Mung bean cleaning process at Poshan Food Product, in Butwal, Nepal.Photo credit: CSISA Archive 2020
A long-term study by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) shows that mung beans, a month-long leguminous crop commonly known as green gram, strengthen rice-wheat farming systems and livelihoods in Nepal.
According to Narayan Khanal, a researcher who works with the Cereal Systems Initiatives for South Asia (CSISA), growing evidence indicates mung beans planted between rice and wheat rotations improves soil fertility and rice productivity by as much as 25 percent.
Rice-wheat rotation is the dominant cropping pattern in many regions of Nepal. With wheat harvest in March followed by rice transplanting in July, a substantial amount of land remains fallow for about 90 to 100 days. Since 2014, CSISA researchers have worked to fill the gap by bringing value chain actors together to promote the use of disease-tolerant and high-yielding mung bean varieties, conservation agriculture techniques, and agricultural mechanization such as direct seeders.
“Over the years our research has included market mapping with value chain actors, testing mung bean varieties in the private sector by engaging seed companies and millers, as well as building the capacity of farmers to grow demand,” says Khanal. “The legume provides a cash crop for farmers with its stable, high market price and demand across Asia.”
An annual vine with yellow flowers and fuzzy brown pods, mung bean crops usually trade at $1 per kilo in rural Nepal.
Khanal also adds that the long-term results show mung bean crop residue provides fodder to feed live-stock and improve soil fertility as it is incorporated into the field to be used as fertilizer as part of conservation agriculture practices.
Read the full article published in Agrilinks here.
An online news portal in Nepal issued a short article about direct-seeded rice (DSR) promoted by CSISA in Kailali District, Sudurpashchim Province in Nepal.
The article highlights the introduction of DSR six years back by CSISA and how it has expanded throughout the district. Khagendra Sharma, Spokesperson of Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture & Cooperative of Sudurpaschim Province, mentions that DSR is more profitable than conventional rice farming, hence farmers are attracted to this technology as it reduces labor and fuel.
Scientific Animations Without Borders (SWABO) uses animations to communicate timely information of emerging global problems that impact farmers locally. One video is helping farmers in Bangladesh fight against Fall Armyworm.
Public and private partners join forces to mitigate voracious pest.
Hundreds of agricultural professionals in Bangladesh were trained in the latest fall armyworm management strategies as part of a new project that will strengthen efforts against this threat to farmers’ income, food security, and health. The new project, Fighting Back Against Fall Armyworm, is supported by USAID and the University of Michigan.
As part of the project, last November over 450 representatives from government, nonprofits and the private sector participated in three-day training to learn how to identify, monitor and apply integrated pest management approaches.
Fall armyworm presents an important threat to farmers’ income, food security and livelihoods as it continues to spread across the country, in addition to health risks if toxic insecticides are indiscriminately used, said Tim Krupnik, senior scientist and agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). It is anticipated the course participants will pass on knowledge about the pest and appropriate control practices to around 30,000 farmers in their respective localities.
“Participants were selected for their ability to reliably extend the strategies that can be sustainably implemented by maize farmers across the country,” explained Krupnik. “The immersive training saw participants on their hands and knees learning how to scout, monitor and collect data on fall armyworm,” he said. “They were also trained in alternatives to toxic chemical pesticides, and how and when to make decisions on biological control with parasitoids, bio-pesticides, and low-toxicity chemical pesticide use.”
Following its ferocious spread across Africa from the Americas, fall armyworm first attacked farms in Bangladesh during the winter 2018-2019 season. Combined with highly apparent damage to leaves, its resilience to most chemical control methods has panicked farmers and led researchers to promote integrated pest management strategies.
In this context, the 22-month Fighting Back Against Fall Armyworm project will build the capacity of the public and private sector for effective fall armyworm mitigation.
The hungry caterpillar feeds on more than 80 plant species, but its preferred host is maize — a crop whose acreage is expanding faster than any other cereal in Bangladesh. The pest presents a peculiar challenge as it can disperse over 200 kilometers during its adult stage, laying thousands of eggs along its way.
Once settled on a plant, larvae burrow inside maize whorls or hide under leaves, where they are partially protected from pesticides. In a bid to limit fall armyworm damage, farmers’ indiscriminate application of highly toxic and inappropriate insecticides can encourage the pest to develop resistance, while also presenting important risks to beneficial insects, farmers, and the environment.
Reaching every corner of the country
Participants of the Fighting Back against Fall Armyworm trainings visit farmers’ fields in Chauadanga, Bangladesh. (Photo: Tim Krupnik/CIMMYT)
As part of the project, CIMMYT researchers supported Bangladesh’s national Fall Armyworm Task Force to develop an online resource to map the spread of fall armyworm. Scientists are working with the Ministry of Agriculture to digitally collect real-time incidents of its spread to build evidence and gain further insight into the pest.
“Working with farmers and agricultural agencies to collect information on pest population and incidence will assist agricultural development planners, extension agents, and farmers to make informed management decisions,” said Krupnik, who is leading the project.
A key objective is to support national partners to develop educational strategies to facilitate sustainable pest control while also addressing institutional issues needed for efficient response.
“In particular, the Government of Bangladesh has been extremely responsive about the fall armyworm infestation and outbreak. It developed and distributed two fact sheets — the first of which was done before fall armyworm arrived — in addition to arranging workshops throughout the country. Initiatives have been taken for quick registration of microbial pesticides and seed treatments,” commented Syed Nurul Alam, Entomologist and Senior Consultant with CIMMYT.
