A Microcosm of Global Food Security

As government leaders gather for the World Food Summit in Rome during November, they would do well to consider the case of East Timor - viewing it as an instructive microcosm of global efforts to achieve food security.

The predicament of this small island nation in Southeast Asia is not much different from that of many African countries. About half of East Timor's nearly one million people live in dollar-a-day poverty, and 85 percent make a living from agriculture.

Most rural families - unable to produce enough maize, rice and other crops on their small farms (1-2 hectares, on average) to last throughout the year - are chronically short of food, particularly in the dry season. According to a 2007 survey, 7 out of 10 families go without basic grains for 4 months a year, and all resort to rationing food for periods of 1-6 months.

Yet, despite those difficulties - not to mention the country's quite recent birth as a nation, its history of bitter conflict preceding independence and its limited experience with research on staple crops - East Timor has brought household food security within reach in a remarkably short time.

Maize farmers in Timor Leste. Photo: CIMMYT.

Selling maize at a market in Timor Leste. Photo: CIMMYT.

Studying the chemistry of change

Rice farmers at harvest time. © Alex Baluyut/World Bank.

This is the promising result of a major post-conflict initiative called "Seeds of Life," which is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). The program consciously aims to replicate the achievements of successful seed-relief programs carried out elsewhere over the last two decades. In Cambodia, for example, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) helped boost rice production by 45 percent through a sustained effort over 13 years to repatriate lost cultivars and revitalize farming in the aftermath of genocide during Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime. The authors of a recent article on Seeds of Life, published in the journal Food Security, see no reason why East Timor cannot make similar gains. But rather than just replicate formulas that have worked well in other countries, the program has opted for a more inquisitive approach, in which it explores the potential of research for strengthening national food security in the "unique crucible" of East Timor's agriculture. Program researchers see the country's post-conflict predicament as an opportunity, not just to rehabilitate old systems, but also to design new ones that are more market oriented and provide a stronger basis for sustainable rural development.

Reaching out

While recognizing that improved agricultural production cannot by itself guarantee food security, the Seeds of Life program could hardly ignore at its outset in 2000 the country's stagnant farm productivity, associated with limited availability of improved technologies.

As a first step toward remedying this problem, the program helped introduce improved germplasm of East Timor's five most important staple crops - maize, peanut, rice, cassava and sweetpotato - from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), IRRI, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and International Potato Center (CIP), respectively. The Centers provided materials from agroecologies in other countries that are quite similar to those in East Timor.

At the same time, Seeds of Life helped establish a system for evaluating and disseminating new crop cultivars, taking various measures to ensure the relevance and sustainability of this work. The program was firmly embedded within the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF), and it made a major commitment to helping strengthen capacity within MAF's new research department.

Seeds of Life also reached out to hundreds of farmers through participatory evaluation of new cultivars, in close collaboration with major nongovernment organizations, including World Vision International and Catholic Relief Services. As researchers assembled the new options, they avoided those that would obligate farmers to purchase seed annually or greatly increase their spending on purchased inputs and labor.

Rice farmers in Timor Leste. © Alex Baluyut/World Bank.

A story to remember

In research trials, the improved cultivars showed significant yield advantages over local materials, for example, 31 percent for peanut, 53 percent for maize and 80 percent for sweetpotato. Those results were confirmed in evaluations by farmers, who appreciated other qualities of the new cultivars as well, including their taste. Farmers adopting these cultivars generally added them to a mix of three to five varieties of each crop they grow, thus widening the genetic diversity in their fields rather than diminishing it.

Based on trial results, several new varieties of each crop were released in 2007. An adoption study carried out a year later with more than 500 farmers showed that nearly 75 percent had continued growing the new varieties, with no difference in the adoption rate between women and men or the poor and more affluent.

Researchers further observed that adoption of the new varieties strengthened household food security and often enabled farmers to produce a surplus for the market, which for many was a first. Farmers reported that they used extra income from crop production to pay for such items as other foods, school fees and clothing or to invest in small livestock or agricultural processing equipment.

One participating farmer, Juvita Da Costa Freitas, commented as follows on her experience:

"After selling, my husband and I decided to buy a set of plastic chairs, which I considered a reward for my hard work. . . . I shared cuttings with the neighbors and some of the harvest with my brothers. The experience we had with the sweetpotato is a story for our children to remember when I pass away."

Researchers are now estimating the total area occupied by new cultivars of all five crops, so they can determine overall economic benefits.

Banishing hunger for good

On the strength of its initial gains, Seeds of Life will expand seed production for much wider dissemination of improved varieties in six of East Timor's 13 districts. An ex ante impact study concluded that the new technology can contribute substantially at the national level, boosting the production of maize, for example, by as much as 28 percent, rice by 14 percent and sweetpotato by 30 percent.

Wider adoption of the new cultivars needs to go hand-in-hand with a concerted effort to reduce postharvest crop losses, which are estimated to be as high as 30 percent. One option for controlling damage to harvested grain caused by various pests is large-scale distribution of 200-liter drums for storage.

Those two steps, researchers say, would "largely eliminate food insecurity in East Timor."

Banishing hunger from the island for good, though, will require further research, aimed at diversifying agriculture and enhancing its sustainability. Toward that end, researchers plan to investigate the use of legumes for soil improvement and the expansion of vegetable, tree crop and small livestock production to improve human diets, raise farmers' incomes and reduce their vulnerability in the face of global climate and economic change.