Photo credit: Terra-i

 

Deforestation has many drivers but one is often overlooked: food consumption in cities that increases demand for products produced on deforested land. To be successful, tropical countries’ zero-deforestation policies need to address changing urban food demands

Reducing rates of deforestation in the tropics is a complex puzzle, and we appear to be missing a few of its pieces, considering deforestation continues to progress at an unsustainable rate. Strategies to reduce deforestation have long recognized the importance of industrial agriculture oriented toward consumption at the global scale. As a result, globally consumed export commodities are flagged as key drivers of deforestation, leading to the proliferation of global initiatives, voluntary zero-deforestation agreements, and certifications and incentives at the international level. While important, agricultural exports globally account for slightly less than 20% of total production, with domestic consumption making up the balance, which leads us to believe that one piece of the puzzle is likely linked with small and medium agriculture production and shifting domestic consumption patterns.

Across Latin America, diets have changed significantly over the past decades as economies and incomes increased and consumers sought convenient foods better suited to their modern lifestyles (Quintero-Lesmes & Herran, 2019). Countries such as Colombia, Ecuador and Peru follow these same trends with increasing shifts towards processed foods, which is reflected in changing production systems – often those located at the agricultural frontier.

Unlike the case of export food chains with high-visibility zero-deforestation commitments from branded companies, there are few instruments available to reduce deforestation attributed to small and medium producers focused on the domestic market. Largely this is the result of public policies that have overlooked and ultimately abandoned these producers. In Peru, for example, a recent study (under review) reported low correlations between deforestation and the production of export agricultural commodities, such as cacao and coffee (Castro-Nunez et al., 2020). Increased production on forest margins of palm oil and short-cycle fruits and crops, such as maize for the poultry industry, for example, is driven by demand in urban centers. In turn, these demands reflect changes in diets in terms of processed food, fruit and poultry consumption, all of which have increased substantially in Peru over the last decade due to rising incomes.

As economies in developing countries grow, increased economic opportunities in cities lead to urban migration and population growth, subsequently increasing urban demand for agricultural products, which has been linked with increasing tropical deforestation, particularly in Asia and Latin America. For example, DeFries et al. (2010) identified urban markets in developing countries and export markets in both developing and developed ones as demand sources for deforestation. Despite this linkage, most work has focused nearly exclusively on global export markets as deforestation drivers ignoring or underplaying the importance of domestic diet shifts and consumption patterns.

The assumption that subsistence low-opportunity cost agriculture is one of the major drivers of tropical deforestation is becoming less valid over time. Research suggests that small-scale subsistence farmers with little connection to markets deforest less, highlighting the importance of commercial market demand as an underlying cause of deforestation (DeFries et al., 2010). Some of these linkages are direct (e.g., expansion of ranching activities for dairy or beef production), while others are indirect (e.g., growing maize production for poultry feed or palm oil for snack foods). Nonetheless, both respond to increasing incomes in urban areas that in turn support higher calorie consumption, increased reliance on processed and prepared foods and the adoption of less diverse dietary patterns by all social strata.

Despite the reported parallel changes in diets and production systems, little has been done to understand the relationship between shifting consumption patterns and land-use change and even less has been done to develop policies to incentivize sustainable land use through shifts in consumer behavior in tropical countries. Thus, a key component to reducing deforestation may lie at understanding the nexus of land and food systems. There is a need to better understand the relationship between production and dietary shifts and to incorporate this knowledge into developing and promoting deforestation-free food policies and diets that could simultaneously contribute to climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation and green economic recovery post-pandemic.

Furthermore, given the current COVID-19 crisis, the short-term development priorities of both developing and developed countries will be largely related to food production, job creation, and economic reconstruction. In the wake of the crisis, many city residents are returning to their home districts to subsist through farming, and we will likely see a migration of workers to agricultural frontiers in search of income opportunities.

The situation generated by COVID-19 provides an opportunity to define the type of food systems that we would like to see in the future and that can contribute to reducing deforestation. According to Hepburn et al. (2020), and considering the rescue packages in relation to COVID-19 in G20 countries, only 4% of policies are ‘green’, while 92% are ‘colorless’, meaning that they maintain the status quo, and 4% are ‘brown’ and likely to increase net GHG emissions. A sustainable food systems lens has the potential to inform the discussion in relation to how investments should be prioritized for a more sustainable world.

Existing land-based policy approaches, and incentives and market-based approaches, need to be complemented with policies targeting both domestic agriculture and globally traded commodities. To do so, researchers and policymakers must use a sustainable food systems lens to develop and promote policy approaches that support sustainable low-deforestation food production systems via incentivizing sustainable, inclusive, and healthy consumption patterns

Figure 1 represents the different financial and market-based approaches that have been implemented alongside land-based approaches to address tropical deforestation associated with both subsistence and globally traded commercial agriculture. Missing from these are approaches based on the understanding that developing countries’ consumption patterns and diets deal with deforestation associated with small and medium farmers linked with domestic markets. Such initiatives must be employed concertedly while engaging national, international, and public and private sector actors to effectively address deforestation in tropical countries.

Read more about the Alliance’s response to COVID-19 impacts on global food systems

Castro-Nunez, A.; Bax, V.; Ganzenmuller, R.; Francesconi, W. (under review). Emerging scenarios on the role of supply chain initiatives in reducing deforestation: evidence from Peru. Manuscript submitted for publication.

DeFries, R.; Rudel, T.; Uriarte, M. et al. (2010). Deforestation driven by urban population growth and agricultural trade in the twenty-first century. Nature Geosci 3, 178–181. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo756

Hepburn C.; O’Callaghan B.; Stern N.; Stiglitz J.; Zenghelis D. (2020). Will COVID-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on climate change? Forthcoming in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy 36(S1).

Quintero-Lesmes, D.C.; Herran, O.F. (2019). Food changes and geography: Dietary transition in Colombia. Annals of Global Health, 85(1).

Javier Gereda, Genetic Resources Program researcher, in one of his activities for bean seed regeneration, along with his colleague Yeferson Hernández.

Making sure that the collections of beans, cassava, bananas, and forages remain alive, even during the quarantine, is an essential job of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT in order to preserve the world’s biodiversity and food safety. From its work sites in laboratories, greenhouses, and experimental fields in Palmira, Colombia, and at the University of Louvain, in Belgium, Mónica, Melissa, Madelyn, Ramiro, Javier, Jair, Wilmer, Vincent, and Bart tell us about their experience in which they take on with equal responsibility the preventive measures established by the health authorities of their countries and those of our own organization. Their mission during the confinement is to safeguard the patrimony of more than 150 nations of the world that have entrusted the Alliance with one of their most precious treasures, their seeds.

Multiplying the patrimony of a nation

“It is something that is unique. It is a bean grown without soil, only in water; it is a hydroponic bean. We are starting, but we have already established it,” says the researcher, Javier Gereda, with pride. His routine in the area of bean seed regeneration of the Genetic Resources Program, in the headquarters of the Alliance in Palmira, has not changed. But since the quarantine started, the responsibility to maintain these collections alive in the field falls on his shoulders and on the shoulders of eleven other coworkers, who are at the off-site experimental stations.

In addition to the care of this type of bean that has no sanitary problems caused by the soil, Javier must take care that the seeds they were given to multiply in the field carry on their normal trajectory of growth. There are a couple of species of bean that also merit special care and attention. They are the Phaseolus hygrophilus and Phaseolus albicarminus, of which there is now no trace in the country where they were collected, Costa Rica. “To lose a variety is to lose the patrimony of a country,” says the researcher.

The researcher Ramiro Sabogal is Javier’s coworker and he has been very active since the quarantine began. There was even a weekend when he was responsible for all the fields of genetic resources. One of his jobs is visiting the growth chambers to water the accessions of beans that are in “intensive care.”

Meanwhile, Javier must also make the rounds of the Alliance’s five seed regeneration stations, coordinating the basic work of maintaining the crops: watering, pruning, fertilization, and even harvesting. The work cannot stop because the commitment to multiply the 120 seeds that they were given for each accession or variety and produce 1,800 fresh seeds from them was not modified by the quarantine.

Behind the scenes in the safekeeping of the primary sources

Mónica Vélez and Melissa Correa, research assistants, worked out weekly shifts to monitor the in vitro laboratory of cassava and their greenhouses. In the solitude of the laboratory, these young researchers walk the aisles of the sultry room lit with powerful white lights, under which are prominently displayed the names of the 28 countries from which the genetic material came in order to be conserved.

They check whether the cassava plants kept in test tubes are growing well, whether they have started to age, whether their leaves are turning yellow, and whether it is necessary to take them to the planting area to multiply them in fresh media, and thus give them a new opportunity for life while, at the same time, guaranteeing the conservation of the materials over the long term.

Outside, in the greenhouse, we find the back-up copy kept under growth restriction, in a system called the Bonsai collection. There the goal is to keep insects, mites, or any other pest from attacking the plants, because it has taken a long time to establish them. Of course the plants must be watered and the weeds must be controlled as well.

“If these primary sources were to be lost, we would have serious problems. The food for today and for the future depends on keeping these plants safe,” says Monica, who is confident that everything will soon return to normal and the complete work team will return to continue carrying out the task of conserving the more than six thousand accessions of cassava that are in safekeeping in this bank.

Mapping the way to Svalbard

When they have a specific job to carry out jointly, Jair Bolívar and Wilmer Ávila come to the field, but they understand very clearly that they must avoid crossing paths in these times of social distancing. They go their separate ways, and they know what they must do to keep the forage standing, the fodder that serves to feed livestock and that contributes to the reduction of environmental impacts.

Concentrating on each flower, Jair is harvesting the seed of a variety known as Stylosanthes, with no more tools than his own hands. Jair keeps the seeds in small cloth bags, labels them, and will keep them until the obligatory confinement has ended and his coworkers from the Genetic Resources bank come back to continue the exacting chain of conservation that will make it possible for these seeds to make their way to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, very close to the North Pole.

Jair and Wilmer are also in charge of pruning, watering, and fumigating the grasses and legumes that grow in the middle of the solitude of this 500-hectare campus.

“I am very happy to be contributing to the program at this time,” says the field worker, and, conscious of his tremendous responsibility, Jair is emphatic in pointing out: “we are prepared to not let this patrimony die.”

Peter Wenzl, leader of the Genetic Resources Program in Palmira, coordinates all the activities that were scheduled for the period of quarantine, supported by his team of more than 80 people, most of whom are working remotely.

