Long from USAID explained their research portfolio approach, which includes a continuum from adaptive research with near term scalable outputs to longer term research with potential for transformative impact on some of the major challenges that farmers face. An example of the latter is their investment in developing RNAi technology to fight mycotoxin-producing fungal diseases in maize and wheat stem rust in wheat. “Whatever the timescale, all researchers need to have a theory of change in mind, and be able to explain how his or her research could impact smallholder farmers”, she says.
More information:
See CGIAR Research Program Engagement with Donors and External Stakeholders for more resources relating to the setting of targets and gauging impacts across the CGIAR Research Program portfolio. #LELP2013 #Ag4Dev (Listening Engaging Learning Progressing – LELP2013)
Photo credit: Graham Thiele/RTB