Farmers in twenty African countries get new window of opportunity to significantly increase yield

Participant at the SARD SC Side Event in Accra

Efforts to transform agriculture in Africa have received a boost as researchers met under the Support for Agricultural Research and Development of Strategic Crops (SARD-SC)’s event, “Partners, Possibilities and Prospects,” on 15 July 2013 at the 6th African Agricultural Science Week in Accra to draw more support from partners into project.
The SARD-SC project will raise the productivity of maize, cassava, wheat, and rice by 20% in twenty selected countries in Africa.
The plan is to reduce food importation from other continents and offer farmers better access to markets, improve livelihoods, and tackle poverty through enhanced capacities of beneficiaries to sustainable development in the region.
About a million farmers will directly benefit from the project through its innovations basket, while another million and half will be reached by project spin off effects. “Narrowing the yield gap is key for African farmers, and it will help them to compete globally and to feed themselves,” says Project Coordinator of SARD-SC, Dr Chrysantus Akem, from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).  
Funded by the African Development Bank with US$ 63.24 million, SARD-SC also aims to create knowledge on the tested innovations with farmers in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Drs Thomas Dubois, SARD SC Rice Commodity Specialist; and Solomon Assefa, SARD SC Wheat Commodity Specialist made presentations on rice and wheat strategies of the project.
The 5-year, multi-CGIAR center initiative will run until 2016, and will be co-implemented by three Africa-based CGIAR centers: IITA, Africa Rice Center, and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas. IITA is also the Executing Agency of the project. Another CGIAR center – the International Food Policy Research Institute – a specialized technical agency, will support the other three centers. ###
For more information, please contact: Godwin Atser, g.atser@cgiar.org; Chrysantus Akem, c.akem@iita.org  or Andrea Gros, a.gros@cgiar.org

Simple technology supporting farmers to revive banana production in Burundi

Beatrice Bukuru, a member of the 'Tugurukire Kitoki' farmers group

in the group's communal land during a field day 

Beatrice Bukuru, 50, from Kassa village in Muyinga commune, Burundi, is a happy woman. She wasn't so happy three years ago. A deadly strange disease was ravaging her banana, threatening her ability to earn a living and feed her family.  Today, she is even the proud owner of two goats, bought through sales from the crop. 

So what has changed in three years?  Well, she joined a farmers group called 'Tugurukire kitoki' (rehabilitate banana) that has transformed the farming of this important food and staple crop in the region. 

She says the group started when the president of the group came back from training with a few banana plantlets of this new variety that is very high yielding. He also introduced a new technology of rapidly multiplying planting materials which are disease free so the new varieties could be quickly distributed to the other farmers. 

Usually, Beatrice and other small-holder banana farmers plant suckers, - the little banana plantlets growing at the side of the mother plant either from their own existing banana plants or borrowed from a neighbor. This is not only slow, as a plant can only produce about four to five suckers in a year, it also transfers pests and diseases from one farm to another.

However, with the new way of multiplying planting material, known as macro-propagation, a healthy sucker is cut into small pieces which are carefully planted in a nursery and when they are big enough, are transferred to the farms. One sucker if well prepared can produce up to 50 plantlets in three months.

The training on macro-propagation and on improved methods of growing banana were conducted by  a team from the  International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) working under an umbrella initiative that brings together many development partners to support the agricultural sector by the name Consortium for Improving Agriculture-based Livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA).  

They are a part of on-going efforts to control the spread of diseases and pest and in particular, the banana wilt and banana bunchy top disease which are spreading rapidly and destroying banana in the great Lakes region. All banana varieties are susceptible to the two diseases hence the need for concerted efforts by all.

According to Emmanuel Njukwe, the partnership associate scientist with IITA, banana is a key staple in Burundi for food and income the diseases were therefore a big threat to the already food insecure country which has a high population density. The diseases are spread by infected planting material, use of infected farming equipment, browsing animals and insects.

One way of getting disease free planting material is the use of tissue culture. However, according to Emmanuel, the farmers did not like the tissue culture bananas much which are small, delicate and require a lot of care. So they turned to macro-propagation and also developed the concept of ‘mother gardens’.

Demonstrating the banana macropropagation technology

during a field day

"We trained the farmers how to treat the suckers by placing them in boiling water for 30 seconds to get rid of pests such as nematodes and weevils. They then remove the sheath to expose the buds and meristem, the growing part of the plantlet, which they cut into small pieces. these are then grown in a nursery whose substrate has also been sterilized to get rid of pests," he said.  "We also help them with testing the mother plant to ensure they are virus free so they do not unknowingly spread the viruses."

The project has also been screening different banana varieties to identify those that can perform well under the local conditions and also meet farmers' preferences.  One such variety is the FHIA variety from and named after the Honduran Agricultural Research Foundation which is Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola (FHIA) in Spanish.