For the future of a unique collection

The International Musa Germplasm Transit Centre houses the world’s largest collection of banana germplasm: more than 1,500 accessions of edible and wild species of banana are conserved in vitro. At the University of Louvain, in Belgium, Madelyn Ibana, Vincent Fichefet, and four other colleagues take turns carrying out the essential activities in the laboratory, which, if they were not done, would put the valuable germplasm at risk or even delay the research for several years.

Madelyn goes in once a week, for reasons of safety. Among her tasks and those of Vincent, her coworker on the shift, are the preparation of planting media, the selection of material for multiplication, and the visual check of all the materials, to determine the presence of microbial contamination and discard the ones that are contaminated.

“I am conscious of the fact that continuous follow-up in our laboratory is a crucial aspect for the future of the banana collection. We cannot ignore it,” says Madelyn, who must also record the activities performed during the day to make sure that they are documented in a complete data base.

The banana “working” collection is conserved in vitro under conditions of slow growth at 16°C. For safety, samples are frozen for the long term in cryotanks at -196°C, the temperature of liquid nitrogen, in a process called cryopreservation.

“For example, the screening and regular filling of the cryotanks with liquid nitrogen is essential, as well as the in vitro maintenance of the banana accessions that have not yet been cryopreserved (30%). In theory, we could rely on almost 70% of the banana germplasm that has been cryoconserved, but if we have to reestablish all our in vitro cultures from cryoconserved material, it would take years for the germplasm to be available to send to our users. That is the reason why, at this time, we Ines Van den Hhouwe, the banana germplasm curator, and me have decided to maintain the stock of plants in the cold chamber at a minimum (but essential) level,” says Bart Panis, cryopreservation specialist a scientist and conservation team leader of the Alliance., who is at the forefront of the laboratory.

The researcher tells us the weighty reason for which the vice rector of the University of Louvain allowed them to continue the basic activities in the laboratory: “because it is the global banana collection. The motivation of this work team at this time ensures the collection of material for future generations.”

They are stored in the Alliance genebanks in Palmira and Leuven

Children at Simon and Sylvia’s dairy farm in Meru, Kenya, drinking milk. (Photo: Georgina Smith).

Written by Georgina Smith and Rosemary Nzuki.

When Simon and Sylvia Kiruja started their farm three years ago, they never imagined it would get so big they would need a bigger plot. Their 3 cows used to bring them 7 litres of milk a day. Today, their 45 cows deliver more than 250 litres daily, contributing around US$1,700 monthly depending on the season, to the Kirujas’ income.

Their farm, nestled in Meru, on the North-Eastern slopes of Mount Kenya, is typical for many dairy farmers in the region, where rolling tea farms spread their emerald-green carpet. But tea, coffee and vegetables do not fetch the kind of prices they used to, and so farmers are looking for alternatives.

“We have really managed to improve our income and livelihood,” said Kiruja, taking a look at the condition of Arsenal, a heifer weighing 568 kg. Every month, she is weighed, checked by the vet, and fed a steady meal of Brachiaria – a drought-resilient fodder grass high in protein which also sinks carbon in the soil – mixed with maize silage, sweet potato leaves and protein concentrate depending on the time of day.

The Kirujas are among those small-scale farmers driving a growing trend in Meru county: intensive milk production. Their efforts to learn as much as possible about new farming techniques and technology as dairy entrepreneurs are starting to pay off.

Tapping Kenya’s dairy potential

Milk accounts for 8% of Kenya’s GDP, making it an important player in the government’s Big Four Agenda – the country’s 2030 vision to boost manufacturing, achieve universal health coverage, food security and affordable housing.

But farmers like the Karujas face a plethora of hurdles to earning big. Among them are the high costs of production – with feed taking the lion’s share of investment mainly due to lack of land – with lack of credit access, information, training or storage facilities all contributing.

Dorcas Kigetu, Meru Dairy Union coordinator, says few members have yet to adopt new and improved Brachiara and Panicum forages, which could improve feed quality and cut back on production costs, she notes.

Climate change is also playing havoc with traditional weather patterns, bringing flooding and more heavy rains – even during this last dry season. The price: increased disease pressure on livestock, especially those bred and kept in restricted plots.

Tackling threats

The county currently produces 200 million litres per year of milk – above the national average – valued at US$99 million. With the right support, that number could reach 350 million litres annually.

Efforts are underway to address hurdles to dairy farming. The Government of Kenya has just unveiled plans for a US$2.5 million cooling plant in Meru by October 2020, to hold 100,000 litres of milk, allowing farmers to store it and fetch potentially higher prices.

Cooperatives have also proved successful in helping farmers navigate complex markets. The Kirujas are among 73,000 members of the Meru Dairy Cooperative Union, a powerful group with its own milk brand, Mount Kenya Milk, owned and run by farmers.

The union collects, processes and sells milk on behalf of farmers – currently 253,000 litres daily. It also trains members, providing information about how to manage animals to increase production, improve protein content in milk or reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cattle.

Kenneth Ndengwa, Chief Executive Officer of the union, explains that, in this way, farmers are in control of the market. “As a union, our main purpose is not to only process and sell milk, but to make sure that farmers are benefiting,” he said.

Entrepreneurs drive change

 Working with the union, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) (now part of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT), Netherlands Development Organisation SNV, the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), and the Feeds and Forages Flagship Program of the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock have tested grasses including Brachiaria varieties Mulato II, Cayman, Cobra and Panicum to plug feed gaps.

Demand is clear: demonstration plots at cooperative milk drop-off points have increased from 15 in 2018 to 50 in 2020, reaching around 30,000 farmers across Meru county, with others coming from as far as Kericho and Bomet counties – a six-to-eight-hour drive away.

Fredrick Muthomi, a CIAT consultant on improved forages, has been working closely with farmers at field days and on training programmes. He reports that some can get 1–2 litres of milk extra daily from their cows, feeding them the new grasses – sometimes overnight.

“The grasses have better nutrition, so farmers are also able to save on cost of concentrate, which can go back into the cost of production, while maintaining high production for the animals,” said Muthomi.

As a young entrepreneur and farmer himself, he sees vast potential in the dairy sector. “There is now a lot of private sector engagement. With the right skills, you can make your own money from your own business, rather than relying on employment.”

Birthe Paul, a farming systems scientist at CIAT, said: “We are now exploring how better grasses can make livestock farming more sustainable and resilient, asking how much carbon forages can sink in farmers’ soils, and how they can help adapt to future climate change.”

Working with farmers like the Karujas, researchers expect to be able to reach many more entrepreneurs in similar conditions, with the aim of helping them transform their lives.

Unlike humans, cows have the ability to convert grass into foods of high nutritional value such as meat and milk. This is because one of their stomachs, rumen, is responsible for the fermentation process that converts pasture into milk precursors. However, other by-products such as methane (CH₄) gas is also generated, emitted into the atmosphere primarily through the cows’ belching, and contributes to climate change.

The answer is yes, it is indeed possible. In the last 20 years, ecologists, zootechnicians and agronomists have joined forces to better understand the relationships between plants, animals and the environment. The understanding of grazing, a process that originates from an act that seems simple but is not, that of the cow catching a bite of grass, has important implications in animal daily productivity and consequently in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

In one day, a cow can eat between 25,000 and 30,000 morsels of grass. What do the differences in these amounts depend on? They will depend on how accessible the grass is to them. For instance, the height of the grass could make a difference. Accordingly, a doctoral thesis conducted by Alejandra Marín, from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and with support of the CIAT Tropical Forages team, looks at whether there is an optimal height of grass that would allow cows to consume better quality grass in less time while producing less CH₄.

To do this analysis, they evaluated five different heights of Kikuyo grass (Cenchrus clandestinus, Hochst. Ex Chiov), which is commonly used pasture in Colombia’s dairy production. They looked at heights of 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 centimeters by observing dairy cows that grazed in short grazing sessions repeated at different times of the day within a set time period.

They measured how quickly the cows consumed grass at those different heights, the quality of the grass at those different heights, and modeled the production of CH₄ and propionate (also called propionic acid, one of the precursors of milk production).

The in vitro gas production technique is a lab technique that recreates the ruminal fermentation process or bovines. It is a solid tool to estimate the methane output and other end products of (bovine in vitro) ruminal fermentation for a large range of forages and diets.

Herbage sampling of the top stratum of kikuyu grass, a highly productive pasture species that is well adapted to the forage-based dairy systems and widely used in Latin America, Australia, and Africa.

Gas measurement using a pressure transducer connected to digital wide-range manometer and a 60 mL syringe through three-way valve.

Laboratory facilities

In vitro incubations were conducted at the Forage Quality and Animal Nutrition Laboratory (certified by the FAO-IAG proficiency test of feed constituents 2017 including in vitro gas production) and Greenhouse Gas Laboratory facilities at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) located in the Valle del Cauca department, Colombia.

What did they measure?

The gas production (GP) and the in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD), as well as the end products of in vitro ruminal fermentation like CH₄ output, expressed per unit of dry matter digested (ml /g IVDMD) and VFA (the acetate, propionate, and butyrate proportions) were measured at 24 and 48 hours.

What were the results?

Gas production (GP) and in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD) were high and positively correlated and the IVDMD was negative correlated with sward height (SH) of kikuyu grass. It is widely accepted that the higher GP, the higher the IVDMD. Although, variations in the chemical composition are closely related to the sward height It is worth highlighting the relationship between digestibility and SH.

In other words, we found that in 20 centimeters the cows consumed larger bites, and therefore of better quality in less time. That is to say, they were more efficient consuming grass comparatively with the cows they ate at the height of 10 and 30 centimeters. At 20 centimeters, also produced more propionate and less CH₄ at that height compared to the height of 30 centimeters. These findings are important to aid decision making on the optimal sward height of the kikuyu grass for being grazing by animals in order to reduce in vitro CH₄ production.

The research outcomes are gaining attention

Final round of the 3MT Contest, who Alejandra won the first place. Source: YouTube.

On December 2, 2019, Alejandra presented her thesis at the 3MT National Contest, a contest designed to present the doctoral thesis in three minutes. This competition celebrates the findings and results obtained by students and research graduates, and promotes their skills to communicate the importance of their research to a non-specialized public. In such a short time, Alejandra presented to the jury her research and was selected as the winner of the contest. Read the story on the University’s website (In Spanish).