“It is imperative that governmental extension agents are educated on sustainable ways to control the pest. In general, it is important to advise against the indiscriminate use of pesticides without first implementing alternative control measures, as this pest can build a resistance rendering many chemicals poorly effective,” Krupnik pointed out.
To this end, the project also consciously engages members of the private sector — including pesticide and seed companies as well as agricultural dealers — to ensure they are able to best advise farmers on the nature of the pest and suggest sustainable and long-term solutions. To date, the project has advised over 755 agricultural dealers operating in impacted areas of Bangladesh, with another 1,000 being trained in January 2020.
Project researchers are also working alongside the private sector to trial seed treatment and biologically-based methods of pest control. Biocontrol sees researchers identify, release, and manage natural predators and parasitoids to the fall armyworm, while targeted and biologically-based pesticides are significantly less of a health risk for farmers, while also being effective.
The 22-month project, funded by USAID, has 6 key objectives:
Develop educational materials to aid in reaching audiences with information to improve understanding and management of fall armyworm.
Assist the Department of Agricultural Extension in deploying awareness raising and training campaigns.
Prepare the private sector for appropriate fall armyworm response.
Standing task force supported.
Generate data and evidence to guide integrated fall armyworm management.
The Fighting Back Against Fall Armyworm in Bangladesh project is aligned with Michigan State University’s Borlaug Higher Education for Agricultural Research and Development (BHEARD) program, which supports the long-term training of agricultural researchers in USAID’s Feed the Future priority countries.
To achieve synergies and scale, the project will also be supported in part by in-kind staff time and activities, through linkages to the third phase of the USAID-supported Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT). CSISA and CIMMYT staff work very closely with Bangladesh’s Department of Agricultural Extension and the Bangladesh Maize and Wheat Research Institute (BWMRI) in addition to other partners under the Ministry of Agriculture.
Dr. Yubak Dhoj GC, Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, Nepal, introducing the ‘Development of Balanced Nutrient Management Innovations in South Asia’ workshop implemented by the USAID/Washington supported Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and USAID/Nepal supported Nepal Seed and Fertilizer (NSAF) projects.
Over
the last few decades, deteriorating soil fertility has been linked to
decreasing agricultural yields in South Asia, a region marked by inequities in
food and nutritional security.
As
the demand for fertilizers grow, researchers are working with government and
business to promote balanced nutrient management and the appropriate use of
organic amendments among smallholder farmers. A new policy brief outlining opportunities
for innovation in the region has been published by the Cereal Systems
Initiative for South Asia (CSISA).
Like
all living organisms, crops need access to the right amount of nutrients for
optimal growth. Plants get nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium,
in addition to other crucially important micronutrients from soils and carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen from the air and water. When existing soil nutrients are not
sufficient to sustain good crop yields, additional nutrients must be added
through fertilizers or manures, compost or cop residues. When this is not done,
farmers effectively mine the soil of fertility, producing short-term gains, but
undermining long-term sustainability.
Nutrient
management involves using crop nutrients as efficiently as possible to improve
productivity while reducing costs for farmers, and also protecting the
environment by limiting greenhouse gas emissions and water quality
contamination. The key behind nutrient management is appropriately balancing
soil nutrient inputs – which can be enhanced when combined with appropriate
soil organic matter management – with crop requirements. When the right
quantities are applied at the right times, added nutrients help crops yields
flourish. On the other hand, applying too little will limit yield and applying
too much can harm the environment, while also compromising farmers’ ability to
feed themselves or turn profits from the crops they grow.
Smallholder farmers in
South Asia commonly practice poor nutrition management with a heavy reliance on
nitrogenous fertilizer and a lack of balanced inputs and micronutrients.
Declining soil fertility, improperly designed policy and nutrient management
guidelines, and weak fertilizer marketing and distribution problems are among
the reasons farmers fail to improve fertility on their farms. This is why it’s
imperative to support efforts to improve soil organic matter management and
foster innovation in the fertilizer industry, and find innovative ways to
target farmers, provide extension services and communicate messages on cost
effective and more sustainable strategies for matching high yields with
appropriate nutrient management.
Cross-country learning reveals opportunities for improved nutrient management.
The
policy brief is based on outcomes from a cross-country dialogue facilitated by
CSISA earlier this year in Kathmandu. The meeting saw researchers, government
and business stakeholders from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka discuss
challenges and opportunities to improving farmer knowledge and access to
sufficient nutrients. Several key outcomes for policy makers and
representatives of the agricultural development sector were identified during
the workshop, which included in the brief.
Extension services as an effective way to encourage a more balanced use of fertilizers among smallholder farmers.
There is a need to build the capacity of extension to educate smallholders on a plant’s nutritional needs and proper fertilization. It also details how farmers’ needs assessments and human-centered design approaches need to be integrated while developing and delivering nutrient application recommendations and extension materials.
Nutrient subsidies must be reviewed to ensure they balance micro and macro-nutrients.
Cross-country learning and evidence sharing on policies and subsidies to promote balanced nutrient application are discussed in the brief, as is theneed to balance micro and macro-nutrient subsidies, in addition to the organization of subsidy programs in ways that assure farmers get access the right nutrients when and where they are needed the most. The brief also suggests additional research and evidence are needed to identify ways to assure that farmers’ behaviour changes in response to subsidy programs.
Market, policy, and product innovations in the fertilizer industry must be encouraged.