Tugurukire kitoki group has a collective farm where they are growing the new varieties FHIA and other local varieties with macro-propagation, they are able to plant all the banana at the same time and when they are ready for harvesting, call the buyers who come with lorries to collect.  Before the banana were planted with suckers of varying age and size at different times and got ready at interval.

They have opened a collective bank account to save the money from the sale of banana from their collective farm. They use it to pay school feeds for children, buy medicine and cater for other emergencies. The group has also been buying goats for the members to diversify their income and recently Beatrice got two.

Hubert Chauvet, the Country Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) one of the institutions working in Burundi to tackle the banana disease says the macro-propagation technology is cheap and simple enough for farmers to do it themselves. 

He said FAO had supported CIALCA and national partners in the first phase of coping with the banana wilt disease which involved creating awareness to farmers about the disease and control measures which included uprooting and destroying affected banana plants to halt the spread.

 "Now with macro-propagation, farmers are getting planting material fast and the disease situation is now slowly getting under control," he said.



Felix talks to journalists

The Tugurukire kitoki group is supporting other farmers in other parts of the country to embrace this new technology. One such group is Collectif des associations de development dans la commune Kibage (CADRE),  which is an association of 29 farmers. According to their vice president, Kanyakiro Felix, they have also started banana macro-propagation and so far they have four nurseries, multiplying 120 banana suckers of the FHIA variety. The group wants to increase to 6000 suckers and each group in the association to establish their own nursery.

Kanyakiro says with this technology and the training received on how to properly grow banana such as mulching and spacing, their banana production is starting to recover. "We did not have banana. They were destroyed by the disease. We are slowly recovering. And we now even want to go into juice processing."

Njukwe says the project has been very successful due to support from many farmers and the government as well and can be easily replicated to many parts of Africa where the two diseases are spreading rapidly. 

In Uganda, coffee and banana go better together

A field with coffee and banana inter-cropped  in Uganda

By Caity Peterson
You're hungry for pizza. Walking around the neighborhood, you find two pizzerias not far from each other. They're both selling pretty much the same thing - crust with cheese and tomatoes on top - and at the same price. But one offers you a free delicious ice-cold 2-liter soda to go with your hawaiian. That makes your choice easy, no?

Believe it or not, something similar is happening in Uganda. Only we're not talking about pizza, and the choice is a bit more complicated.

The comestibles in question here are two of the country's most important agricultural commodities. One, coffee, makes up 20-30% of Uganda's foreign exchange earnings and creates a cash boom for smallholders once or twice a year. The other, banana, is the country's principle staple crop, providing a small, steady food harvest all year long. In fact, Uganda was the 2^nd largest banana producer in the world in 2008, and the 11^th largest coffee producer.

By happy coincidence, both of these crops tend to grow at around the same altitude: from 800 to 2300 meters. Thus, considering growing human populations and farmers increasingly squeezed for space, it makes sense to grow them together, especially since coffee tends to produce more consistently when grown with a little bit of shade. Many farmers in Uganda are doing just that, intercropping banana and coffee to make good use of space in densely populated areas. Others are sticking with the old system or growing the two crops in separate plots, as used to be promoted by colonial extension services solely concerned with profits from the coffee cash crop and is often still promoted today, for apparent lack of a better option.

But which of these systems is actually the most beneficial for farmers? Until now, not much research has existed specifically targeting the relative advantages and disadvantages of different types of coffee growing systems. The result is that government agencies and other advisory bodies have trouble knowing what to promote, and farmers are even more in the dark.

Ongoing research by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Kampala, Uganda, in collaboration with other CGIAR centers (CIAT, ICRAF, and CIFOR), has attempted to evaluate the benefits of different types of systems, including co-benefits for climate change adaptation and mitigation and implications for pest and disease incidence.
 They have found that banana-coffee intercrop systems have the potential to be the most beneficial for farmers because they leave the yield of the coffee crop virtually untouched, while providing a little something extra in the form of more food for their personal use. Essentially, by combining the two crops farmers are greatly increasing the total yield value of a single plot of land, even if the yield for individual crops doesn’t change much. Bananas are to coffee crops what our free soda is to pizzerias – it doesn’t change the pizza, but it’s a nice bonus nonetheless.

Furthermore, including bananas in the coffee system spreads the farmers’ risk. If one crop fails or is decimated by a disease, they can still get a harvest from the other. Ugandan farmers have reported that the shade from the bananas also decreases their coffee’s susceptibility to drought and extreme weather events due to climate change. The residues from the trees provide in-situ mulch which would otherwise cost them much capital and labor to bring in. They say bananas also motivate them to better manage their coffee crops during the first 3-5 unproductive years, because the bananas are producing even when the coffee is not. This is especially true for the female half of the community, which often doesn’t see the money from a coffee sale come back to the household but can use the banana harvest for home consumption.