Preliminary results also were published as an Info Note in the context of the Project LivestockPlus, of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), both in English and Spanish. Also, Alejandra defended her Ph.D. thesis on December 20 of 2019 at the National University of Colombia in Medellín, and the study will be submitted for peer review to a scientific journal.

This study was undertaken as part of the LivestockPlus project and CLIFF program funded by CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is a strategic partnership of CGIAR and Future Earth. In addition, this work was also done as part of the Livestock CRP.

Jorge Mario Díaz, CEO at Agrosavia; Ruben Echeverría, Director General at CIAT; and Juan Lucas Restrepo, Director General at Bioversity International and designated Director of the Bioversity-CIAT Alliance, who signed the cooperation agreement seeking to create synergies with the strengths and complementarities of the three entities.

Research projects on plantain, banana, cocoa, pastures, restoration, circular farming, and Future Seeds are some of the initiatives that will set Agrosavia and the Bioversity-CIAT Alliance in motion with the cooperation agreement signed by both entities.

According to Juan Lucas Restrepo, Director of Bioversity International and designated Director of the Bioversity-CIAT Alliance, “this agreement seeks to formulate and implement research, development, and innovation projects with a high impact on the Colombian agricultural sector, generating synergies with the strengths and complementarities of the three entities.”

Restrepo spoke highly of this first agreement signed by the Alliance with a national institution in Latin America and the Caribbean. “Agrosavia has an enormous scientific and technical strength, as well as a very strong relationship with institutions and farmers, which allows it to mobilize and promote what is referred to as a technical change in agriculture. Our coverage is more regional and global, we have scientific knowledge networks that we want to pass on to Agrosavia and, on a reciprocal basis, we would like to learn from their high capacities to be able to achieve our global mandate and have a better impact with our work in other regions”.

One of the key collaboration areas of this agreement is on Musaceae, responding to a major challenge facing the region, with the arrival of Fusarium R4T, which includes data collection, analysis, and processing for the establishment of an early warning network and epidemiological studies on Fusarium R4T in Musaceae species, as well as strengthening plantain and banana seed production programs with a good sanitary, genetic, and physiological quality for smallholders in Colombia. 

 

The action lines of the new agreement include the assessment of plantain and banana crop performance in the presence of Tropical Fusarium oxisporum R4T and the strengthening of plantain and banana seed production with good sanitary, genetic, and physiological quality.

“We want to provide an immediate answer to the underlying issue facing Latin America with the confirmation of the presence of Fusarium R4T. Through the strategy we are designing together and combining the different capacities we have, we are going to be able to provide a science-based response to this threat,” declared Jorge Mario Díaz, Executive Director at Agrosavia.

Other research areas relate to the strengthening of the cocoa supply chain, as well as restoration and bioremediation, under the frame of the National Ecological Restoration, Rehabilitation, and Degraded Land Restoration Plan of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Furthermore, Future Seeds includes research on phytosanitary diagnosis of seeds; temporary storage space for plant material in specialized rooms with temperatures ranging between -18 and 28°C; research regarding seed quality tests; the use of genomic technologies for the characterization of genetic resources; software platforms to manage data in genebanks; the use of the genetic diversity of crops and promoting options based on diversity as alternatives to chemical inputs.

Regarding circular farming, we aim at the optimization and use of biomass, the large-scale production of fertilizers such as compost from organic or secondary raw materials, in accordance with the circular farming model, transforming waste into nutrients for crops. Finally, we will continue conducting joint research on the improvement of pastures and fodder with an emphasis on beef and milk.

The agreement signed will run for five years.

A Colombian researcher is to be awarded with the Young Scientist recognition of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF) and the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS).

The prize is to be awarded to Jacobo Arango, environmental biologist of the Tropical Forages Program at CIAT, in recognition of his outstanding scientific career and his contributions to developments on Tropical Forages, as well as his role in mitigating greenhouse gases to combat climate change and improve the lives of millions of smallholders around the world.

The Prize, awarded for the thirteenth time, seeks to increase the motivation of young scientists making a contribution to research and development in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and related industries in developing countries.

Jacobo Arango is one of the leading authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and he is contributing to draft the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), more specifically, regarding mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals.

The award ceremony will take place next Tuesday, November 26, at the Tsukuba International Congress Center in Tsukuba, Japan.

Each year, the Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Research Council (AFFRC) selects three young scientists, who have demonstrated outstanding research achievements leading to future technological innovation, to present them with the award.

In addition to Arango, the award will be granted to: MAI Thi Ngan from the National Agricultural University of Vietnam and Rebijith Kayattukandy Balan from the Plant Health and Environment Laboratory at the Ministry for Primary Industries of New Zealand.

The prizewinners are young scientists from developing countries who have demonstrated an outstanding performance in research and development in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, or related industries.

Bernard Gitobu in his grass farm

Bernard Gitobu spent most of his life working in bank, but deep down his heart, he knew he would retire into farming. After all, his parents were farmers.

Upon retiring from work, Bernard went ahead to set up his farm in Kithoka location of North Imenti Sub County, Meru County in Kenya. In 2015, he then ventured into dairy farming and joined Kithoka Dairy farmers’ Co-operative Society, an affiliate of Mount Kenya Milk.

He recalls the day the manager of the co-operative shared the news that he was one of the farmers selected to attend a Dairy Management course at Baraka Farm in Eldoret, a program sponsored by SNV Kenya. The team spent a whole week under the tutelage of Mr. Kennedy Kisa, who trained them on dairy management, forages, calf rearing, and silage production.

Shortly after the training, Bernard was introduced to Mr. Fredrick Muthomi, an agronomist from the the Improved Brachiaria and Panicum Forages for Increased Livestock Production, a joint project by  the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) in Kenya. Following their close interactions, Bernard decided to try his hands on grass. He was among the first farmers to receive free seedlings from the project, and Muthomi joined him on his farm, where they planted different types of Brachiaria to serve as a demonstration plot for other farmers. Among the forages established were four Brachiaria cultivars (Brachiaria cv Xaraes, cv Piata, cv Basilisk, cv MG4) and three Panicum cultivars (Panicum cv Mombasa, cv Tanzania, cv Maasai).

To his delight, Bernard noticed that the Brachiaria cv. Xaraes and B. Piata varieties grew much faster compared to the other two cultivars and Panicum cv. Mombasa and Tanzania varieties. With this observation, he decided to multiply the forages using splits. His decision paid off very well. He says, “We established the plots on 14 August 2018, and to date I have already harvested the grass four times, and bear in mind this was a drought period in Meru County.”

After the first two harvests, Bernard was so impressed with the performance of the forages that he bought the subsidized retail packs provided by CIAT to expand his forage landscape. He established Brachiaria hybrids (Brachiaria cv. Mulato II, cv Cayman, cv Cobra) in a nursery bed, which he transplanted afterwards.

Prior to this project, Bernard was feeding his cows on Boma Rhodes, and the milk production from his cows was about nine liters per cow. After introducing the Brachiaria grass to their feed, he noticed a significant increase with each cow yielding about 20 liters per day.

“In addition, I also noticed that the milk is not watery as it was before, it is now denser,” he says.

Currently, Bernard has a total of 11 cows and with each liter retailing for K sh. 34 (USD 3.4), giving him an income of about K sh. 150,000 (USD 1,500) per month.

Bernard also noticed that his cost of feeding the cows reduced by approximately 20% – 30% now that he does not have to rely on buying much of the cattle feeds.

“My wife is very happy because when I sell the milk, I give her some money, the bigger share in fact, and she is able to purchase items for the house. She is a teacher at Meru High school so for her this is like a bonus.”

At 64 years, Bernard has four children (three boys and one girl) between the ages or 25 and 35 years. He lives a comfortable life. Before venturing into dairy farming, he was practicing horticulture for sale but he has since realized cows do better.

“Cows have a more steady income. I am happy that CIAT and SNV supplied me with free seeds. I bought a few to increase my stock but now I am happy after transplanting, and it is doing very well.”

“Currently, I have planted grass on four acres of land but I want to plant more on another parcel of land that is 8 acres,” he adds.

Frederick Muthomi in Red shares some  insights with  Bernard on his farm

Fred from CIAT/SNV can attest to Bernard’s good fortune with grass. “Last year there was severe drought in Meru that spilled over to this year and as I was looking for grass to show case at the annual farmers’ field day this year, there was none. However, I found Bernard’s grass, which was doing very well because he had faithfully been watering it. It was the best compared to other farmers’ fields and I used it to demonstrate the potential the grass has to other farmers,” he says.

For a farmer doing so well with grass, I asked Bernard if he was selling some of the harvested grass. “I do not sell any grass. I keep the grass because it is not even enough for my cows. But I plan to sell once I invest in the additional 8 acres sometime next year,” he says.

He is an avid advocate of planting grass and says, “I am an official at Kithoka dairy so I invite other members to see how well my grass is doing. In fact, we held a demonstration day on my farm earlier this year.”

When asked to give a word of advice to potential dairy farmers, Bernard says, “Brachiaria is very good feed for animals because of its protein content. The cows respond well to it by giving milk in increased quantity and of good quality.”

Rachel talks with Uwe Ohmstedt from CIAT about the performance of the cultivars on her plots.

“I had a bad experience when I ordered some grass seeds that were being advertised on Facebook.  What I got was a mix of Mulato and some unidentified variety that did not do well at all on my plot. Frustrated, I decided to uproot the grass.”

This was Rachel Kinyua’s experience before she met the team from the Piloting of Improved Brachiaria and Panicum Forages for Increased Livestock Production – a joint project between the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) in Kenya. She recalls being duped on Facebook in her quest for quality grass for her cows, but it also turned out to be the beginning of success for Rachel.

She is one of the successful farmers in Meru County who has been working with the CIAT–SNV project since March 2018, planting CIAT-improved forages, which are high yielding, more palatable and nutritious, and have shown to respond better to biotic and abiotic stresses and to improve livestock productivity of milk and meat.

A mother of two, she grew up in a family that practiced subsistence farming. When she got married, she decided to delve into vegetable farming but the returns were not good enough. In 2016, she decided to pursue dairy farming and realized the returns were much better than the vegetable venture.