It describes the need for blended fertilizer products and programs to support them. A blend is made by mixing two or more fertilizer materials. For example, particles of nitrogen, phosphate and small amounts of secondary nutrients and micronutrients mixed together. Experience with blended products are uneven in the region, and markets for blends are nascent in Bangladesh and Nepal in particular. Cross-country technical support on how to develop blending factories and markets could be leveraged to accelerate blended fertilizer markets and to identify ways to ensure equitable access to these potentially beneficial products for smallholder farmers.
Farmers around the world face consistent threat from crop pests, such as wheat blast disease that attacks maturing grains causing them to shrivel and reduce farmers’ yields. But new advances in technology and modeling are making it easier to identify, prevent and control these diseases.
Outbreaks of wheat blast in South Asia – a region where people consume over 100 million tons of wheat each year – have an enhanced impact on food stability and income security. In 2016, wheat blast struck South Asia unexpectedly, with crop losses in Bangladesh averaging 25 to 30 percent, threatening progress in the region’s food security efforts. Estimates are that blast could reduce wheat production by up to 85 million tons in Bangladesh, equivalent to $13 million in foregone farmers’ profits each year when outbreak occurs.
That’s why
there’s optimism from farmers and scientists alike about a new digital early
warning system that integrates mathematical models that, when combined with weather
forecasts, can simulate disease growth and risks to forewarn against potential
wheat blast outbreaks. With three years of data recorded, the system, which was
originally piloted in Brazil where wheat blast has been a concern for several
decades, is now being rolled out across Bangladesh to deliver real-time disease
updates to extension workers and smallholder farmers via SMS and voice message.
“Through
collaborative research we have established a model to identify areas at risk of
wheat blast infection with five days advanced warning,” said Timothy J.
Krupnik, senior scientist and systems agronomist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT). “It can provide
Bangladesh’s 1.2 million wheat farmers a head start against this disease.”
This data-driven
early warning system analyzes environmental conditions for potential disease
development in crucial wheat growing areas of Bangladesh and Brazil. Through
this information, the system generates forecast maps and automatic advice for
farmers of where and when infection is most likely to strike.
“The model was
originally developed in Brazil, but we have worked closely with collaborators
from Brazil and the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) and Department
of Agricultural Extension to develop a warning system positioned for use by
extension workers and farmers,” Krupnik said.
Currently,
farmers are advised to apply fungicides on a calendar-based preventative basis.
This is costly and can have negative environmental effects. Instead, the early
warning system pushes advice to extension agents and farmers, indicating when
disease control is really needed.
“Our hope is that
it will help reduce unnecessary fungicide use while assuring that farmers can
implement cost-effective and resilient practices to overcome wheat blast risks”
Krupnik said.
The importance of collaboration
With limited information on wheat blast, Krupnik initiated a collaboration with agricultural researchers in Brazil – where the disease originated in 1985. Professor Jose Mauricio Fernandes, a crop pathologist from Embrapa, and Mr. Felipe de Vargas, a computer scientist, with Universidade de Passo Fundo, were familiar with wheat blast and had already developed an initial mathematical model of disease development. The team collaborated to transfer the model to South Asia and build it into a more comprehensive and location-explicit early warning system.
“We improved preliminary modelling framework to manage
data requirements to predict the time and location of blast outbreaks in
Bangladesh, Brazil, and beyond,” Fernandes said. “I am excited to see how it
increases farmers’ resilience to disease risks in Bangladesh.”
The team plan to adapt the system to help manage other pests threatening farmers in Feed the Future countries, including initial efforts in Nepal where a complementary UK Aid investment through the Asia Regional Resilience to a Changing Climate (ARRCC) is supporting CIMMYT to scale-out the model and to include wheat rust disease early warnings.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (CIMMYT) – In South Asia, the population is growing and land area for agricultural expansion is extremely limited. Increasing the productivity of already farmed land is the best way to attain food security.
In the northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains, farmers use groundwater to irrigate their fields. This allows them to grow two or three crops on the same piece of land each year, generating a reliable source of food and income for farming families. But in the food-insecure lower Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains in Bangladesh, farmers have lower investment capacities and are highly risk averse. Combined with environmental difficulties including ground water scarcity and soil and water salinity, cropping is often much less productive.
Could the use of available surface water for irrigation provide part of the solution to these problems? The government of Bangladesh has recently promoted the use of surface water irrigation for crop intensification. The concept is simple: by utilizing the country’s network of largely underutilized natural canals, farmers can theoretically establish at least two well-irrigated and higher-yielding crops per year. The potential for this approach to intensifying agriculture however has various limitations. High soil and water salinity, poor drainage and water logging threaten crop productivity. In addition, weakly developed markets, rural to urban out-migration, low tenancy issues and overall production risk limit farmers’ productivity. The systematic nature of these problems calls for new approaches to study how development investments can best be leveraged to overcome these complex challenges to increase cropping intensity.
Policy makers, development practitioners and agricultural scientists recently gathered to respond to these challenges at a workshop in Dhaka. They reviewed research results and discussed potential solutions to common limitations. Representatives from more than ten national research, extension, development and policy institutes participated. The CSISA-supported workshop however differed from conventional approaches to research for development in agriculture, in that it explicitly focused on interdisciplinary and systems analysis approaches to addressing these complex problems.
Systems analysis is the process of studying the individual parts and their integration into complex systems to identify ways in which more effective and efficient outcomes can be attained. This workshop focused on these approaches and highlighted new advances in mathematical modeling, geospatial systems analysis, and the use of systems approaches to farmer behavioral science.
