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Study says drought tolerant maize will greatly profit African farmers |
| Posted by Administrator (admin) on Tuesday, 20th July, 2010 |
Maize is life to more than 300 million of Africa’s most vulnerable inhabitants, and the most important food staple on the continent. Recurrent droughts in the region ruin harvests, lives, and livelihoods. A new study shows that the development, deployment, and cultivation of drought tolerant maize varieties can significantly profit sub-Saharan Africa's maize farmers and consumers, reducing their vulnerability.
Drought tolerant maize can bring sub-Saharan Africa's farmers cumulative economic benefits of nearly USD 0.9 billion during 2007-16. "This is assuming likely rates of adoption of drought tolerant varieties," says CIMMYT impacts specialist Roberto La Rovere, lead author of a new study on the potential impacts of drought tolerant maize in Africa, "and that those varieties provide a yield advantage of 10 to 34% over normal improved varieties, depending on the site and seasonal conditions."
The study evaluates the potential impacts of Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA), a project led by CIMMYT and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in 13 African countries: Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Ghana. It outlines cumulative economic and poverty-reduction benefits to farmers and consumers for the period described above—the duration of the DTMA project—through farmers' adoption of improved, drought tolerant maize varieties.
Moving from subsistence to surplus
Millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa depend on maize for food and livelihoods. Rainfall in the region is extremely erratic and drought destabilizes crop production and erodes food security. Worse, climate change effects on agriculture in Africa are expected to add significantly to farmers' and consumers' difficulties.
Despite a proliferation of private seed producers in eastern and southern Africa in recent decades, the amount of seed marketed is only enough to sow just over a third of the region's maize lands, and most maize farmers sow grain that they save from previous harvests.
"DTMA varieties provide both higher and more stable yields," says Wilfred Mwangi, associate director of CIMMYT's global maize program and a co-author of the study. "Small-scale agriculture in Africa is predominantly rainfed; few farmers have access to irrigation. Drought tolerant maize varieties are more dependable under varying rainfall conditions. This means that farmers will suffer less pronounced fluctuations in season-to-season yields, reducing their risk." High risk coupled with economic vulnerability is a chief reason why small-scale maize farmers often forego investing in improved seed or yield-enhancing inputs like fertilizer—they simply cannot afford to lose their investment. This in turn traps them in a cycle of subsistence farming, chronic poverty, and food insecurity.
"Assuming the yield advantages described in the study and if all maize farmers in the project countries who currently grow improved varieties were to replace them with drought tolerant maize during some time 2007-16, the benefits could directly help more than 4 million people to escape poverty and many millions more to improve their livelihoods," says La Rovere. "Our study shows the most striking economic and poverty benefits would accrue in Nigeria, Kenya, and Malawi. This is a function of the amounts of maize sown in those countries, the importance of maize in local diets and livelihoods, and historical levels of adoption of improved maize there."
Even bigger benefits in the future
Co-authors of this multi-disciplinary study include experts from IITA; the University of Georgia, USA; and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Crucial components used were geographic information system data, the "probability of failed crop seasons" concept, yield data from breeders, projected maize adoption rates from seed experts, and poverty data. The drought tolerant varieties considered are the product of conventional breeding, which is the focus of DTMA.
La Rovere and his colleagues are beginning follow-up research to measure potential benefits from such factors as area expansion effects, increased cropping diversity (households can meet their maize requirements from a smaller portion of their land, freeing up space to sow other crops), and increased investments in fertilizer and other improvements.
"We expect that farmers who adopt drought tolerant maize will continue to grow it beyond 2016, and even more farmers will begin to use it," says La Rovere. "This means the benefits and returns on investments from this work would grow significantly over time."
For more information: Roberto La Rovere, impacts specialist ( r.larovere@cgiar.org )
Last changed: Friday, 6th August, 2010 at 11:52 AM
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