Soon after the bad experience, Rachel started working with Fredrick Muthomi, an agronomist from the project, and was among the farmers who received free seeds for testing. Hungry to get more from her dairy farming venture, she chose to plant several types of grasses: improved Kikuyu grass, Panicum, Brachiaria, and forage legume Desmodium varieties. During the commencement of the improved forages project, a team of CIAT and SNV led by CIAT researcher Solomon Mwendia established the first set of forages at Rachel’s farm on 9 March 2018. Brachiaria hybrids (Mulato II, Cayman, Cobra), legumes Desmodium and Vetch were established in small plots of 5 x 10 m each. Vetch being an annual crop was not well received by farmers, including Rachel. Owing to the better performance of the hybrids, Rachel decided to establish the Brachiaria and Panicum cultivars on 19 November 2018 on larger plots of 10 square meters.

Fredrick advises the planting of different types of grass as a risk mitigation strategy in case of pest infestation, and it is also good for ration formulation.

“Panicum did better than Brachiaria because I realized it regrows faster after cutting,” she says.  She also mentions that Cobra and Cayman varieties were also doing much better than Mulato II. Rachel is pleased with the produce that she made from the grass as she managed to get four cuts in that year alone.

Uwe Ohmstedt, a CIAT specialist in scaling seed and forage technologies for the Africa region does not entirely agree with Rachel and goes on to explain that Mulato has a better biomass production compared to the others although there is not much difference. “It is largely a matter of perception by the farmers. Farmers do prefer Panicum because of its biomass since they have smaller plots,” says Uwe.

Rachel started her grass-planting venture on a small plot and, once she was satisfied with Panicum cultivars, she decided to use splits to expand the venture that now covers a better half of the field. She has also grown some Desmodium legumes, which she says, have 22% protein content and is very good for cows.

“The challenge with Desmodium is the biomass, although the quality is good, you have to mix it with other feeds,” Fredrick clarifies.

Rachel currently has 15 cows in total (six of which are being milked). “I want to have 10 milkers and 10 heifers to make a total of 20. I wish to build another barn to accommodate the heifers,” she says.

From the six dairy cows, she gets 160 liters of milk in a day and sells at Kenya Shillings 34 per liter to Nyaki farmers’ co-operative society, which is affiliated to the Meru Union Dairy Cooperative Society.

“I am satisfied with the yield because we don’t get enough when we depend on irrigation. In addition, we experienced severe drought between last year and a good part of this year,” she says.

Rachel uses all the grass she harvests as fresh feed for her cows. “I tried once to make silage and it was good, but unfortunately I do not have excess after feeding,” she says.

Clean fuel

Thanks to the good amount of feed, her cows have increased the amount of dung they produced.  Rachel no longer uses firewood in her kitchen but instead biogas. Six buckets of dung mixed with 12 buckets of water produce enough gas for her to cook the whole day.

“I am happy with the gas because it does not emit smoke, I no longer have to look for and carry firewood on my back, my sufurias (cooking pots) are also clean and it saves me money and time,” she says.

Rachel and her husband stand behind their household biogas plant.

Rachel with some of her champion cows.

Rachel the trainer

Rachel’s passion for dairy farming also paid off when staff from SNV approached her in 2018 and requested her to become a trainer of farmers after they noticed her professional approach and success in the business. She gladly accepted the challenge and constructed a classroom that accommodates 50 farmers in her compound.

For a modest fee of Ksh 500 (USD 5) per day, farmers get tea and lunch, and she trains them on dairy farming management modules (feeding and nutrition, fodder management, housing, calf rearing, milk hygiene and technique, hay and silage production).

“I know many people, especially the youth, will be self-dependent after attending the training. That is my goal for the youth. I am happy to note that the youth are now showing interest in farming after the training,” she says.

Rachel is married to Mr. Joseph Kinyua who is in formal employment. Acknowledging her passion, he says, “I am very proud of my wife. She has made dairy farming an important trade and now even the neighbors appreciate the work she does.” He is not shy to pledge continued support to the work she does noting that, because of her work, they now receive visitors from far and wide who want to learn from their farm”, he says.

“Women are nurturers. If you see the way Rachel cares for her calves, she is one of our best farmers. Her heifers are inseminated at 15 months, which means that, by the time they are two years, they have already calved. This is very rare for most farmers who inseminate their cows at two years,” Fredrick concludes.

CIAT held a workshop as part of the work on livestock production and environment funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), to reinforce knowledge on Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) on the livestock sector in Colombia, which includes silvopastoral systems.

NAMAs are a set of feasible activities determined by a country in sovereignty, which lead to reduce emissions in a measurable, reportable, and verifiable (MRV) manner.

As part of the activities carried out in the workshop, representatives from the Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies Institute (IDEAM, its Spanish initials), the Colombian Cattle Ranching Federation (FEDEGAN, its Spanish initials), the Center for Research on Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems (CIPAV, its Spanish initials), and WRI defined alternatives for low-carbon cattle production and the intensification of livestock production in regions of the country.

Similarly, they created a working path to plan mitigation actions to meet the goals set in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in Colombia.

On the other hand, Felipe Torres, leader of the national greenhouse gas inventory added that “it is important to harmonize all mitigation actions within the frame of a strengthened MRV system, especially when emissions are a key category in the Colombian agricultural sector. CIAT has been a very important actor, along with FEDEGAN, CIPAV, and universities working to improve emission factors in the country.”

During the workshop, the progress of the Livestock NAMA in Colombia was presented. The first emission activities were identified to plan the road map for specific mitigation actions.

During the workshop, the LivestockPlus project presented the main results obtained, regarding the identification of mitigation measures in the livestock sector and progress in the accurate quantification of the composition of the main forages found in Colombia, with the purpose of modeling current emissions and projecting mitigation scenarios based on diets combining pastures and fodder shrubs.

Photo: Farmers at a community plot testing different forages in Tanzania. Credit: Georgina Smith / CIAT

Cross-posted from The CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform

Meat and dairy products are central to the Latin American diet, and livestock is a source of income for over 600 million people living on less than US $1 per day around the world. Historically, a lack of quality forage crops has restricted production and increased the environmental impact of livestock farming, with poor-quality grazing areas being created through deforestation.

Seeing this challenge, breeders at CIAT, Colombia set off to radically change the market by developing the first commercially available tropical forage hybrids. The fledgling breeding program went from first cross in 1988 to the successful release of the Mulato variety by 2001 and, just three years later, a popular successor that was widely adopted.

According to CIAT forages breeder Valheria Castiblanco, this success was a product of involving public sector and commercial partners from product design all the way through to release and tightly coordinating breeding program targets with market needs.

“In the first phase, when they were doing the product concept, they were in close communication with seed companies and with people in the field, who were users of these materials,” said Castiblanco. “That was a key point in order to design products that were going to be successful in the long-term.”

The 1980s forage market in Latin America was dominated by four African brachiaria grass varieties. Humidity, soil and pest conditions in many growing areas meant that productivity of these varieties was low and, because the grass is an apomict that reproduces by creating clones of itself, breeders were not able to improve on them.

The first scientific challenge was therefore to cross different grasses to create hybrids with superior traits and reproduction. From early interaction with stakeholders such as national agricultural research programs and seed producers, soil acidity tolerance and spittlebug resistance were identified as key priorities. Through several international forage networks, CIAT had access to 5,000 grass and legume samples to look for these traits.

To rapidly navigate the many cycles of crossing plants to pass down and combine the genes responsible for the characteristics needed by the market, the breeding team prioritized their goals. Basic traits like biomass production and grass quality are based on complex genetics, so the goal was set to meet the market standard. Others such as spittlebug resistance are based on fewer genes, so here the breeders pushed to make improvements that would have a real impact for farmers and producers, designing processes to measure each trait.

The first result of this effort was released under the name Mulato, a hybrid of two African grasses that flourishes in a wider range of conditions and produces more forage material than any competitor, in addition to having tolerance to spittlebug.

The next challenge was seed production. In order to flower and produce seeds, brachiaria needs the longer days found at higher latitudes. To find these conditions, Mexican seed company Papalotla was included as a partner from the beginning, tasked not only with producing seed and exporting to the tropics, but as a partner in product design.

“From the onset of the relationship we set clear goals to deliver varieties that would not only address today’s needs, but that contemplate the needs of tomorrow’s livestock farmers,” said Andrei Nicolayevsky, founder and director general of Papalotla. “Our global reach allowed us to identify a wealth of diverse farmer needs to enrich the breeding program.”

Papalotla also carry out the final stages of variety selection, testing the last 30-50 hybrids produced by CIAT in their own fields to find those with the best level of seed production and impact on animal productivity. They soon identified that seed production of the Mulato cultivar was not high enough, leading directly to the release of Mulato II three years later, which today is sown on near 800,000 hectares.

“Listening to the end user, whether it be our distributor or direct client is essential for product development. Who better to understand what it takes to compete in today’s globalized food production economy?”, said Nicolayevsky. “It is not only the variety that matters, but that technology transfer accompanies that variety through the value chain all the way to the farmer.”

This close relationship with different stakeholders allowed the breeding program to rapidly achieve impact at scale, with a product that can lower both the cost and the environmental impact of livestock production. According to Nicolayevsky, small-scale farmers are often among the first adopters: “They live day-to-day with the risks of climate change, low productivity and difficult market access. Having the benefit of improved pastures makes their work a little less difficult.”

“Having a seed producer involved in the process is a triple win for CIAT, Papalotla and end users,” said Castiblanco. “CIAT aims to have the highest impact in terms of number of farmers and hectares reached, and having a partner with a wide commercialization network guarantees that goal. For Papalotla, getting involved in critical phases of product development allows them to have products tailored for their customers.”

Future versions, again based on farmer feedback, addressed environmental challenges specific to particular markets, such as Humidicola adapted for humid conditions, drought-resistant Camello, waterlogging-tolerant Cayman, and Cobra selected for Cut and Carry Systems. Hybrid grasses have also been sent to 11 African countries and grown on at least 1,000 ha, showing the potential for future varieties to impact livestock production in Africa.

For Papalotla and the CIAT breeding team, future successes will be built on even greater market knowledge, not just from seed companies and farmers, but based on socioeconomic data too. CIAT is working with the CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform to advance the modernization of its breeding programs.

This agreement will focus on developing high-productivity and eco-efficient pastures, in line with global initiatives to mitigate climate change and build sustainable food systems.

As global population grows so will demand for animal protein (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving, 2009[1]), making livestock farming intensification a central part to a sustainable food future. Breeding and mainstreaming of tropical forages are essential for improving productivity and lowering the environmental footprint while reducing the number of hectares dedicated to livestock production and the pressure over highly valuable ecosystems. This is a not only a priority in Latin America but in Africa and Asia as well, where the demand of forages with high nutritional quality and with resistance to different stresses is growing.