There are trade-offs, of course. The intercrop system removes larger quantities of nutrients from the soil, and, in the long-term, coffee can eventually out-compete banana. The system can also require larger inputs of labor and capital at the outset. Accordingly, the success of intercrop systems will require identification of major production constraints – principally soil fertility – and the development of site-specific recommendations to address them.

Recently, the IITA team has been taking a more climate-centric focus to their crop system analyses, collaborating on the development of suitability maps for East African coffee crops, pests, and diseases and investigating the mitigation potential of the coffee-banana intercrop system. For more info on past and current IITA work in Uganda – and parallel projects on cocoa systems in Cameroon and Nigeria – check out the following resources:

• Van Asten et al (2011) article in Agricultural Systems: Agronomic and economic benefits of coffee-banana intercropping in Uganda’s smallholder farming systems
• IITA policy brief: “Towards climate smart agriculture: Lessons from a coffee x banana case.”
• Building ‘climate smart’ East African coffee production systems: presentation by Rikxoort et al. at the CIALCA 2011 international conference.

See original story on CCAFs blog:  http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/uganda-coffee-and-banana-go-better-together

IITA DG calls for a “Brown Revolution” for a “Green Revolution” in Africa

The push for a “Green Revolution” in Africa to increase agricultural production for food and economic development will not bear much fruit if adequate attention is not paid to managing soil fertility in the continent.  

Dr Sanginga making a presentation on Brown Revolution at the
 Global Cassava Partnership conference in Kampala, Uganda.

According to Dr Nteranya Sanginga, IITA Director General, Africa cannot achieve a “Green Revolution” without first having a “Brown Revolution”. He noted that the current application of 8 kg/ha of soil nutrients, whether organic or inorganic fertilizers, was very low and was a major setback to the continent’s vision of adequately feeding itself.

Dr Sanginga spoke at the Global Cassava Partnership meeting currently taking place this week in Kampala, Uganda, that brought together over 400 international scientists from all over the world to strategize on how cassava can play a bigger role in economic development by exploiting the diverse uses of this hardy crop. Cassava performs well under harsh conditions, such as poor soils and drought.

The conference was launched by the Honourble Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Hon Tress Bucyanayandi who noted that frequent droughts and floods as a result of climate change were one of the leading causes of food insecurity in the world today with millions of USD going into emergency food aid.

The Guest of honour Hon Tess Bucyanayandi makes
the opening remarks. 

He noted that cassava was a crop that performs well in drought conditions and is becoming an important food security crop. He therefore urged the researchers gathered at the conference to develop solutions to some of the challenges facing the production of the crop in the region such as Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD), the two diseases wreaking havoc on the crop’s production. 

Participants following workshop proceedings

Dr Eugene Terry from Transfarm Africa noted that a number of efforts to transform cassava were already underway in the region starting with the development and deployment of improved better yielding varieties by IITA. He noted that over 80% of the new varieties released by national programs in Africa had incorporated these varieties released in the 1970’s and dubbed TMS series.

He said there were many challenges facing the transformation of the crop that needed to be tackled through research including control of pests and diseases and the need for early maturing and drought tolerant varieties. On marketing issues, he said there was need to research on better organization of value chains, better infrastructure support and how to reduce transaction costs.

Dr Sanginga on his part told the conference participants that while much investment had gone into developing high-yielding cassava varieties that were resistant to some of the major pests and diseases, the gains achieved cannot be realized if these varieties are grown in poor soils.

He said it was unfortunate that cassava had been tagged for many years as a poor man’s crop that does not require much input such as fertilizers. He argued that the crop harvested as much nutrients from the soil as other crops and that these nutrients needed to be replenished. It also requires nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium similar to other crops.

“Nutrient use in cassava has been very minimal as it is considered a poor man’s crop. However, if we are talking about cassava transformation, about increasing cassava production not only for food but also for commercial use, we must change these wrong perceptions. If we think of growing cassava in soils that are too poor for other crops such as maize,” he said, “then, we are missing the other half of the equation.”

The African Union has recommended for the countries in the continent to increase application of soil nutrients to 50 kg/ha of nutrients combining both organic and inorganic fertilizers.

The Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century (GCP21) conference is taking place on 18–22 June 2012 in Kampala, Uganda. GCP21 consists of 45 member institutions working on research and development of cassava, a staple crop relied on by more than 700 million people worldwide. The ultimate goal of the partnership is to improve cassava productivity through scientific research and development. 

Group photo of participants

The conference participants include representatives from NARS, international agricultural research centers, advanced laboratories and universities from developed and developing countries, United Nations’ agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, donor and development organizations, businesses in the ag-biotechnology and food processing industries.

Sanginga drums up support for IITA’s Southern Africa hub

 The IITA Director General, Dr Nteranya Sanginga, was last week, from 11 – 15 June 2012, in Zambia, to meet different partners of the institute to explore ways to strengthen relationships and support each other in efforts to find solutions to hunger and poverty in the country and beyond.

