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Irish Aid/IIED Learning Platform on Climate Change and Development, Limerick, 8-10 April 2014

Linking Smallholder F armers and Scientists for Food Security and Resilience to Climate C hange: the role of Participatory Plant Breeding. Irish Aid/IIED Learning Platform on Climate Change and Development, Limerick, 8-10 April 2014. Climate-Smart Agriculture.

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Irish Aid/IIED Learning Platform on Climate Change and Development, Limerick, 8-10 April 2014

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  1. Linking Smallholder Farmers and Scientists for Food Security and Resilience to Climate Change: the role of Participatory Plant Breeding Irish Aid/IIED Learning Platform on Climate Change and Development, Limerick, 8-10 April 2014

  2. Climate-Smart Agriculture • FAO (2010): Agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation), reduces/removes GHGs (mitigation), and enhances achievement of national food security and development goals. • DFID (2012): CSA helps: (i) Support the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and build prosperity, (ii) Produce the food farmers and consumers need, (iii) Improve people’s nutrition – especially that of women and children, (iv) Help farmers adapt to existing and future climate risks, (v) Sustain the health of the land and increase its productivity, (vi) Avoid the loss of forests and biodiversity, (vii) Store carbon in the soil and reduce emissions of greenhouse-gas from agriculture.

  3. Why link SHFs & scientists? • Locally specific knowledge of agriculture, landraces, climate-smart practices, plant breeding, climate change (observation & TK) complements science, eg: • Local ‘technicians’ in the Potato Park (Peru) collaborate with CIP to restore & monitor native potatoes and test them in the landscape(1460 varieties, CSA). • Local knowledge fills the resolution gap of climate models. • HOW? • Scientist-led, or Farmer-led • Increase SHF voice / policy dialogue (eg. citizen’s juries) • Practical collaboration on common goals (eg. plant breeding) • SHF funds to pay experts/scientists (eg. Prolinnova, IFAD)

  4. Mind the gap! • Industrialisation of agriculture and formal training for plant breeders has created a gap between breeders and farmers – this gap was exported to developing countries in the post-war era. • As breeders stopped interacting closely with farmers, concern for addressing farmers’ needs & constraints fell by the wayside. • The conventional one-size-fits-all package of new varieties and external inputs has been successful in more favourable areas, but hasoften failed to benefit small-scale farmers in marginal areas. • (Ceccarelliet al. 2009)

  5. Closing the gap • The basic aim of PPB & PVS is to ensure that crop research is relevant to farmers’ needs. • PPB involves close collaboration between scientific researchers and farmers as equal partners throughout the R&D cycle: identifying breeding objectives, selecting parent lines, breeding experimental materials, and evaluating these materials (this is known as participatory variety selection or PVS). • PVS is the selection of new crop varieties (or landraces) by farmers in their environments using their own criteria. It involves: identification of farmers’ needs, searching for suitable genetic material, and farmers’ experimentation with new crops on their fields.

  6. Emergence of PPB • PPB originated in the early 80s in response to criticisms of the failure of station-based research to address the needs of poor farmers in DCs. • Late 1970s, increasing evidence that post-GR “improved” varieties were failing to satisfy farmer requirements & being shunned. • By 2009: About 80 PPB progs worldwide. • A global review in 2000 concluded that PPB should be part of every breeding programme targeting small-scale farmers in difficult, high-risk environments (Ceccarelli et al 2009)

  7. PPB increases Resilience to Climate Change • Tailors crops to diverse local conditions & climates by testing on-farm. Avoids risk of useful lines being rejected due to poor performance on station (favourable) • Includes farmers’ own selection criteria - can increase yields where previous plant breeding has not (eg. barley in N.Africa & M.East; rice in Nepal closed the yield gap) • Enables use of robust landraces - highly resilient to drought, pests etc. (eg. maize landraces survived big spring drought, SW China; far more genetically diverse). • Provides a far larger gene pool (inc.in situ crop diversity) to develop “Climate-smart” crops (yield + resilience) • Enhances crop diversity, local knowledge, seed & innovationsystems – this offers a fundamental source of resilience to climate variability

