New high-yielding varieties are helping to fight hunger, poverty and malnutrition.
 

Faba bean in Sudan: new varieties have increased farmers’ profits by seventeen percent.

Nutrition experts, economists, policy makers, all have their own definitions of the term ‘food security’. But for millions of families in Africa, food security simply means being able to grow, or buy, enough food year-round. ICARDA’s work is targeted at these families. The Center and its partners in Africa have developed a range of new farming technologies for poor subsistence farmers. Have these technologies made a difference to food security and livelihoods? Yes. Can this difference be measured? Again, yes.

Ahmed Mazid has been in the measuring business for 25 years. As an agricultural economist at ICARDA, he tracks the adoption of new technologies, quantifying the benefits in hard numbers. He led one such study in Africa, to measure the impacts of an ICARDA research project that covered three countries — Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan — and multiple crops including wheat and faba bean. The study was conducted jointly with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research in Addis Ababa, the Agricultural Research Center in Cairo, Egypt, and the Agricultural Economic and Policy Research Center in Khartoum, Sudan.

“We interviewed 850 households in three countries,” says Dr Mazid. “We collected data not only on crop yields and adoption rates, but also on household budgets, local institutions, and farmers’ perspectives of the new technologies. With such a large and diverse sample, we now have a much better idea of what factors help or hinder the dissemination of new technology.”.
 

The project, the people

The technologies assessed in this study were developed, tested and promoted by ICARDA and numerous partner organizations in the Nile Valley region. A series of research projects, beginning in the mid 1970s, focused on specific problems such as drought, heat and insect pests, with extremely successful results.  In 2003, the International Fund for Agricultural Development provided funding for a major new project. The aim was to directly target food security and livelihoods by consolidating previous research into technology ‘packages’ for different crops and farming systems.

The 3-year project, and the subsequent impact study, focused largely on wheat and faba bean. Both crops are crucial for food security and nutrition. Wheat is a major food staple in all three countries. Faba bean is the most important source of dietary protein, eaten by most households every day.

The project introduced 16 new high-yielding crop varieties: eight varieties of faba bean (three each in Egypt and Sudan, two in Ethiopia) and eight varieties of wheat, three in Egypt, and five in Sudan. Each variety came with a crop management ‘package’: tillage method, planting date, seeding rate, fertilizer application rate, weed and pest control methods, irrigation schedule.
 

Eat more, sell more

Research pays: measurable improvements in food security, nutrition and income of the poorest families.

“We knew the varieties were good,” says Dr Mazid. “But the impact data were even better than expected.” In Ethiopia, farmers who adopted the new faba bean varieties produced more than double the food that non-adopters did: 113 kg per capita, compared to 47 kg. In Sudan and Egypt, per capita wheat yields doubled: from 164 kg to 322 kg in Sudan, 537 kg to 1219 kg in Egypt.

Food consumption increased by at least 27% in every household, and by 80% in some cases. For example, in households that grew the new varieties, consumption of faba bean — a major source of protein — was more than twice the national average.

Farmers also had larger surpluses for sale. The team measured the net return on investment: how much money did the farmer make, after accounting for all costs? Adopters earned significantly higher net returns than non-adopters:

• Egypt, wheat: $1190 per hectare, 43% more than non-adopters
• Egypt, faba bean: $962 per hectare, 17% more
• Sudan, wheat: $510 per hectare, 280% more
• Sudan, faba bean: $164 per hectare, 52% more
• Ethiopia, faba bean: $180 per hectare, 55% more than non-adopters.

Fighting poverty

“All three countries have very high levels of rural poverty,” says Dr Mazid. “So it was important to measure the impact of the research program on poverty.”

The 850 households were classified into three groups: below the poverty line (per capita income less than a dollar a day), within a ‘poverty band’ ($1 to 1.20), and above the poverty line (above $1.20). By adopting the new technologies, a significant percentage of households moved up at least one ‘income class’. Using faba bean as an example:

• In Ethiopia, 3% of adopter households moved up at least one income class, while all non-adopters remained in the lowest class.
• In Sudan, 12% of adopters rose from the poorest to the middle category.
• In Egypt, 21% of adopter households were in the poorest class, compared to 35% of non-adopter households.

Lessons for the future

Why were the impacts so huge? “Good science, good partners, and good planning,” says Dr Kamil Shideed, ICARDA’s Assistant Director General. “ICARDA worked with a number of strong national institutions. Technologies were tested rigorously for several years. Once they were proven, we moved to a 3-year dissemination phase, clearly focused on ‘packaging’ and promoting these technologies. Most important, farm communities were closely involved in the project, so the technologies spread quickly from farmer to farmer, and community to community.”

Clearly, research by ICARDA and its partners has led to substantial improvements in crop productivity and food security. It has also had a direct, visible impact on poverty in three of Africa’s most populous countries. This impact study was conducted at a relatively early stage in the ‘adoption curve’. The new varieties are still spreading, farmers are still experimenting with different components of the supporting crop management packages. A few years from now, the impacts will be even greater.

For more information, contact Dr Ahmed Mazid (A.Mazid@cgiar.org), agricultural economist at ICARDA.