IITA DG (extreme left) talks to Dr Mick Mwala, Dean of School of Agricultural
Sciences. At the centre is Dr Chikoye, IITA Director for Southern Africa 

The partners welcomed the move by IITA to invest in first class research facilities and increase the number and diversity of scientists working in Lusaka, Zambia, its regional hub for Southern Africa and serving 13 countries in the region

Meeting with AfDB team

The hub is one of four that the institute is working through as it decentralizes its activities to have more impact as part of its ambitious plan to get 20 million people out of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa in the next ten years as spelt out in its refreshed strategy. 


The hubs are in Nigeria for the West, Tanzania for Eastern, Zambia for Southern and Democratic Republic of Congo for Central Africa.

Tackling succession crisis in agricultural research
Sanginga said the institute was going to especially focus on building capacity of researchers from national research institutes and institutions of higher learning.

He noted that many countries in Africa were heading towards a crisis as the current experienced civil servants in the agricultural sector who were retiring did not have qualified predecessors to take over. 

At a media briefing

“In Zambia, in Congo, in Kenya and in many other African countries, the situation is the same. We have scientists at the prime of their career being forced to retire because they have attained retirement age of 50 – 55 years. On the other hand, there are very few experienced staff to take over from them. So at IITA we are exploring how to make use of the knowledge and skills of these retirees and how to build the capacity of young researchers and attract the young people to agriculture,” he said.

This was welcomed by the Acting Director of ZARI Dr Moses Mwale and the Dean of the School of Faculty of Agriculture Sciences, University of Zambia, Dr Mick Mwala and their colleagues.

Crop diversification

Visiting a tissue culture lab at Zambian Agricultural Research Institute

Dr Sanginga also noted that there was need for African countries to diversify their staple crops particularly to avoid over reliance on maize. This was supported by country representatives of FAO, Mr Adrianus Spijker and Africa Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Freddie Kwesiga who noted that over-reliance on maize as a food staple and income crop in Zambia was not sustainable particularly in the face of climate change and dependency on rain-fed agriculture.

They identified cassava as one crop they were keen on promoting as it was a hardy crop with uses that went beyond just being a food crop.

Dr Sanginga assured them that IITA had many years of working along the cassava value chain and would lend its expertise to support the country in its diversification efforts.

He gave an example of Nigeria where the policy of including 20% cassava flour was saving the country millions of US dollars from reduced wheat importation and was creating jobs for thousands of young people.

Sanginga giving a talk at the University of Zambia, School of
Agricultural Sciences

FAO country representative, Mr Spijker noted that IITA and FAO had achieved significant success in dealing with Cassava Mosaic Diseases (CMD) in DRC. He said IITA’s new disease-resistant varieties distributed all over the country, with support from FAO and other partners, had averted a major disaster. He was therefore more than happy to collaborate with IITA to make a difference in Zambia.

A group photo with students and faculty members

Sanginga said the institute was also focusing on strengthening its research on Natural Resource Management, and partnership with National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) for better impact.   

Sanginga was accompanied by the IITA director for Southern Africa, David Chikoye and Steve Boahen, and Alene Arega, the Country representatives for Mozambique and Malawi respectively.

In his short busy program in Zambia, Sanginga also made brief presentations at the University of Zambia, at the FAO offices, had a media briefing in addition to holding a meeting with all IITA staff in Zambia.  

Project to save farmers from bogus agricultural commercial products launched

Most small holder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to make ends meet and are always on the lookout for ways to boost their production. And they are even more desperate now in the face of unpredictable weather due to climate change.

Unfortunately, they sometimes fall prey and loose huge sums of their hard earned money to unscrupulous companies selling them ‘miraculous’ products that promise to increase their yields but which turn out to be fake or sub-standard and do  not live up to their claims.  

Moreover, the regulatory bodies established to control these products and safeguard farmers’ investments are often poorly funded, poorly equipped and the regulations are not up to date to include some of these new innovative products coming into the market such as bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides.

To address this, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) recently launched the second phase of the Commercial Products (COMPRO-II) project that aims to benefit two million smallholder farmers in East and West Africa by providing information on which agricultural products are genuinely effective to boost their production among the myriad currently available in the market.

IITA's Director General Dr Sanginga speaking during the project launch. 

 “We have all these products in the market which, like the witchdoctors’ potions, promise to solve all the farmers’ problems. Our concern therefore is that our poor small-scale farmers are using their little hard earned money to pay for products that do not produce results. So we first set out to understand the problem then see how to help them,’ said Dr. Nteranya Sanginga, Director General for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) during the launch that was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on 16 May 2012.  

‘Under phase I of the project, with a grant from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation, we screened over 100 such products in the market to see which ones are useful. And out of these only three were found to be really effective,” he said.