CIAT has a history of more than 45 years on forage research. Starting from the genetic resources conserved at CIAT’s genebank and applying cutting edge technologies in phenotyping, genotyping and breeding, the forage breeding program generates new hybrids under three grass-breeding programs (Brachiaria humidicola, B. interspecific and Panicum maximum). However, supporting these programs not only implies a significant investment in key resources on research and development -like evaluation on a wide range of sites under different agro-ecological conditions and livestock digestibility tests, far beyond those operated by the Center- but also having a key partner to scale out their major outputs, including multiplication and dissemination of new cultivars. Here is where interaction with partners is key! The biology of tropical forages, characterized by the need of longer days and temperature shifts to induce flowering, demands a partner who is able to work both in a latitude sufficiently distant from the equator  for seed production and across tropical regions for commercialization and distribution.

The Papalotla Group, a worldwide leading company in the production of improved seeds for tropical hybrid pastures, has a long-term collaboration with CIAT, achieving a wide dissemination of hybrid pastures developed by CIAT and distributed by Papalotla, such as Cobra, Cayman, Mulato, and Mulato II. Since the release of Mulato, the first hybrid bred and selected through this partnership and launched in 2001, it is estimated that CIAT-Papalotla hybrids have been planted in more than 900,000 hectares worldwide. To this date, the Papalotla Group has disseminated CIAT hybrids in over 50 countries around the world to meet the growing demand for improved forages, technology, and knowledge that guarantee profitable and sustainable livestock production and thus improve farmers’ livelihoods.

Under the new agreement signed on October 1^st, 2018, CIAT will focus on the research of new hybrids, while the multi-environment phase of hybrid development and livestock feeding evaluations will be a joint effort between Papalotla and CIAT. The research for production, and final production and commercialization phases will be in hands of Papalotla. Through this partnership CIAT seeks to streamline the links between CIAT’s Tropical Forages Breeding and the end users, to guarantee delivery and adoption of the products optimizing the program’s impact. The Forages Breeding Program is characterized by being the only one to successfully handle a complex biological system (tetraploid apomictic hybrids) to potentiate multiple desirable characteristics in forages, such as resistance to drought, flooding, and pests; higher productivity and nutritional quality; among others.

Besides the desirable characteristics of improved forages, the work under this new agreement will focus on developing products that also reverse environmental degradation, such as higher productivity per area to use less land, and contribute to reducing greenhouse gases from livestock activity, in line with global initiatives to mitigate climate change and build sustainable food systems.

Under a limited exclusive arrangement for only multiplication and commercialization, CIAT safeguards the original accessions at the international collection, which remain available to all under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). Likewise, outputs will be available for non-commercial research by public sector organizations and in case of food emergencies. Further, as a recognition of the heritage of the improved forages, downstream commercialization is subject to monetary benefit sharing towards the International Fund created for this purpose and administered by the Secretariat of the ITPGRFA Treaty.

By: Dindo Campilan and Nguyen Tra My

In further strengthening scientific cooperation, CIAT and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS) is establishing a Joint Laboratory in Advanced Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture in Beijing.

The Letter of Agreement for the Joint Laboratory was signed last 27May in Cali, Colombia as part of the visit of a CAAS delegation led by Vice-President Mei Xurong. In discussions with CIAT senior management and research teams led by Dr. Maya Rajasekharan (director of program management), CAAS and CIAT agreed on expanding the scope and mechanisms of scientific cooperation.

Earlier in 2019, CAAS and CIAT launched collaborative research on: 1) legume-based cropping systems, crop residues and bio-fertilizers, 2) monitoring and early warning systems on drought risks, and 3) Phaseolus v. bean germplasm exchange and evaluation.

The Joint Laboratory will be hosted by CAAS’ Institute for Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning (IARRP) to serve as scientific cooperation platform in: 1) microbial biotechnology for soil health and agro-ecological sustainability, 2) remote sensing, spatial and related technologies for agro-environmental and climate-change assessment, and 3) systems-based and landscape-level approaches for integrated farming and land-use management. The Joint Lab further strengthens CAAS’ partnership with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, as add-on physical and operational presence to the former’s existing liaison office in the Academy.

Implementation of these on-going and future opportunities will be jointly coordinated by Dr. Hao Weiping (CAAS Director of International Cooperation) and Dr. Dindo Campilan (CIAT Director for Asia).

To support the expanding collaboration with CIAT, CAAS has committed to increase China’s W3 contribution to CIAT while also joint exploring other in-country and international funding opportunities. CAAS further suggests to showcase this new era of CAAS-CIAT scientific cooperation when China hosts the Global Leaders in Agricultural Science and Technology (GLAST) Forum in November.

Jacobo Arango, Lead Author of the Sixth IPCC Assessment Report

By Sylvia Pineda | Jun 5, 2019

Photo: José Luis Urrea / CIAT

Jacobo Arango, environmental biologist from the Tropical Forages Program at CIAT, is one of the lead authors from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is currently contributing to draft the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), more specifically, on mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 to provide comprehensive assessments on the current state of scientific, technical, and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its causes, possible impacts, and response strategies. 

One of IPCC main principles is that the assessments are objective. All IPCC reports seek to reflect the agreement of an internationally shared scientific consensus and be free from biases. Therefore, when the team of authors is selected, care and attention are paid to ensuring it is integrated by a diverse range of experts representing different geographical regions and a variety of relevant specialized disciplines, as well as to making sure the team of authors is balanced in terms of gender.

IPCC scientists volunteer to assess scientific papers published each year to provide a comprehensive summary on what is known about the causes of climate change, its impact and future risks, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks.

 

The chapter will place a strong emphasis on the projection of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation scenarios for year 2100. Arango’s team is integrated by 15 researchers from different countries, who will be in charge of undertaking a macro-sectoral model and analysis to identify issues on sectors that should reduce their emissions in the long term.

An open and transparent review by the experts and governments from around the world will be essential in this process to ensure an objective and comprehensive assessment, and to reflect a diverse range of perspectives and expertise. Through the assessment of researchers, IPCC will identify the strength of scientific consistency in different areas and will determine where future research is needed the most.

Click here to access more information on IPCC’s sixth assessment cycle. A complete list of authors and editors of the Sixth Assessment Report is available here.

Related Publications:

Adequate vegetative cover decreases nitrous oxide emissions from cattle urine deposited in grazed pastures under rainy season conditions

Native arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi increase the abundance of ammoniaoxidizing bacteria, but suppress nitrous oxide emissions shortly after urea application

Genetic mitigation strategies to tackle agricultural GHG emissions: The case for biological nitrification inhibition technology

Biological Nitrification Inhibition (BNI) potential of the tropical pasture Megathyrsus maximus to reduce emissions of nitrous oxide in agricultural systems

Effects of tannins and saponins contained in foliage of Gliricidia sepium and pods of Enterolobium cyclocarpum on fermentation, methane emissions and rumen microbial population in crossbred heifers

The focus on the negative impacts of livestock overshadows its multiple positive contributions to livelihoods of smallholders in Africa in terms of nutrition, draft power, manure for soil fertilization, asset and risk management. For example in Ethiopia, people consume only about a tenth as much meat as people in developed countries, and moderate increases in milk, meat and egg consumption could make huge strides towards tackling malnutrition and stunting.

Instead of reducing the consumption of animal source protein, rural people in the developing world would benefit from it in terms of health! Gebregziabher Gebreyohannes, State Minister of Livestock and Fishery Resources in Ethiopia, invites to see a world where livestock are not part of the problem but part of the solution. “It’s a much larger, more complex and promising world than the one depicted in the report”. However, all still agree that environmental impacts of livestock are critical, and need to be reduced – e.g. reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of animal source product. In the developing world, such a pathway has been coined ‘low emission livestock’.

In that order, a recent workshop entitled “Low emissions livestock: supporting policy through science in West/Central Africa” brought together nearly 60 senior government officials, policy and science representatives. All of them work in the livestock and related sectors in 22 countries in West and Central Africa, and attended to discuss and raise awareness on low emission livestock development as a driver of economic gains while at the same time tackling climate change. The workshop aimed at providing practical and science-based support to these countries in order to achieve a sustainable development through livestock.

Birthe Paul, Farming Systems Scientist in CIAT’s Tropical Forages Program, made a presentation to the plenary, where she highlighted the key role of improved livestock feeding and tropical forages in reducing livestock emission intensities, showcasing on-the-ground work in Benin and DR Congo, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emission modeling capacities at CIAT, through a case study in Lushoto, Tanzania, where the CLEANED model was implemented.

In addition to calculating GHG emissions, the CLEANED model (that stands for Comprehensive Livestock Environmental Assessment for Improved Nutrition, a Secured Environment and Sustainable Development) can also quantify water impacts, productivity, soil nutrient balances, and land requirements. To ensure the systems are economically viable, it can also produce gross margins and value of production. Recently, two training workshops were conducted in Rwanda and Kenya, strengthening the capacities of a wide range of researchers and other stakeholders on this tool. The Version 2 that was just published will help to increase reach and use across East Africa and beyond.

Tools and approaches like CLEANED and others showcased during the workshop will contribute to increasing understanding and awareness of low emission livestock, while establishing new science and policy partnerships. Main opportunities for an Africa-wide low emission livestock research and policy program included national capacity building on GHG emission reporting (moving to IPCC Tier 2), as well as quantifying the impact of improved livestock technologies such as improved forages towards meeting countries’ pledges under the NDCs.

The workshop was organized by the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA), together with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The World Bank, and was hosted from 26-28 March in Dakar, Senegal, by the Senegalese Institute for Agriculture Research (ISRA).

Geoffrey Hawtin

What will food systems, agriculture and the environment look like in 2050? Given current trends, there is a range of highly contrasting outcomes
In one scenario, these bedrocks of society will have continued down their current path and faced significantly greater challenges than they do today.

But 30 years from now, we don’t believe that a global population of almost 10 billion people will be tied to today’s predominant farming practices, food business models, and dietary lifestyles. Things will have changed radically, and for the better.

Through a combination of existential necessity and human ingenuity – embodied by scientists and put into action by individuals, communities, nations, and businesses – food systems a generation from now will guarantee global food and nutritional security. Food systems will be fundamental components of healthy lifestyles, healthy economies, and a healthy planet.

In 2050, agriculture – the place where food systems begin – will no longer be on the wrong side of the digital divide. The sector will be as hyper-connected, efficient, and intelligent as our smog-free cities and our zero-carbon energy networks.