Timothy J. Krupnik, Systems Agronomist at CIMMYT and CSISA Bangladesh country coordinator, gave an overview of a geospatial assessment of landscape-scale irrigated production potential in coastal Bangladesh to start the talks. For the first time in Bangladesh, research using cognitive mapping, a technique developed in cognitive and behavioral science that can be used to model farmers’ perceptions of their farming systems, and opportunities for development interventions to overcome constraints to intensified cropping, was described. This work was conducted by Jacqueline Halbrendt and presented by Lenora Ditzler, both with the Wageningen University.
“This research and policy dialogue workshop brought new ideas of farming systems and research, and has shown new and valuable tools to analyze complex problems and give insights into how to prioritize development options,” said Executive Director of the Krishi Gobeshona Foundation, Wais Kabir.
Workshop participants also discussed how to prioritize future development interventions, including how to apply a new online tool that can be used to target irrigation scheme planning, which arose from the work presented by Krupnik. Based on the results of these integrated agronomic and socioeconomic systems analyses, participants also learned how canal dredging, drainage, micro-finance, extension and market development must be integrated to achieve increases in cropping intensity in southern Bangladesh.
Mohammad Saidur Rahman, Assistant Professor, Seed Science and Technology department at Bangladesh Agriculture University, also said he appreciated the meeting’s focus on new methods. He indicated that systems analysis can be applied not only to questions on cropping intensification in Bangladesh, but to other crucial problems in agricultural development across South Asia.
CSISA-MI(Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia – Mechanization & Irrigation), a project led by CIMMYT, in collaboration with iDE and is being operated in Bangladesh for the last four years. It has transformed agriculture in southern Bangladesh by unlocking the potential productivity of the region’s farmers through surface water irrigation, efficient agricultural machinery and local service provision.
Spielman, David J.; Ward, Patrick S.; Kolady, Deepthi Elizabeth; and Ar-Rashid, Harun.
The governments of Bangladesh and India have set impressive targets to expand hybrid rice cultivation as part of their national food security strategies for the next decade. Although hybrid rice offers significant yield improvements over varietal rice, adoption by farmers remains low and unstable. This paper analyzes the technical challenges, market opportunities, and policy constraints associated with hybrid rice in both countries. It argues that while many of the technical constraints can be addressed through continued investment in breeding, significant challenges remain relating to product development, marketing, and economic policy. Solutions require new insight into relationships between industry structure, business strategies, and public policy incentives.
The genetic improvement of food staple crops cultivated by small-scale farmers is a well-established route to increasing agricultural productivity and improving rural livelihoods. But in developing countries where seed markets are commercially active or advancing in that direction, undue emphasis in both policy and research is often placed on the adoption of improved cultivars rather than varietal turnover, or the replacement of an already improved variety with a more recently released improved variety. Strong and consistent rates of varietal turnover contribute to sustaining yield gains over time, protecting those gains from both biotic and abiotic stresses, increasing the sustainability of intensive cropping systems, and improving the quality of the commodity itself for storage, processing, and consumption. This paper explores the importance of varietal turnover in advanced and transitional seed systems for food staples in South Asia and Africa south of the Sahara. We first review the measurement of varietal turnover over spatial and temporal dimensions before examining evidence on policies designed to accelerate varietal turnover rates. We then suggest a sequence of regulatory reforms and public investments designed to accelerate varietal turnover while drawing attention to the economic trade-offs, unintended consequences, and operational challenges of such reforms and investments.
Hill, Ruth Vargas; Kumar, Neha; Magnan, Nicholas; Makhija, Simrin; de Nicola, Francesca; Spielman, David J.; Ward, Patrick S. 2017. Insuring against droughts: Evidence on agricultural intensification and index insurance demand from a randomized evaluation in rural Bangladesh. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1630. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
It is widely acknowledged that unmitigated risks provide a disincentive for otherwise optimal investments
in modern farm inputs. Index insurance provides a means for managing risk without the burdens of
asymmetric information and high transaction costs that plague traditional indemnity-based crop insurance
programs. Yet many index insurance programs that have been piloted around the world have met with
rather limited success, so the potential for insurance to foster more intensive agricultural production has
yet to be realized. This study assesses both the demand for and the effectiveness of an innovative index
insurance product designed to help smallholder farmers in Bangladesh manage risk to crop yields and the
increased production costs associated with drought. Villages were randomized into either an insurance
treatment or a comparison group, and discounts and rebates were randomly allocated across treatment
villages to encourage insurance take-up and to allow for the estimation of the price elasticity of insurance
demand. Among those offered insurance, we find insurance demand to be moderately price elastic, with
discounts significantly more successful in stimulating demand than rebates. Farmers who are highly risk
averse or sensitive to basis risk prefer a rebate to a discount, suggesting that the rebate may partially offset
some of the implicit costs associated with insurance contract nonperformance. Having insurance yields
both ex ante risk management effects and ex post income effects on agricultural input use. The risk
management effects lead to increased expenditures on inputs during the aman rice-growing season,
including expenditures for risky inputs such as fertilizers, as well as those for irrigation and pesticides. The
income effects lead to increased seed expenditures during the boro rice-growing season, which may signal
insured farmers’ higher rates of seed replacement, which broadens their access to technological
improvements embodied in newer seeds as well as enhancing the genetic purity of cultivated seeds.