The three were Rhizobium inoculants for legumes, mycorrhizal inoculants for tissue-culture banana, and fertilizer seed coating of for maize.

Rhizobium and mycorrhizal are bio-fertilizers that make use of useful micro-organisms that are naturally found in the soils. Rhizobium is a bacterium that converts the free nitrogen in the air into a form that plants can absorb from the soil. Mycorrhizal fungus assists plants to absorb nutrients from the soil and strengthen their resistance to soil-borne pests such as nematodes.

Fertilizer seed coating for maize on the other hand, avails essential nutrient to the crop on germination making it grow better, have better root development and become better established.

Participants drawn from the six project countries at the its launch.

The second phase will primarily focus on creating awareness and disseminating to farmers these tried and tested quality products to increase their production and building the capacity of national systems to continuing screening such products coming into the market.


“The project will engage with and support national institutions to put in place systems to continue screening these products to check their quality. This will ensure farmers are not wasting money on fake products that do not work,” said Dr Prem Warrior, a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the end of the project, more farmers are expected to confidently use these products because their safety, efficacy, and quality will be ensured through institutionalized regulatory and quality assurance mechanisms.

“We want to make farmers’ life better. Using some of these productions that we have checked and ascertained their quality together with other good farming practices such as use of fertilizers and improved varieties, they can get better yields of maize, soybean and banana and improve their lives,” said Bernard Vanlauwe, IITA Director for Central Africa and the project team leader.

The project is targeting small-holder farmers in six African countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania.

Work smart not hard - Boosting productivity of small-holder farmers through smarter farming practices

A man and his wife who are small-holder farmers, display their harvest of cassava and banana, two important staples in Sub-Sahara Africa. 

They have small farms, big families and few animals. They grow different types of crops to spread their risks and lack resources to invest in inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides to boost their production. They are at the mercy of the weather; when it rains their harvest is abundant, when it fails, their granaries are empty and they sometimes require food aid.

These are the small-holder farmers in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda that Dr. Piet Van Asten, a system's agronomist with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is trying to work with to ensure they get the most out of what they have. However, they represent a majority of small-holder farmers in Africa.
He works for the Consortium for improving agriculture based livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA) which brings together many partners to improve the livelihoods of small-holder farmers. IITA is one of the founding partners.

Too many challenges, where does one start? According to Van Asten, the starting point to improve the productivity of their farming systems is to understand their constraints and to try and identify the one or two issues that if tackled can have great positive impact. He says using tools such as yield gap analysis which looks at the actual productivity of the small holders farmers against the maximum yield they can get in the same circumstances, they have been able to make some headway.

Poor old soils

Dr Piet Van Asten, IITA systems agronomist. 

Van Asten says, focusing primarily on banana, they have established that poor soils are one of the most important constraints to the crop's production by the small-holder farmers in the three countries. Most soils, he said, were old, from old parent rocks and had very little nutrients left.


It therefore follows logically that supporting the farmers to use inputs such as fertilizer was one of the best-bet technologies to increase their production. However, Van Asten cautions, this must be applied based on the actual soil deficiency and include factors such as distance from the farms to market and banana prices.

"Investing in fertilizer does not always lead to profits for the farmers. They can only get value for their money if they live near markets or infrastructure is good and they are able to fetch good prices for their banana. They must also know which nutrients their soils are lacking and which are important for the crops they are growing. They should not follow blanket recommendations as is always the case," he said.

For example he said, they established that potassium, which plays a big role in banana production, was lacking in most soils in the three countries. Yet, the addition of the mineral led to great gains in banana production. Furthermore, Van Asten said, the banana plants that received adequate potassium fared better in times of drought.

He says the impact of adding nutrients to the soils was visible even at the farm level where bananas growing near the homesteads were healthier than those further down.

"This is because the soil closer to the homestead benefited from kitchen wastes as women tend not to walk far to throw away the rubbish. For example, ashes from the fire add calcium to the soils, "he said. "Food wastes add organic matter."

Banana growing near a homestead where the soil is often more fertile from kitchen waste 

.

Which crops give the highest returns?

Most African farmers practice mixed farming. The question therefore arises, with the little limited resources at their disposal, which crop would give them the highest return from fertilizer application and how do they make these decisions?

Van Asten says according to a scooping study they carried out in the three countries, they were surprised to discover that farmers would get the highest return from coffee, cassava and banana and not maize and beans which they gave preference.

"Coffee, banana and even cassava in the long run proved to be better value for money invested in fertilizer in terms of replenishing nutrient extracted in the soils and returns per dollar invested. However, farmers only see the immediate gains in maize and beans.

"Farmers still have to make the decision carefully because for example, once they start fertilizing their coffee it would be best if they can continue. If they stop, the coffee can't maintain its canopy and yields and will show some die-back. This fuels farmers' belief that fertilizer is bad and spoils soils," he said.