Just-on-time efficiencies that define modern, globalized industries will be commonplace on family farms. Yes, family farms will still exist, but profitable, sustainable, and inclusive community agricultural systems will have relegated the term “subsistence agriculture” to the dustbin of history.

Agriculture, today grouped with land use and deforestation which emits 25 percent of global greenhouse gases, will no longer be a driver of climate change. It will be a key component of global efforts to drawdown atmospheric carbon.

That same need to decarbonize human activity will extend to food systems. This transformation will be driven by local and global markets that demand high-quality, safe, nutritious, and environmentally friendly food, and lead to a significant reduction in the amount of food that goes to waste – which today is estimated to be 30 percent of all food produced.

This vision may sound optimistic. But given what an alternative future looks like – for our diets, our environment, our economies, and our hard-won gains in food security – it’s the only vision we can afford to have.

Attaining it will not be easy but there is a reason we’re firmly headed toward this future. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Bioversity International, and their hundreds of partners around the globe are already working toward the challenges ahead, as a glimpse at 2018’s highlights shows us.

Transformation requires an increase in sustainable intensification of farming, which will make agricultural landscapes more productive and less of a burden on the planet – and eliminate the need to clear forests for agricultural land. 

In the coming decades, many of climate change’s effects will have already taken hold across breadbaskets everywhere, making the food-production challenge even more urgent. The good news is that rapid action on climate will reduce the extent of these impacts, and mitigation strategies being developed by CIAT and partners are already having positive results.

Ruben Echeverría

Climate-proofing farms against drought, flood and higher temperatures is one of CIAT’s research priorities, and our scientists and partners have set the stage for rolling out climate-smart agriculture strategies in dozens of countries across the globe. We’re also working on de-risking agriculture to promote the investment needed in the sector.

Changes to business-as-usual practices on farms are a key part of transformation, and youth and women are leading the way – both as drivers of change in the field and on the research front at CIAT and Bioversity International, which will be allied CGIAR research centers next year.

In the spirit of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal #17 –Partnerships for the Goals – CIAT’s Alliance with Bioversity International will help us achieve this optimistic vision for the future.

As a bigger, stronger organization, the Alliance will help us build upon our shared mission to deliver research-based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity and sustainably transform food systems to improve people’s lives.

Geoffrey Hawtin
Board Chair

Ruben Echeverría
Director General, CIAT

Michael Peters has led the Tropical Forages Program at CIAT for 12 years now, but his history with forages began 30 years ago, when he started pursuing a Master’s degree in Tropical Forages at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Congo DR (Zaire, at that time), then he worked in Nigeria at ILCA/ILRI, and since 1998, at CIAT, in Colombia.

During his stay at CIAT, he has focused on integrating tropical forage genetic resources research and natural resource management, with a strong emphasis on linking the research and development approaches led by farmers and scientists, experts in the selection of forage options for different biophysical and socio-economic environments, as well as linking farmers to markets and innovative systems.

Recently, he and his team have been developing tropical forage varieties that enable improved animal productivity, better adaptation to biotic and abiotic stresses, while being environmentally friendly, through the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. I talked to him some days ago to become acquainted with the program’s strategies for 2019, the upcoming and future challenges facing him and his team, and the Alliance between Bioversity International and CIAT, the key of which, he claims, is working on seed systems and biodiversity issues for environmental and climate change impacts. Another topic that is gaining momentum is the forages-livestock-water linkage as key to sustainable food systems in the future.

What is the Tropical Forages Program banking on?

The projected demographic growth and the increasing demand for animal protein, particularly by the population with higher incomes in developing countries, combined with the rapid loss of the natural resource base, mean that there is an urgent need to reduce the environmental footprint of livestock production.  To achieve this, we are working on carbon sequestration, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, restoration of degraded lands and water-efficient use.

Michael Peters, Leader of Tropical Forages.

Program researchers are studying the current and potential impacts of livestock production systems on climate change. Similarly, we are advancing in defining strategies for large-scale sustainable intensification of production systems to achieve efficiency in the use of natural resources.

Moreover, we are working to contribute significantly to sustainable food production systems through natural resource conservation, improved productivity and profitability of farming in developing countries, and sustainable livelihoods, since their adoption translates into greater incomes.

What are the challenges for this year?

In Asia, we are designing a platform that will contain all the information on the legume materials that we have, and it will be launched in May. Furthermore, we will complete the Tropical Forages Selection Tool v.2, a tool designed to help select forage species suitable for local conditions in the tropics and sub-tropics. These technologies will be very useful for agricultural researchers and extension agents engaged in improving livestock production, and users will be able to access through mobile devices, such as tablets and telephones, in that continent.

In addition, the web page http://www.tropicalforages.info/ will be promoted as an important knowledge product that provides easy access to information on tropical forages.

In Africa, we are starting to scale up several forage lines, and we have been working on improving soils and measuring greenhouse gases. In Central America, we have several projects with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), where we are combining components of production, economy, and the environment. In Colombia, carbon-neutral livestock production is turning a lot of heads, and we will address this convinced that we can move it forward through the work we are carrying out with the Colombian Corporation for Agricultural Research (Agrosavia) and the forage network at the national level.

We will also advance the modernization of the remote sensing evaluation methodology (with drones and satellites), and building reliable databases with controlled trials in animals, not only for meat, but also for milk production.

We will release a new material under the name of “Camello”, bred from Brachiaria species, and whose main trait is drought tolerance.

What do you think of the Alliance between Bioversity and CIAT?

We will have a wide range of opportunities, because we are quite complementary. We have key opportunities to work together: income generation for farmers, based on knowledge management and seed systems; sustainable food systems and restoration of degraded lands.

A promising future

The Tropical Forages Program will seek to identify sustainable intensification to enhance environmental benefits and improve the livelihoods of smallholders, on the basis of forage systems.

The discovery of genes responsible for asexual reproduction in a tropical grass may reduce negative impacts of cattle farming. The grass captures carbon, reduces gas emissions from soils, restores degraded land, and improves cattle health and productivity.

Cattle are a mainstay for many smallholders but their farms are often on degraded lands, which increases cattle’s impact on the environment and lowers their production of milk and meat. Researchers at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) have shown that Brachiaria grass species can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cattle and increase productivity – and breeding improved varieties can potentially augment the environmental and economic benefits.

But the breeding process is difficult, time-consuming and expensive. A breakthrough on Brachiaria’s complex genome may make breeding much more efficient, and potentially increase the speed with which new grasses begin benefiting cattle farmers and the environment.

Margaret Worthington, a geneticist at CIAT and the University of Arkansas, and colleagues created the first dense molecular map of B. humidicola, a robust and environmentally friendly forage grass. They also pinpointed the candidate genes for the plant’s asexual reproductive mechanism, which is a huge asset for plant breeders. The findings were published in January in BMC Genomics.

Traditional plant-breeding methods for Brachiaria grasses involve one of two complex techniques. One is to grow the plant to seed, and to study the seeds under a microscope to determine if the plant reproduced asexually. The other involves excising the plant’s embryos and conducting a similar analysis. Both techniques require many weeks, significant funds and highly trained specialists.

Asexual reproduction through seed, called apomixis, is key for developing new crop varieties for widespread use. Crops that reproduce through apomixis conserve the same traits from one generation to the next, essentially locking in sought-after characteristics such as drought tolerance or high nutritional value. Plants that reproduce sexually do not reliably pass on desired traits to subsequent generations.

Seeds, perpetually

With this molecular marker, plant breeders can run a quick and inexpensive test when Brachiaria grasses are seedlings to identify whether they reproduce through apomixis. The results are available in a couple of weeks. This allows plant breeders to select only asexually reproductive plants for trials, allowing them to allocate more time and resources to plants that have the potential to produce new cultivars.

Brachiaria grasses have often been considered an “orphan crop,” due to a lack of investment in research, but their potential for making tropical farms more productive and better for the environment is well known among tropical forage specialists. One recent study found that B. humidicola was especially adept at reducing the nitrous oxide, a strong greenhouse gas, emitted from soil as result of cattle urine deposition. In addition, CIAT researchers have identified mechanisms that this tropical grass uses to efficiently acquire nutrients from soil.

Brachiaria breeders also value apomixis for smallholders in developing nations who have limited resources for investing in improving their farms. Improved grass varieties that produce sufficient quantities of trait-retaining seeds can eliminate the need to purchase new seeds for every planting, which is a potentially expensive barrier to adoption.

Livestock production sometimes has a negative connotation due environmental issues, ethical views and human health questions. A response to this — mostly from the developed world — is for a transition to a vegetarian or vegan diet.

This hot topic can be debated in many ways. It can be argued that health problems occur due to meat overconsumption.  Livestock production in the tropics tends to occupy marginal lands, increasing its negative impacts on the environment. And ethical views fall into a philosophical domain.

What is undeniable is that livestock can, and must, be raised more efficiently to reduce the practice’s negative impact it has on the environment, including clearing forests for grazing, degrading existing pastureland and contributing to climate change through the emission of greenhouse gasses.

Specific interventions and practices can tackle this. The list is extensive and includes use of nutritious forages and livestock races adapted to specific environments, the establishment of grass-legume or silvopastoral systems, and assuring a steady supply of the healthy forages that animals require.

 However, no interventions or practices can singlehandedly be a silver bullet to solve the environmental issues associated with livestock production. The key is to combine all our knowledge to improve livestock systems. But how?

Sensors, drones and satellites

Remote monitoring can assist in the management of both animals and their environments. GPS collars on cattle can gather information on time and places of grazing, the timing of their digestive processes, and periods of rest and active movement.

Remotely sensed information – gathered from drones and satellites – can help determine the amount of forage available to livestock. At the same time, laboratory analyses can demonstrate when forage feed is at its best in terms of nutritional quality, or determine what combinations of different forages provide a better and more nutritious diet to animals. This laboratory information can be quickly applied in the field to improve livestock diets.

This information, including measurements of emissions of greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane, can provide a multi-layered knowledge base to implement a more environmentally friendly and productive strategy for livestock management. 

Recently, researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, CIAT’s Tropical Forages Program, Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia, Colombian agricultural research organization Agrosavia, and the Sustainable Livestock initiative (or GANSO, for its Spanish abbreviation), visited several farms in the Orinoquía region of  Colombia to discuss how to increase the impact of the GANSO initiative. The visit was funded by Scottish Funding Council (SFC).