CSISA is a science-driven and impact-oriented regional initiative for increasing the productivity of cereal-based cropping systems in Bangladesh, India and Nepal, thus improving food security and farmers’ livelihoods. CSISA generates data that is of value and interest to a diverse audience of researchers, policymakers and the public.
CSISA’s data repository is hosted on Dataverse, an open source web application developed at Harvard University to share, preserve, cite, explore and analyze research data. CSISA’s repository contains rich datasets, including on-station trial data from 2009–17 about crop and resource management practices for sustainable future cereal-based cropping systems. Collection of this data occurred during the long-term, on-station research trials conducted at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research – Research Complex for the Eastern Region in Bihar, India. The data include information on agronomic management for the sustainable intensification of cropping systems, mechanization, diversification, futuristic approaches to sustainable intensification, long-term effects of conservation agriculture practices on soil health and the pest spectrum.
Additional trial data in the repository includes nutrient omission plot technique trials from Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Odisha, India, covering 2012–15, which help determine the indigenous nutrient supplying ability of the soil. This data helps develop precision nutrient management approaches that would be most effective in different types of soils.
CSISA’s most popular dataset thus far includes crop cut data on maize in Odisha, India and rice in Nepal. Crop cut datasets provide ground-truthed yield estimates, as well as valuable information on relevant agronomic and socioeconomic practices affecting production practices and yield. A variety of research data on wheat systems are also available from Bangladesh and India. Additional crop cut data will also be coming online soon.
Cropping system-related data and socioeconomic data are in the repository, some of which are cross-listed with a Dataverse run by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The socioeconomic datasets contain baseline information that is crucial for technology targeting, as well as to assess the adoption and performance of CSISA-supported technologies under smallholder farmers’ constrained conditions, representing the ultimate litmus test of their potential for change at scale. Other highly interesting datasets include farm composition and productive trajectory information, based on a 20-year panel dataset, and numerous wheat crop cut and maize nutrient omission trial data from across Bangladesh.
CSISA’s web site also has a variety of other valuable resources, including knowledge management products and training manuals, peer-reviewed publications and project reports. In particular, CSISA has just published training modules on integrated weed management and mechanical tran
Delhi, India (CSISA) – In the past year, the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), has trained scientists from 15 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) – agricultural extension centers – in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh on improved methods of survey design and on the digital data collection tool, Open Data Kit (ODK).
CSISA and its partner KVKs, have identified the strengthening of the monitoring, learning and evaluation (ML&E) systems as a strategic objective of the collaboration. With improved data collection and analysis, the KVKs can assess farmers’ agronomic practices and cropping system productivity to see how their practices compare with state-level agricultural recommendations and to undertake a critical review of official recommendations and update them if necessary.
Designing surveys as digital questionnaires allows surveys to be shorter, more streamlined and faster to implement. Digital data collection allows researchers and ML&E staff to generate datasets in real time, reducing the time it takes to collect data and minimizing the opportunities for error that occur when transferring data from paper forms to electronic spreadsheets. ODK is an open-source platform that is easy for KVKS to adopt, streamline and facilitate data collection, storage, analysis and sharing.
From the first batch of 15-trained KVKs, seven have already deployed improved survey design methods and implemented a survey through ODK. Seven KVKs in Bihar are conducting a coordinated survey on wheat production practices for the 2016-17 cropping season. The survey covers 129 villages and 1,855 farming households. From the findings, it was quickly observable that farmers are using slightly more nitrogen- and phosphate-based fertilizers than recommended by the state agriculture universities and official dose recommendations. Using higher-than-recommended fertilizer doses does not increase yields, only cost.
CSISA has worked with KVKs since 2015 to test and modify locally-relevant technologies and help integrate successful technologies into the government’s official package of practices for each state.
CSISA is facilitating KVK scientists to survey farmers’ practices and conduct agronomic trials on nutrient productivity so that they can feed locally relevant research results into extension systems. In the areas where KVKs operate, improved ML&E systems, as well as better, cleaner and more readily available data, can help these KVKs align their activities with the seasonal priorities and investments of the state-level departments of agriculture, as well as help inform the research priorities of the state agriculture universities.
Nepal (CSISA) – In July 2017, the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and the Prime Minister’s Agriculture Modernization Project (PMAMP) jointly held a working group forum, aiming to unify and coordinate the efforts of 21 public and private stakeholders working on research, extension and private sector development for wheat in Nepal. The forum emphasized the need to identify proven best practices for sustainable intensification of wheat, explored possible scaling pathways for knowledge and technological innovations and identified knowledge gaps and areas for future research. The group also laid out a strategy for development of a joint work plan for the 2017–18 wheat season.
The Government of Nepal recently endorsed a new twenty-year agriculture development strategy that charts a progressive course of action to revitalize agriculture as an engine for economic growth and domestic food security. At the center of this strategy is the recently-launched PMAMP, designed to enhance productivity and commercialization of major cereals, fisheries, fruits and vegetables over the next decade. The PMAMP has laid out a structure of super zones -commercial areas of more than 1,000 ha, zones – areas over 500 ha, blocks – over 50 ha and pockets – over 10 ha, these are defined areas across the country that receive government support to produce particular crops intensively.
CSISA has been closely working with PMAMP from its inception in 2016 by providing technical backstopping at the central and local levels for the wheat, maize, rice and farm mechanization programs. CSISA sees PMAMP as a key mechanism for scaling up sustainable intensification technologies in Nepal due to the large geographic reach of the program.
