Why? At our first Development Dialogues conference, the point was summed up neatly by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center. Agriculture is one of the main culprits for pushing the boundaries of our planet to the edge, as it accounts for over 70 percent of water use and generates around 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. However, agriculture — and the research that drives innovation in agriculture — can and should play just as a significant role in the solutions for the immense challenges of protecting the environment, fighting climate change and feeding 9 billion people by 2050.
So is CGIAR ready to live up to that challenge? Here are just three ideas that the discussions uncovered at the Development Dialogues.
1. Partnering for development outcomes.
In his keynote address at the conference, Nigerian Agriculture Minister Akinwumi Adesina told the audience that yes, agriculture drives GDP — but you can’t eat GDP. Innovations only have impact when they are meeting farmers’ needs on the ground. There was a time when our research centers were primarily measured by how many publications in respected academic journals they produced. Not anymore. The modern CGIAR and its funders want to hold us accountable for development outcomes in the field, which can only be achieved by partnering with organizations that can help take innovations to farmers.
Take for example our Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics. Our research has shown the benefits of planting legumes such as soybeans that fix nitrogen in the soil alongside staple crops like cassava, as the latter crop will benefit from the extra nutrients given to the soil by the former plant. But what’s the missing link for farmers? A market to sell this extra produce. To address this, our Humid Tropics team partnered with private firm SEASCO, and farmers in Uganda not only gained a buyer for their crop, but also learned how to process soybeans into other nutritious products, such as soy milk.
Integrating soybeans in existing cropping systems provides opportunities for enhanced farm income (by selling the soybean and derivatives on the market), provides fodder for livestock (lack of fodder deters many from investing in cattle) and can improve soil fertility (a key problem in the densely populated highlands of central Africa). This is the type of partnership that makes us proud.
2. Embed climate-smart agriculture.
In New York, we committed to invest at least 60 percent of our $1 billion annual budget in climate-smart agriculture, which helps farmers not only meet targets for production while adapting to the climate challenges, but also lower their own carbon footprint. This can mean combining indigenous and scientific knowledge to provide 2 million farmers in Senegal with weather forecasts via community radio so they have a better handle on rainfall patterns, or working with private insurance companies in India to provide a payout to insured farmers when rainfall drops below a certain threshold during a growing season. These are the kinds of technologies that have to become a priority for us, and the farmers we serve, as they are facing the front lines of the changing climate and we depend on them for our food supply and to help ensure the world stabilizes within its planetary boundaries.
3. Ensure research is people-focused.
Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and CGIAR alumnus, highlighted in his speech that science without a social dimension cannot be considered science for development. We need to consider the cultural norms that affect the behavior of the people we are trying to reach.
A project led by our Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems demonstrates how involving target beneficiaries from an early stage in research and development can reap great rewards. In Bangladesh, where 20 million people suffer from undernutrition, the program worked with women to use household ponds to produce more and better fish as a source of healthy, high-protein food. With support from AAS researchers, the women themselves identified the best varieties of fish and feed for their local conditions. They designed a research plan that would optimize fish production. In the first year, production of fish from ponds increased substantially — on average by 500 percent from previous years — with significant improvements in household fish consumption. Just as importantly, strides have been made toward gender equality, with participants in the project reporting they now stand on a more equal footing with their male counterparts — both within the family and at community level.
It is outcomes like these that spur CGIAR to continue to listen to our partners and the farmers we serve, more and better. We believe that agriculture science is the backbone of sustainable development — but only when we take innovations to the farmer and receive a thumbs up can we consider our work a success.
Source: Devex | 27 October 2014