A way forward

Even though multilayered information is not always available, it can be quickly generated and used for implementation of sustainable practices. But to do so, social behavior and economic analyses need to be included. These analyses will be integrated through a research project funded by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Research Council to generated knowledge on Colombian livestock systems.

The project will be implemented by UK partner organizations (Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, IBERS; University of Glasgow; University of Bristol) and CIAT, with collaboration from GANSO, the University of Antioquia and Agrosavia.

By: Juan Andrés Cardoso and Jhon Freddy Gutiérrez 

A new cost-benefit analysis by CIAT examines three practices for improved livestock management in Ethiopia: improved rangeland, restoration of degraded land, and fodder cropping. Preliminary findings suggest all three practices are better than business as usual and can be scaled up.

 By: Stanley Karanja Ng’ang’a, Ph.D.

A cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a systematic approach used for estimating the benefits and costs (or strengths and weaknesses) of different projects versus their alternatives. These include business investments and the construction of dams or roads. In essence, a CBA helps determine the most cost-effective approach to obtaining a given benefit at the lowest cost. It can also be used retrospectively to learn, improve, and compare a course of action or to analyze benefits compared to the cost of a decision, project or policy.

At the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), we commonly use CBAs to i)  determine if an investment or a decision is economically sound for farmers, and, if economically sound, ascertain if – and by how much – its benefits outweigh the costs, as compared to business-as-usual practices, ii) provide a basis for comparing agricultural investments to the expected costs of each investment with its total expected benefits. With this in mind, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), led by CIAT, developed an idea aimed at enhancing institutional capacities and developing a systematic program and projects relating to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). CSA stems from the need to provide innovative solutions to the complex trade-offs between increasing agricultural production, enhancing the quality of production, increasing resilience to climate and other environmental factors, and promoting low-emissions agriculture. Under this alliance, and financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a CBA tool – both online and offline versions –  was recently developed and made available for use by all free of cost.

While there is a debate about uncertainties associated with CBA results, especially those computed at the micro-level, in areas such as climate-change-related policy; CBA analyses are still crucial for policy- and decision-makers looking for appropriate alternatives for investment. This is because accurate estimates may lead to better policies and strategic investment at different scales (farm level, watershed level, national level). This post reports some preliminary results from a CBA study conducted recently by CIAT in the lowland of Ethiopia. More detailed and complete results will be posted after March 2019.

Restored degraded land – with pasture for livestock to graze on during the drought period in Yabello district, Southern part of Ethiopia. (Photo courtesy of the Decision and Policy Analysis Research Area of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture – Africa regional office).

In this study, the three studied practices for improved livestock management were improved rangeland, restoration of degraded land, and fodder cropping (see table). The practices have been in operation for at least three years, placing the assessment in an intermediate viewpoint when compared to the projected lifetime of all the three, which is typically 15–20 years.

This CBA analysis combines a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the costs and benefits of three improved livestock management practices compared to business as usual. The approach involved extensive household surveys and collection of data from stakeholders on costs and benefits associated with these practices, as well as market information and the lifecycle periods. The information was used to prepare the retrospective cost-benefit analysis. The collected information was also used to construct the practice history before and after the introduction of improved livestock management practice and to assess the effect of the improved practice on crop and livestock yield and their associated costs. The approximate area under the three practices was estimated, and this helped compute the expected environmental changes (i.e., carbon sequestration), even from an ex-post perspective. The environmental impacts were then translated into monetary terms using values for sequestered carbon per hectare per year. The information was also used to determine whether the practices were beneficial at both private and social point of view.

The objective of this CBA evaluation exercise was not limited to verifying the cost and benefit of the business as usual scenario as compared to the improved livestock management practices. Rather, the goal was to analyze the long-term cost and benefits of the three improved livestock management practices and to estimate their contribution to the quality of life (i.e., environment), and well-being, such as household income. For this reason, the methodology goes beyond a simple update of the ex-ante cost-benefit analysis with observed data. Rather, the benefit of this CBA evaluation exercise comes from performing a new cost-benefit analysis from today’s standpoint and trying to understand whether the practices are worth promoting for adoption or scaling up.

The CBA evaluation framework consists of nine building blocks, which are schematically presented in the figure below. This framework was consistently applied to the three practices.

Our preliminary findings suggest that the three practices are beneficial from a private and social point of view. That is, the economic Net Present Value estimated ex ante was positive for all the three practices. However, only one practice, fodder cropping for livestock supplementation, was fully beneficial without risks of profit falling below the discount rate used (i.e., 12%). In a practice such as fodder cropping, the crops and livestock are integrated leading to effective use of the resources on the farm: crop residues supplement livestock diets, while livestock manure is used on cropland in return. The grain yield is from crops, and livestock and livestock products are used as food for human consumption. The effectiveness of the fodder cropping practice and the high net present value is often influenced by the quick response of livestock and livestock products due to supplementation with fodder and crop residues. In general, however, we can say that based on our findings the three improved livestock management practices can be scaled up because their benefits are higher compared to those of the business as usual.

The bottom line of these preliminary results is that cost-benefit analysis is critical for any decision relating to practices aimed at development or a project that has already started but needs to be redesigned or improved. Notably, this can be done through astute hindsight: learning from the past. Retrospection is a reflective (at times bittersweet) process of learning. In this regard, retrospective or intermediate cost-benefit analysis (when appropriately implemented and integrated with qualitative evidence) is a valuable tool for policy learning. If the systematic retrospective exercise is part of the project cycle and feeds into the decision-making process, the lessons learned can be used to improve the ex-ante appraisal process by taking corrective action to errors that may arise due to poor decisions and spur result-oriented behavioral change.

Stanley Karanja Ng’ang’a is an agricultural development economist at the Decision and Policy research area of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, where he works as the focal point on Cost-benefit analysis-related projects in Africa.

Each year, CIAT organizes a Training for Cost-Benefit Analysis of Investment Projects, which admits between 15-20 participants from East Africa, and all the international institutes hosted at ICIPE campus in Nairobi Kenya.

Colombia has set ambitious targets to mitigate climate change and achieve stability. One promising approach to help achieve those simultaneously is designing and promoting sustainable land use systems that incorporate the views of all the stakeholders in the value chain.

In this interview, Dr. Augusto Castro-Nuñez, a climate policy and finance scientist at the Sustainable Food Systems Team within CIAT’s Decision and Policy Analysis Research Area who coordinates the SLUS project, sheds light on how a sustainable land use system can contribute to Colombia’s climate change mitigation and peacebuilding goals and how to develop such a system.

 What is a sustainable land use system?

A sustainable land use system may come in different forms depending on the context and location. Overall, it meets livelihood aspirations in ways that are sustainable and that maintain environmental integrity.

In the context of the SLUS project, sustainable land use systems are agricultural and livestock production systems that, by meeting the pillars of sustainability — environmental, social, and economic — contribute to achieving not only Colombia’s environmental goals, such as reducing deforestation, restoring lands, and mitigating climate change, but also other objectives, including building peace and improving livelihoods in rural areas, especially those affected by the country’s conflict.

Sustainable land use systems designed and promoted within the SLUS project will combine two kinds of approaches that have not been fully integrated yet. One is adopting land-based approaches, which seek to contribute to the conservation of forests by promoting sustainable land uses, an approach that focuses on land use decisions taken at the local level. The other is using market-based approaches, which are evolving into sustainable food system approaches. It has a perspective that considers value change relations and food choices by consumers. Diets and increase in food consumption, for example, have an impact on land uses.

To ensure its effectiveness, a sustainable land use system should be tailored to a specific context. That means its design must be informed by an in-depth understanding of enabling conditions, existing institutional arrangements, and agricultural value chain actors. Fostering adoption of promising land use systems will also require upgrading strategies, which incorporate financial and nonfinancial incentives and services, within the value chain.

How would a sustainable land use system that contributes to climate change mitigation and peacebuilding look like?

In municipalities emerging from conflict in Colombia, such as those located in the department of Caquetá, there are many areas whose landscapes are dominated by cattle pastures. A sustainable land use system could be a cattle ranching production system that includes trees in order to increase carbon storage in that location and that has good access to markets so it can earn revenues from its economic activities.

Why are sustainable land use systems important for achieving forest conservation and peacebuilding in Colombia?

It’s important because the broad adoption of these systems can help accomplish the targets of the government in terms of climate change mitigation, land restoration, and peacebuilding.

It’s not that promoting sustainable land use systems is new. It’s being done in Colombia and elsewhere around the world, and we have many good examples of how this could work. However, these examples are not necessarily reaching the scale needed to contribute to mitigating climate change or to building peace. So the question is, how can we reach the scale that we need?

The project that we have with the German government’s International Climate Initiative and several international and local partners aims to address that. We seek to develop a strategy and a business model that will incorporate the views of all the stakeholders in the value chain and then measure if these systems really contribute to peacebuilding and climate change mitigation.

Is this measurement something that hasn’t been done before?

It’s been done a bit but not fully. There have been studies that estimate emissions for cocoa production under agroforestry systems, which may be considered as a sustainable land use system, but not necessarily measure its peacebuilding benefits, or vice versa. Also, we don’t have a clear understanding of why these land use systems are not being adopted at scale.

It could be because they were developed using different views and without considering everyone’s views. For instance, some stakeholders believe the data they are gathering to do measurement is relevant and enough proof of sustainability. But maybe for someone else in the value chain, say an investor, the measurement is not a good indicator of the sustainability they are looking for.

How can we develop and scale up sustainable land use systems that contribute to climate change mitigation and peacebuilding in Colombia?

The SLUS project integrates four components. First is to identify synergies and integrate policies and approaches to reduce conflict and deforestation and/or to achieve land restoration. We have to put these together because otherwise, we may be promoting similar sustainable land use systems with different objectives and then maybe instead of having synergies, we will be having trade-offs.

The second is to identify the barriers to the adoption of a sustainable land use system at the farm level. If we identify those barriers, then we can make the adjustments needed to the system in order to overcome those barriers. Here we also need to measure contributions to both climate change mitigation and peacebuilding.

The third is to also identify the barriers at the value chain level. Then we need to develop the strategies and identify the motivation of stakeholders within the value chains to overcome those barriers.

And fourth, we need investments. So, we need to develop business models that are compatible with these sustainable land use systems and help to overcome barriers identified at the farm and value chain levels.