Since early 2017, CSISA has provided PMAMP staff technical guidance on seasonal activity planning and has facilitated cross-learning events and ‘trainings of trainers’ to super zone and zone technicians and operational committees on how to implement and out-scale sustainable intensification technologies. CSISA has also developed training materials, educational videos and other extension materials for utilization by the cereal- and mechanization-based programs.
In the recent forum, Rajan Dhakal, Senior Agriculture Officer at PMAMP, remarked that the discussions were instrumental in identifying technical priorities for wheat and revealing how the efforts of diverse partners can contribute to the food security goals of the Government of Nepal.
Similarly, Yagya Prasad Giri, Chair and Director of Crops and Horticulture at National Agriculture Research Council (NARC), said he appreciated CSISA’s efforts to facilitate discussion and coordination across a diverse set of stakeholders through a common and action-oriented platform.
Drawing on the success of the wheat forum, PMAMP is planning to convene meetings for maize and rice with support from NARC, CSISA and private sector partners within the next two months. CSISA will continue to provide technical support for program implementation and scale-up, as well as advice on seasonal planning, in recognition of the value of public-private collaborations around sustainable intensification issues in Nepal.
Reaching the vast number of individuals of rural Bangladesh’s huge farmer population presents a formidable challenge to the agricultural extension system’s capacity. The diversity and geographic spread of Bangladesh’s farmers also challenge extensions’ ability to link farmers with innovative and locally relevant agricultural research findings.
CSISA has launched a partnership with the AAS, an NGO, to help disseminate agricultural research and extension messages to large numbers of farming villages, highlighting locally relevant sustainable intensification technologies.
In 2012, CSISA and AAS teamed up to field test an initiative to use videos to spread agricultural information. CSISA and AAS organised 482 screenings of the Bangla language video ‘Save more, grow more, earn more,’ which introduces farmers to small-scale agricultural machinery that can be attached to two-wheeled tractors. These implements seed and fertilize crops in a way that saves fuel and labour, allowing farmers to profit while reducing irrigation requirements.
Groups of volunteers in over 300 communities distributed over 3,000 DVDs across Bangladesh and the video aired 12 times on the national station, Bangladesh Television, which resulted in a viewership of 28 million.
The initiative was so successful that it earned the prestigious international Access Agriculture Award for the use of training videos for farmer outreach in 2015.
Based on this experience, CSISA and AAS worked together this year to use video shows to increase farmers’ knowledge and skills on quality rice seedling production. The team screened ‘Healthy Rice Seedlings’ in 11 districts within Southern Bangladesh during May-July, reaching an audience of at least 23,970 people.
“Video-based material is very important for agricultural extension,” said Rezaul Karim Siddique, the director of this video production. “[Videos] create awareness among farmers about new technologies, disseminate scientific knowledge to marginalized people and areas, and can reduce knowledge gaps in agricultural production.”
Now, over 205,000 farmers have seen CSISA-related videos in the target area in Bangladesh.
NALWAPUR, Nepal (CSISA) – A targeted investment by the U.S. Agency for International Development has boosted the government of Nepal’s capacity to test innovative, scale-appropriate agricultural machinery and conduct agricultural machinery training programs for local farmers, operators and mechanics.
In collaboration with the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia in Nepal (CSISA)’s Mechanization and Irrigation project, the government of Nepal is launching two new centers in the coming months: an Agricultural Machinery Testing and Research Center, established by the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), and the Central Agricultural Machinery Training Center, established by the Department of Agriculture’s Directorate of Agricultural Engineering.
The Agricultural Machinery Testing and Research Center will greatly improve NARC’s capacity to evaluate agricultural machinery as well as to suggest changes, and where appropriate, implement design improvements. The center will allow NARC to oversee the quality of manufactured agricultural machinery as a service to importers, local manufacturers and Nepal’s farmers.
The Central Agricultural Machinery Training Center aims to strengthen the Directorate of Agricultural Engineering’s capacity to conduct training programs on agricultural machinery operation and maintenance for farmers and service providers, and for agricultural machinery repair for mechanics. The establishment of these new centers fulfills part of Nepal’s Agriculture Mechanization Promotion Policy, as well as the larger Agricultural Development Strategy of Nepal.
Collaborative work between CSISA, NARC and the Engineering Directorate began in 2015 with the initial site selection process. Both NARC and the Engineering Directorate wanted the centers to be centrally located to facilitate collaboration, dialogue and knowledge sharing between the centers. The NARC center obtained a 10-hectare parcel of underutilized research farmland in Nawalpur, overseen by a separate NARC research program, which is undergoing renovations to create offices, storage and equipment space. The Directorate of Agricultural Engineering finalized selection of a nearby site, which is currently undergoing approval by the Ministry of Agriculture and Development.
CSISA, NARC and the Engineering Directorate have now started the procurement process of relevant machinery for the facilities. For NARC, one of the center’s most important testing machines is a dynamometer, which calculates exact power outputs of motors. This center also procured mechanical vibration testing equipment and various sensors for measuring torque, revolutions per minute, drawbar force and digital telemetry for data transfer from the machinery in testing. NARC has also started field-testing new two-wheel tractor seeders and planters.
For the Engineering Directorate’s Machinery Training Facility, a wide variety of tools and equipment have been procured to support upcoming agricultural trainings. The equipment includes diverse hand tools, power tools, field equipment, tractors, tractor attachments and specialized training devices such as small agricultural machinery cutaways. Such machinery will be used to train lead farmers in the use and maintenance of scale-appropriate machinery, as well as to train technicians, mechanics and blacksmiths in machinery manufacturing and repair.