  8. ...and resilience to socio-economic change • Increased profits from: co-ownership, higher yields, crop diversification, seed production/sale (eg. by 30% in SW China) • Empowerment of farmers, esp. women, due to recognition of the value of their knowledge & improved organisation. • Changed outlook of plant breeders & extension services, leading to improved support for poor farmers in policies and institutions. • PLUS: • Mitigation: Can revitalise traditional “climate smart” agriculture practices, reducing inorganic inputs & GHGs. • Improved cost-effectiveness due to high adoption rates (particularly with participation at an early stage) – and reduced costs eg. barley 5-28% cheaper (reduced time)

  9. Why crop diversity matters • 75% of crop diversity has been lost, largely due to the use of only a few commercial crop varieties (FAO) • “Modern agriculture is like a huge inverted pyramid – it rests on a precariously narrow base” (Vernooy, 2003) • It threatens the source of new genetic resources for plant breeding, and increases vulnerability to disease (eg. Banana fungus/ Potato famine) • Crop diversity reduces risk of crop failure & enables recovery & access to GRs (Swiderska 2011) • Landraces can be more resilient than modern varieties (higher genetic diversity than in gene banks) • Crop diversity & landraces/underutilised sp. can also improve nutrition and address hidden hunger.

  10. Maize PPB in Guangxi, SW China (CCAP) • PhD on impact of CIMMYT’s maize technology devt on poor farmers found separate & conflicting formal & farmer systems (Song, 1998) • In 2000, PPB started in harsh karst mountains – drought prone, poverty, food insecurity, declining maize diversity. • Results: Adaptation + Mitigation: • Bred 8 “climate-smart” maize varieties with 15-30% higher yields and increased drought and pest resistance. • Conserved 200 resilient landraces & improved 30 landraces. • Increased incomes by 30% due to higher yield, benefit-sharing & niche markets (provincial organic restaurant). • Revitalised traditional practices (duck-in-rice), & biogas circular agric, reducing inorganic inputs & GHGs. • Scaled up through extension services, provincial budget, GMRI, improved farmers’ rights (also in Vietnam & Nepal).

  11. ‘Success stories’ in Sub-Saharan Africa • PVS: • Improved bean varieties in E. Africa eg. Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi • New Rice for Africa/NERICA – based on productive Asian rice & adaptive African rice (WARDA countries) • Early maturing pearl millet in Namibia (from ICRISAT- India) • Improved maize & potato doubled crop production in Tigray Ethiopia – Irish Aid • PPB: • Beans in E. Ethiopia: improved yield, income, diversity, empowerment, skills. • Africa Maize Stress project, esp. drought, Zimbabwe & Kenya.

  12. Conclusions • Food security in heterogenous and risk prone areas (eg. drylands) requires demand-led solutions tailored to local needs & conditions. • PPB links SHF knowledge & science to optimise resilience, profits, empowerment, nutrition, biodiv. • PPB is often quicker than conventional breeding (2-4 years), due to fast adoption rates. • Millions are spent to develop climate resilient crops – yet resilient landraces/practices already exist. • But very little is invested in PPB – why?

  13. Irish Aid contributions to the CGIAR Year Amount in USD • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008 • 2007 • 2006 • 1972-2005 • 5.3 million • 2.6 million • 11.1 million • 9.7 million 9.4 million • 8.2 million • 5.0 million • 25.1 million

  14. What are the obstacles to PPB? • Revenues can be limited due to difficulty for farmers to register new varieties, and time to develop them. • Income generation is needed from the start, and facilitation (social scientists). • Few professional breeders accept that farmers can be full partners in a PP programme. PPB promoted by anti-establishment NGOs. • Scaling up PPB requires making breeding institutions accountable to poor farmers as clients – a tenacious obstacle (incentives/ vested interests). • Sustained investment in PPB (10 yrs +) can bring transformative change to address needs of SHFs.

  15. CCAFS article on rice PPB in Nepal (Vermeulen, Head of Science, 2012) • “The advantages of farmer-led breeding for climate change adaptation are plentiful. The 8-10 cultivars a typical Nepali hill farmer cultivates offer a fundamental source of resilience to climate variability. Local and scientific knowledge can combine to track climate trends and select traits with considerable sensitivity and quick response times”.

  16. PPB PVS • Use of local crop varieties which enhance participation & use of local knowledge (conservation incentives) • SHF are co-owners of new materials • Better tailoring to local needs & adoption rates • Strong empowerment & institutional change • Tends not to use local varieties • SHF are not co-owners • Less participation in technology development

  17. THANK –YOU! • Krystyna.swiderska@iied.org

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