Coffee and banana - super mix

Coffee and banana intercrop. 

Other practices that were found to increase yield include inter-cropping banana and coffee. Piet says the farmers got more out of their land by growing the two crops together than having either of them alone. These findings he said are slowing leading to a change of hearts among policy makers who have for a long time preached mono-cropping of coffee in Rwanda and Burundi. This is because coffee is an import foreign exchange earner and they did not want anything to affect its production.

He said their research was not inventing anything new. Rather it was based on finding out what the best farmers were doing to get their good yields and helping the others to adopt them.

"Some of the best banana farmers get as much as 40 tons per hectare. We try to understand what they are doing and why, and then promote it to wider farmers in the community and even further," he said.

However, he says they don't always agree with the farmers views. For example, most farmers judge the productivity of their banana by the size of the bunches.

"To us, this is not the best indicator. We instead look at productivity per hectare. A farmer may have smaller bunches but more plants therefore his overall productivity is higher than the one with huge bunches but fewer plants. We therefore have been working with them to plant as many bananas as their land can accommodate based on its soil fertility, rainfall, among others" he said.

Piet says under CIALCA they have mapped most of the soils in the three countries and developed fertilizer usage recommendations that are region specific. They have also developed and are disseminating the rich information gathered on various ways that small-holder farmers can increase banana production. The crop is among their most important food and cash crop in the three countries but its productivity is very low.

CIALCA partnership highlights contribution of research to bringing stability in Africa’s Great Lakes Region

The Consortium for Improving Agriculture-based Livelihoods in Central Africa (CIALCA) and the CGIAR Research Programme on the Humid Tropics today opened the first international conference to examine the challenges and opportunities for intensifying farm production in sub-Saharan Africa’s humid tropical regions.

Although good rainfall and temperatures allow cropping most of the year, small farm sizes, persistent civil conflicts, poor infrastructure, and political instability have made it difficult for Central Africa’s small farmers to eke out a living. The region has some of the highest rates of food insecurity, malnutrition, and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

“When CIALCA first started, we thought this was the best opportunity to highlight that science can contribute to peace,” said Nteranya Sanginga, a Congolese scientist and Director General designate of IITA, which will lead a major global CGIAR research program for the humid tropics that builds off of CIALCA’s work.

“Achieving food security in CIALCA region is a big challenge,” said Sanginga. “If we don’t find solutions to food security under the current constraints, we will face major challenges and increased conflict over food, land, and other natural resources in the next few decades.”

During the opening plenary, CIALCA partners and representatives of the Rwandan government highlighted the success of several projects that are delivering results for farmers and national food security. In 2007, 20 out of 30 districts in Rwanda were reported as being food insecure. Today, as a result of increased public investment in agriculture and country’s National Crop Intensification Program, all of Rwanda’s districts are now food secure. In addition, the country is exporting surplus crops to neighboring countries and is the only country in the region not dealing with food crisis.

Rwanda’s Permanent Secretary for Agriculture, Ernest Ruzindaza, noted the importance of linking research knowledge to the needs of farmers on the ground and taking a more systemic approach to ensure food security and eradicate poverty.

“CAADP is here to support African countries in their push to support agriculture, but agriculture alone cannot solve the problem of poverty. Other rural development programs are need and agriculture is a key player,” he said.

http://cialcaconference.org/2011/10/24/cialca-partnership-highlights-contribution-of-research-to-bringing-stability-in-africa%e2%80%99s-great-lakes-region/

IITA, partners launch project to control cancer-causing aflatoxin

The Kenyan government warmly welcomed a project seeking to identify and avail to farmers a natural, safe, and cost-effective solution to prevent aflatoxin contamination in maize and peanut in the country and pledged its support to ensure it was a success.

Noting the importance of maize in the country where it is the number one staple, Dr Wilson Songa, Agricultural Secretary in Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture said the country needed the initiative yesterday.

Kenya, aflatoxin hot spot
“Kenya has become a hotspot of aflatoxin contamination. In 2004, 150 people died after eating contaminated maize. Last year we had 2.3 million bags of maize contaminated. Currently we have 160,000 bags of infested maize that are not only taking up storage but are also a problem to dispose off. It is a nightmare. That is why I say this launch should have been yesterday!” he said while launching the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF) funded project, on June 3, 2011, in Nairobi.

He said this was one area that the Kenyan government could not afford to go slow on. “We are happy with the innovative scientific solution which has done well in Nigeria. The ball is now in our court and we shall move fast so our farmers start benefiting from the technology.”

IITA’s Deputy Director General, Research for Development, Paula Bramel said IITA was pleased to be part of this exciting project which would see its biocontrol solution for aflatoxin reach the farmers.

“This project will take our biocontrol product, commercialize it, and make it available to farmers. We have worked on it for many years, tested it in many fields in Nigeria and we are pleased with its effectiveness,” she aid. “And we are optimistic it will help farmers.”