The establishment of these new centers represents a deepening of support by USAID and CSISA to scale-appropriate mechanization research and development in Nepal and highlights their long-standing commitment to, and cooperation with, the Government of Nepal, NARC and the Department of Agriculture, in providing research and technologies needed by Nepal’s farmers. As evidence of the government of Nepal’s commitment to these centers and the growth of agricultural mechanization, NARC recently announced a US$ 100,000 co-investment in the Agricultural Machinery Testing and Research Center, complementing the nearly US$ 300,000 investment made across both centers by CSISA.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (CSISA) – The Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) recently organized field demonstrations to show how using direct-seeded rice (DSR) instead of transplanting rice crops not only minimizes water use but also reduces production cost and increases profitability. This event created significant awareness of, and interest in, DSR technologies among policymakers and farmers.
Bangladesh has attained self-sufficiency in rice production, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). In 2015–16, rice occupied 74% of the country’s total cropped area, 15.44 million hectares, and total paddy (rough rice) production was 52 million tons.
Sustaining rice self-sufficiency will require the country to produce about 20 percent more, or 10 million more tons of paddy, by 2025 to feed the expected population of 169 million people. This increase must occur despite the steady decline in cultivated land area, reduction in availability of groundwater, declining profitability and increasingly erratic climate.
In Bangladesh, rice grows throughout the year in three seasons popularly known as Aus (March–July), Aman (June–November) and Boro (November–May), with the majority of production occurring in the Boro season. Rice in Aus and Aman is mainly rainfed but fully irrigated during Boro. More than 80% of irrigated areas rely on groundwater, which is decreasing over time due to unregulated use, leading to a lack of irrigation water at the end of the Boro season across a large part of the country and driving up irrigation costs, reducing the profitability of Boro rice.
Diversifying cropping and production systems with nutritious and low water crops would save groundwater, but could reduce the total volume of rice production. To minimize rice shortages, previously uncultivated areas during Aus and Aman seasons may need to be cultivated.
The promotion of mechanized Aus DSR directly supports the government priority to increase Aus cultivation and farm mechanization. Both public and private organizations have shown significant interest in Aus DSR and a willingness to work with CSISA.
CSISA has therefore targeted this region for DSR rice in Aus season where over 400 two-wheel tractor-based direct sowing machines are currently in use by service providers, and another 500 units are shipping to Bangladesh from CSISA partner RFL, an agricultural machinery importer and manufacturer.
CSISA will work with BRRI, DAE, non-government organizations and machinery dealers to further raise awareness of DSR technology, aggregate farmer demand for emerging service providers, and scale out the technology. CSISA will facilitate market linkages to ensure quality inputs, particularly seeds and herbicides and with millers and traders to help farmers sell their rice.
The wider dissemination and adoption of DSR in Aus will save water use, reduce labor requirements, lower production cost, and increase the profitability of rice farming.
A letter of intent signed by both parties outlines five themes: improving maize production in the Odisha plateau, growing the service economy for agricultural mechanization, rice fallows intensification, data-driven monitoring and evaluation, and advancing the science and impact of precision nutrient management through India’s soil health card scheme. The collaboration constitutes a major push to accelerate agriculture productivity growth in the state.
In collaboration with the DAFE, CSISA piloted hybrid maize cultivation and proper nutrient and weed management practices in the north-central plateau of Odisha. Farmers realized a grain yield of 4.8 tons per hectare; almost double that of traditional maize yields.
For maize, post-harvest management is very challenging because it coincides with monsoon season when hot and wet conditions persist. Farmers need management innovations to maintain good grain quality, particularly when monsoon-harvested maize is destined for dry grain markets. CSISA and DAFE are designing post-harvest and marketing interventions to help farmers’ maize harvests reach markets.
The key drivers of agricultural machinery-based entrepreneurship must be understood to grow a service economy. CSISA and DAFE are conducting a study to clarify the motivating factors behind farmers becoming service providers. Data collection for the study will occur in October–November 2017 and the results of the study will guide key policy actions to modify the existing subsidy structures, which will provide a thrust to the service economy by effectively utilizing state resources.
Some complex factors cause farmers to leave land fallow, or unused, after the rice season in Odisha, and ad-hoc investments will not yield effective or sustainable solutions. The decision process behind leaving land fallow goes beyond biophysical and technical issues. CSISA found that complex constraining factors – social, economic and political – and trade-offs that farmers face greatly affect the decision.
To understand some of these complexities, CSISA conducted participatory diagnostics of three things, potential interventions, the sequencing of those interventions, and the coordination of those interventions, which could stimulate intensified cropping in the rice fallows of coastal Odisha. CSISA, with experts from stakeholder organizations, conducted workshops with farmers at the village and district levels.
These participatory diagnostics of decision-making around the cultivation of fallow land highlighted the importance of considering unconventional issues, such as poor synchronization of markets with new-crop investment and credit repayment timing. A state-level working committee has been formed to develop seasonal work plans for this theme, as well as to monitor activities, such as how to generate evidence on fallow investment preferences and the design and implementation of experiments.
In 2016, CSISA, the Government of Odisha and private sector actors cultivated approximately 4,000 hectares of fallow land with hybrid maize, an initiative that has benefitted smallholder tribal farmers primarily. Seeing the success, DAFE urged CSISA to implement similar interventions in other areas of the state.
In the spring of 2017, CSISA began work in the west-central plateau of Odisha. In this area, CSISA facilitated the availability of hybrid seeds, high-quality planting equipment and extension workers trained on best management practices for maize. These interventions were the first of their kind in the area and resulted in the cultivation of 600 additional hectares in the 2017 cropping season. CSISA and DAFE are jointly planning further expansion to additional districts, especially areas where mechanization is uncommon.
CSISA considers precision nutrient management critical for sustainable intensification and, in collaboration with various government agencies, has engaged a team to assess the Indian government’s Soil Health Card (SHC) system.
CSISA’s experience in facilitating the uptake of improved agricultural technologies, as well as the integration of new information, indicates that the distribution of soil health cards alone will not be sufficient for generating behavior change at the farm level. To understand farmers’ perspectives on SHCs, CSISA conducted user tests in several districts of Bihar and Odisha to see which information farmers understood and adopted from the SHC. Researchers found that although the cards contain significant essential information, farmers have a difficult time understanding it. Therefore, CSISA and government partners are collaborating to simplify the SHC and make it more user-friendly and farmer-accessible.
CSISA is supporting the state’s learning & evaluation (ML&E) systems to ensure that feedback from the field is used to help set the next year’s priorities. The collaboration will focus on the training of extension staff on effective tools and techniques for digital data collection, as well as data analysis. CSISA conducted training for DAFE staff on an open source software called open data kit (ODK), in May 2017. Follow-up trainings will provide capacity building on data analysis tools and techniques.
Using ODK, the trained staff will now capture survey data according to a standardized questionnaire agreed to by the group. Since data will be collected in ODK, it will be available through an online database to DAFE researchers. CSISA will provide the initial support to DAFE for the analysis of the data and interpretation of the results. Results will help policymakers fine-tune agricultural programming and inform their agricultural investments. Analytical and design work is underway, and results are expected to emerge by mid-October 2017.
India is the industrial powerhouse of South Asia, with a large agricultural machinery industry that, most notably, sells huge numbers of good quality, low-cost four-wheel tractors. Indian machinery manufacturers are well placed to expand and diversify their markets into other South Asian nations, not only for four-wheel tractors, but also for two-wheel tractors and their specialized implements, including planters and seeders.
To address the need for better two-wheel tractor attachments such as seeder-planters and reapers in Nepal, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provided funding to the Cereal Systems Initiative in South Asia (CSISA), led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), to work with Indian manufacturers of two-wheel tractor attachments to better tailor their designs to the needs of small-scale farmers. Noting that two-wheel tractor owners have not adopted existing models of seeder-planters on a wide scale anywhere in the world, CSISA conducted a series of ‘Design Sprints’ in India that helped manufacturers of two-wheel tractor seed drills and planters tweak and modify their machinery designs to better suit the needs of small-scale farmers, including in Nepal’s hill and Terai ecologies.
A ‘Design Sprint’ at National Agro in Ludhiana, Punjab, going well into the evening due to lively debates and discussions.
During a series of three- to five-day Design Sprints, CSISA provided seed drill manufacturers with technical feedback on their current designs and facilitated discussions about the merits and demerits of various seed drills currently available in the market (worldwide there are over 40 design offerings from the private and public sector). Groups considered various incremental changes to their existing models, as well as entirely new designs that would be more relevant for, and commercially attractive to, small-scale two-wheel tractor owners, farmers and service providers.
After a series of visits by CSISA in 2016, the Design Sprints began in earnest in early 2017. The Sprints will accelerate the prototyping, testing and ‘getting to market’ of at least three new models of two-wheel tractor planters from Khedut Agro and Dharti Agro, both located in Rajkot, Gujarat, and National Agro in Ludhiana, Punjab. CSISA wanted to give the manufacturers’ designers wide creative berth to be as innovative as possible in solving existing agronomic and ergonomic limitations faced by their current offerings. Therefore, CSISA provided only a few stipulations – any new design should aim to:
Follow basic norms in seed drill design, including basic agronomic and conservation agriculture norms
Cost less than the current offerings
Be lighter weight than their existing designs
Fit easily on the two-wheel tractors that are prevalent in Nepal and Bangladesh (and many places in India)
Be driven safely and comfortably on the road so that service providers can move quickly between jobs (farmers’ fields).
New Dharti prototype for lightweight, road transportable, two-wheel tractor planter-seeder that emerged from the Design Sprint.
These conditions were derived from years of feedback received by CSISA about farmers’ experiences with various two-wheel tractor seed drills. Farmers conveyed that although many drills were agronomically sound in the field, they were ergonomically problematic for the operator, and too expensive for many small-scale two-wheel tractor service providers.
The three manufacturers have nearly completed their prototypes, and the next stage will involve CSISA facilitating several prototypes from each manufacturer to be tested and, if necessary, refined in Nepal by the Nepal Agricultural Research Center. Ultimately, USAID and CSISA aim to utilize the knowledge and knowhow of the Indian agricultural machinery industry to enable two-wheel tractor-based farmers to enjoy the same economic and agronomic benefits of increased input productivity from mechanized line sowing of seed and banding of fertilizer that four-wheel tractor-based farmers now enjoy in South Asia.
This article is authored by Scott E. Justice, Agricultural Mechanization Specialist, CIMMYT-Nepal.
India is the industrial powerhouse of South Asia, with a large agricultural machinery industry that, most notably, sells huge numbers of good quality, low-cost four-wheel tractors. Indian machinery manufacturers are well placed to expand and diversify their markets into other South Asian nations, not only for four-wheel tractors, but also for two-wheel tractors and their specialized implements, including planters and seeders.