She thanked the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support and Peter Cotty from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for sharing on the experience in the US and his collaboration and commitment to the project.
Dr Prem Warrior, a senior Program Officer from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said aflatoxin impacted negatively on human health and was a great barrier to trade and economic growth.

“Today we have an opportunity to do something about it (aflatoxins). This project is a short term development strategy to test the technology and learn on product development issues. We have confidence in the technology but how we will commercialize it and who are our customers?” he said.

Acting Executive Director of African Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF), Jacob Mignouna, noted that maize was an important staple food for 300 million people depending on the crop so its contamination was of great concern.

Director of Kenya Agricultural Research Organization (KARI) Ephraim was happy to note the speed at which the discussions on aflatoxin were moving from the boardroom down to where the problem was.

Deadly aflatoxin and its eliminator
Aflatoxin is a chemical produced by a fungus scientifically known as Aspergillus flavus, which suppresses the immune system, retards growth in children, and causes liver disease and death in both humans and domestic animals when exposed to levels above the recommended limits.

Explaining the technology, Dr Ranajit Bandyopadhay, IITA plant pathologist, said not all strains of the Aspergillus flavus fungi produce the toxins. The biocontrol solution works by introducing non-toxic fungi or 'the good guys,' that are able to outcompete and drastically reduce the population of their toxic relatives, or 'the bad guys' in affected field.

He said the technology held great promise as it was easy to use – farmers simply throw it in their fields three weeks before the flowering of the plants and this successfully protects the maize and peanut while in the field and in storage.

The biocontrol was first developed by the United States Department of Agriculture – Agriculture Research Service (USDA-ARS) and is widely used in America to control Aflatoxin. Partnering with USDA, IITA has successfully adapted this technology for use in Nigeria where it has been widely tested with very promising results - it consistently reduced aflatoxin contamination in maize and groundnut by 80–90% and even some cases as high as 99%. It is now ready for registrations under the name 'Aflasfe' and the project will support its commercialization.

In Kenya, efforts to seek a biocontrol solution have been on-going for 4 years and great progress has also been made. Potential strains of non-toxic fungi have been identified and the project will narrow down to the most effective strain that will be registered and packaged into a product.

The project partners are IITA, USDA-DAR, KARI and AATF.

Group riding high, thanks to an old friend, cassava

“With the money I made from the sale of my cassava roots and stem (as planting material) and the dividends I received from the group, I have now finished constructing a video den, purchased a TV and a DVD player, and installed a solar system to power them. I will be charging the villagers a small fee to watch news and movies,” Peter Mtoi, 61 year old shows us his latest acquisition with pride.


By his side, his wife, Mary Mtoi, 51, adds that they have also purchased a commercial charcoal oven to bake bread and cakes made of mixed cassava and wheat flour to sell to the village and nearby shopping centre.

The Mtois living in Tongwe village in Bagamoyo District, Pwani region are members of a local cassava farmers group, Wambato (Wakulima wa mhogo Bagamoyo Tongwe) which has been processing cassava into flour thereby getting more income as compared to the sale of fresh roots.

Ten years ago, things were very different and they had almost given up growing cassava following its devastation by the cassava brown streak (CBSD) which causes a dry rot in the tubers rendering them useless – they are not edible nor can they be milled into flour. All their local varieties were susceptible to the rot disease and they were desperate.

The Roots and Tuber programme of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Cooperatives introduced and tested together with the farmers six varieties growing elsewhere that had shown good levels of resistance to the disease.

‘Out of the six varieties they brought us for testing, we found Kiroba to the best. It was high yielding, resistant to the disease and sweet,’ Mtoi said.

They were also trained on good agronomical practices to get maximum yield such as when and how to plant, spacing and selection of good planting material. Soon the group was back to the cassava growing business.

Cassava cassava everywhere


However, following the rapid adoption of Kiroba and better farming practices, there was now more cassava than the markets could absorb, prices plummeted and the farmers were in despair again.

The Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) came to their rescue and constructed a processing centre equipped with simple machines to process cassava into flour which has a longer shelf life and fetches more money than the highly perishable fresh cassava roots which start to rot three days after harvesting. To show its commitment, the group purchased the bricks and provide labour for the construction.

From 2009, the group has been receiving support from the Unleashing the Power of the Cassava in Africa (UPOCA) of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in tackling emerging challenges to take their production to a higher level.

In 2009 the project trained Tabu Maghembe, the government extension officer working with the group and selected representatives on production of high quality cassava flour and new products and recipes using the flour; quality and safety management, and labelling, packaging and marketing.

The group warmly welcomed and implemented all the new ideas received on their own costs. It has since constructed a toilet at the centre, raised the racks for drying the cassava to avoid contamination by dust or domestic animals, and started using plastic bags to spread the cassava chips to dry.

‘As you can see we have notices for everyone to wash their hands before touching anything as per the hygiene quality and standards training, ‘Maghembe said. “We are working towards getting our flour certified by the Tanzania Bureau of Standards.”


A credit scheme

The group has a bank account and pays dividends to its members twice a year from some of the profits made. It also buys their cassava for processing and pays them a daily wage for their labour during processing. The neighbouring community is also benefiting from a ready and better priced market for their cassava.

It also acts as a saving and credit society for both members and surrounding farmers who borrow money for emergencies against the cassava in the field. Once they harvest it, they sell it to the group to repay the loan with a small interest.

One challenge for the group is transporting their dried cassava chips over long distances for milling. The mills are also not exclusive for cassava products and the flour is sometimes contaminated with maize and other grains flour. John Msemo, UPOCA country Mananger says the project will purchase a milling machine for the group and they construct the building to house it.

For the group, this is just but the begining:‘We are ready to continue to grow from strength to strength. We started from the farm and now we are processing and selling to supermarkets in big towns. We are now eyeing markets outside the country,’ said Maghembe.

Return of the cassava: New ways of making popular foods using old crop take village by storm

Cassava, an old neglected crop that is often remembered when all other crops fail, has gained new recognition and prominence among the residence of Tongwe village in Tanga region, Tanzania, who have discovered new ways of utilizing the crop that is adding new and more nutritious twists to their local menu.

The farmers are also earning a higher income from processing the crop into high quality cassava flour (HQCF), a versatile flour developed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) that can be used for baking and making confectionaries as a substitute for wheat.

They are mixing cassava and wheat flours to make popular foods such as cakes, chapati (round flat fried bread), and mandazi (small squarish donuts) that were previously made with wheat flour only. This has made them more affordable for the villagers.

Christine George, 29, makes chapati which she sells to school children and the local community. She says mixing cassava and wheat flour has increased her profit margin. The married mother of one who is also a cassava famer mixes the two in the ratio of one to three – one cup of wheat flour to three cups of the high quality cassava flour. She also adds eggs and margarine to make them tastier and more nutritious.

Mary Lipande, 59, also sells snacks to school children made from a mixture of cassava and wheat flour. She says with the money she is making she is able to help her husband meet the needs of the family including school fees for their two children in secondary school, clothing, adequate shelter and health care.

“Today, I do not wait for my husband to do everything. He only contributes,’ she says laughing.

They are both members of Wambato farmers group (Wakulima wa Mhogo Bagamoyo Tongwe ‘Cassava Farmers of Bagamoyo Tongwe’) that is involved in growing and processing cassava. The group has been a beneficiary of initiatives by the national roots and tuber research programme of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, Sokoine University of Agriculture and IITA’s Unleashing the Power of the Cassava in Africa (UPOCA), all in Tanzania.


According to Tabu Maghembe, the extension officer from the Ministry of Agriculture who trained Christine, Mary and their fellow group members on production of various products and recipes using the high quality cassava flour, people in the village now prefer the chapati and mandazi made from the composite flour which are tastier and more nutritious.

In 2009, under UPOCA, Maghembe was trained on the production of the high quality cassava flour and on products and recipes for the flour. A follow up training focussed on quality control and safety issues and on packaging and marketing. She faithfully passed on all the new knowledge to the group.

‘We were also trained how to make the cassava products more nutritious by adding soybean flour to provide protein. However, in Tongwa village, since we do not have the soybean, we substitute with eggs, milk and dried fish,” she said.

The group has a well equipped cassava processing centre constructed by Sokoine University of Agriculture in 2007 in response to the groups cry for lack of markets for their cassava. This in turn was a result of the rapid adoption of new high yielding cassava varieties introduced by the roots and tubers programme of the ministry of Agriculture as all the local varieties were under attack by the deadly cassava brown streak disease (CBSD).

According to John Msemo, the country manager for the UPOCA project in Tanzania, they were impressed by the group’s hard work and initiative and decided to continue to build their capacity from where the ministry and the university had left.

He says he is also happy with the way the group members have put into practice everything they have learnt. For instance, the group was now drying the grated cassava on raised racks and spread on polythene bags where as before they were drying them on the ground spread on palm mats risking contamination from dust and domestic animals.

The result today is a group whose members are enjoying a greatly improved standard of living from the good income made from the sale of high quality cassava flour to supermarkets and shops in Morogoro and Dar es Salaam as well as around the village.

Maghembe says before the trainings, the group was processing 500kgs of fresh cassava roots per month. But now as a result of improvement in the flour quality, better packaging, and marketing skills learnt, they are processing five to six tonnes per month and selling at 800 Tshs/kg (0.5USD).

UPoCA project funded by USAID is in response to the 2008 food crisis in Africa and promotes cassava as an engine for rural economic growth and improving livelihoods with spill over benefits to urban populations. It is being implemented in seven countries in Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.