Verónica Ruiz, coautora del estudio basado en Nicaragua, lleva a cabo investigación en pasturas.
Crédito: UNAN

When cow urine falls on degraded land, it releases far more nitrous oxide – a potent greenhouse gas – than when absorbed by healthy pasture. The findings show additional benefits of landscape restoration and conservation.

The exceptional climate-altering capabilities of cattle are mainly due to methane, which they blast into the atmosphere during their daily digestive routine. Cattle urine is a lesser-known climate offender. It produces nitrous oxide (N₂O), which has warming power far greater than that of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the main driver of global warming. A study conducted by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and partners shows that these N₂O emissions can be significantly curbed by healthy cattle pastures.

For the study, researchers collected urine from cattle at research sites in five countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. They spilled these 500 mL samples on paired cattle fields classified as degraded or healthy, which was determined by vegetation coverage. In six of the seven test sites, degraded pastures emitted significantly more N₂O – sometimes up to three times as much. The results were published January 29 in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal by the publishers of Nature.

The results add urgency to global land restoration agreements, including Initiative 20x20, which aims to bring into restoration 20 million hectares of land into restoration in Latin America by 2020 as a first major step toward even more ambitious restoration targets.

Estimates vary, but Chirinda calculates, conservatively, that there are 150 million hectares of degraded lands in Latin America. Brazil alone is home to some 80 million hectares of degraded pastureland.

Degraded livestock land is generally characterized by overgrazing, soil compaction, loss of organic material and low levels of nutrients and soil carbon. Large-scale land restoration with improved forage grasses, rotational grazing and the addition of shrubs and trees (silvopastoral farming) could significantly mitigate the negative climate effects wrought by degradation. In addition to reducing N₂O emissions, restored landscapes generally contain more carbon, have healthier soils and more robust and productive livestock.

The curious results from the single test site that did not align with the study results – in Taluma, Colombia – may be attributed to a number of factors that merit further research. N₂O emissions there were by far the lowest at any test site and were the same on both degraded and healthy pastures. The cattle urine used in the experiment had the lowest nitrogen content compared to the other research sites, which likely contributed to the results. The forage grass used there, Brachiaria humidicola, also has an especially high nitrification inhibition capacity, meaning that it prevents nitrogen from becoming N₂O.

Silvopastoral System in Colombia’s southwestern Cauca Department. Credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer.

By Pat Heslop-Harrison, University of Leicester (with collaborators listed below)

Tropical grassland grazing by cattle provides food for millions of people, and livelihoods for huge numbers of farmers and smallholders in developing countries. Pastures and rangelands have a profound influence on the environment. As the dominant vegetation over much of the world’s land, covering areas from flood plains to high uplands, grasslands are some of the most environmentally important and sensitive vegetation types.

Grasslands are grazed by animals used for human food, and are often unsuitable for other agricultural uses so, despite the recent call from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for people to eat less meat, animal production on grasslands will remain important for economies and food supply for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, grazing is often critical to maintaining landscapes and maximizing grassland biodiversity. Grasslands provide ecosystem services such as stabilizing soil, preventing erosion, and purifying and slowing the flow of water. It is vital that grasslands are as productive and environmentally sustainable as possible. Farming must be efficient to minimize land use while ensuring reliable food production and maintaining livelihoods in a changing climate.

Even small improvements in performance of pasture by genetic improvement of grasses can deliver both economic and environmental benefits, whether through the impact of the grasses themselves, including reduced use of herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer, or through reducing pressure to increase farmed areas. Improved grazing can reduce the need for growing field crops, about a third of which are fed to animals. Improvement of grasses can come from exploiting genetic biodiversity, finding and bringing together traits of ecological benefit and increased productivity.

Our research project involves a partnership between the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Colombia, and UK institutions including University of Leicester, Rothamsted Research, Earlham Institute and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. The project takes a three-pronged approach to improving tropical forage grasses, with a focus on the Panicum and Brachiaria (Urochloa) genera: measuring the genetic diversity present in the species; identifying critical traits related to environment, productivity, and the rural economy; and developing improved approaches for breeding and selection, to identify the best traits that will improve grass varieties for farmers.

In addition to productivity and disease resistance, we are looking at the importance and genetic basis of a range of traits related to the environment and sustainability. Our work is of global importance but in the short-term will help the world-class grass breeding program at CIAT. Traits to be investigated include genetic characteristics related to soil nitrification, drought resistance, waterlogging tolerance, allelopathy (how plants compete with neighbors using their own chemicals), and insect resistance (particularly to the sap-sucking spittlebug). We will also look at grass genetics related to grazing animals such as leaf lipid content, which affects cow methane (greenhouse gas) emissions, and cell wall modifications affecting digestibility.

Traits such as grass productivity and digestibility determine the carrying capacity of a pasture, and increased production reduces pressure to convert biodiverse natural habitats such as forests to farmland. Our project will also analyze why farmers do not use improved grass seed, and the findings will provide key information to ensure the best use of the knowledge gained during the project to support future grass breeding efforts at CIAT. This project, therefore, helps economic development by improving livelihoods and the environment for farmers and the wider community.

CIAT has one of the world’s largest collections of tropical forages in its genebank held in trust for humanity, and these germplasm resources are critical to finding new and useful traits to exploit. Since the Nobel Prize winning work of Norman Borlaug at CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), a CGIAR Center based in Mexico, we have seen the positive global impact of genetic improvement. In our project, the diversity of all the genes in more than 10% of the germplasm collection has been measured. This huge amount of data – well over 500 billion DNA bases – was made public in January 2019.

Another challenge is finding out which plants have the potential to be crossed together for breeding, and for the next phase of the project we will use modern techniques to screen the best grasses for breeding programs. Our goal is to use information about the grass genes to develop a genotyping ‘chip’ which will speed up the methods for choosing plants to act as parents for producing improved varieties. Genotyping ‘chip’ technology is revolutionizing plant breeding, and our project will enable us to apply genotyping and molecular assisted breeding technology to tropical forage grasses.

Breeding better crops is a long-term undertaking, and CIAT already has breeding pipelines for tropical forage grasses. Our project is designed to supplement and accelerate breeding by exploiting wide biodiversity and the latest cost-efficient, genomic technologies, leading via improvements in forage grasses, to increased food security, reduction of rural poverty, and efficient, sustainable use of land as pasture.

Written by Jessica Mukiri

The second CLEANED training occurred Nov. 21-23. Similar to the previous training in Rwanda, the participants were personnel from the livestock sectors, this time from Ethiopia and Kenya. Participants included researchers, livestock development officers and university lecturers from Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), Send a Cow Kenya, Send a Cow Ethiopia, Egerton University, Siaya County Representative, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EAIR), Wolaita Sodo University Ethiopia and Dairy consultant working with the private sector and development partners.

CLEANED stands for Comprehensive Livestock Environmental Assessment for Improved Nutrition, a Secured Environment and Sustainable Development along Livestock and Fish Value Chains. You can find the Excel tool in this link. This ex-ante environmental impact assessment tool allows users to explore multiple environmental impacts (see figure on the left). The aim of the training was to strengthen technical capacity for agriculture stakeholders and for them to use this tool as a means of improved decision making in the agriculture development sector with a focus on livestock systems.

During the training, the participants gave opinions on who they believe can use the tool. This included researchers, students, policymakers, extension agents, consultants and program officers.

The training also gave a breakdown of the different methodologies and calculations used to build the tool as well as different sources where users can obtain data to make the tool context-specific. This included: IPCC, RUSSLE, NUTMON and  web sources such as the Tropical Forages selection tool and the SoilInfo App This is discussed in full in the CLEANED technical note.

The training also looked at the data that is needed to fill the tool and participants discussed the different sources of data needed to feed in the tool can be obtained from:

• Administrative levels of governments, e.g. county, district
• International, regional and national research organizations (EIAR, KALRO, CIAT etc.)
• Universities
• Industry players, e.g. Dairy processors
• Cooperatives and CBOs
• Surveys, household interviews

During this training, there was a networking session where participants from the different regions were given an opportune to discuss their interests outside the training with fellow participants and other members from the tropical forages team in Nairobi. Uwe Ohmstedt from CIAT Kenya talked to new livestock personnel in Ethiopia and discussed the different ways to disseminate improved grasses such as Brachiaria. More info about improved grasses.

On the last day of the training session, participants presented their modeled farms. This included looking at zero grazing units Western Kenya, designing a model dairy enterprise at Wolmera district in the Central Ethiopian Highlands and Modeling a farm of improved calves in Meru Kenya.

At the end of the training, participants gave their feedback on the aspects they liked.

They also gave suggestions on how to improve the tool and the training.

The team has been working on improving the tool with the next version to be published early next year.

Written by Jessica Mukiri

A team from the Tropical Forages Program at CIAT has been working on CLEANED*, an Excel-based ex-ante tool that assesses the environmental impacts of livestock, over the past four years. The tool’s first version was published at the beginning of 2018 and can be found here. It looks at greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, soil health and economic impacts. The CLEANED tool was developed for use in ongoing innovation processes in value chains. It helps decision-makers understand the environmental impacts of intensification and develop sustainable livestock intensification plans that mitigate negative impacts and enhance positive ones.

The team has already used the tool to conduct the study Feeding a productive dairy cow in western Kenya: environmental and socio-economic impacts in Western Kenya in collaboration with Send a Cow Kenya, Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization together with ETH Zurich. Other case studies include Nicaragua and Tanzania.

The goal for this training is to strengthen technical capacity for agriculture stakeholders and for them to use this tool for improved decision making in the agriculture development sector with a focus on livestock systems.

The first training session was Nov. 14-16 in Kigali, Rwanda. Participants included researchers, livestock development officers and university lecturers from Tanzania Livestock Research Institute (TALIRI), Send a Cow Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, University of Rwanda, Rwanda Agricultural Board (RAB), National Livestock Resources Research Institute (NaLIRRI) from Uganda and CIAT Tanzania.

The training aimed at getting participants to understand the tool and how it can be used. During the training, they modelled a livestock enterprise related to work in their fields. They also generated different scenarios to mimic technologies of interest to improve productivity and environmental efficiencies in their systems. The participants expressed the importance of understanding the environmental impacts of livestock enterprises and the challenges that can be faced trying to calculate these different impacts on the ground. The tool works with minimal data that can be easily collected using expert opinion, secondary data and household surveys.

After the three-day training, the participants presented the livestock enterprises they had developed, such as an intensive dairy system in Arumeru Tanzania, smallholder crop-livestock systems in Rwamagana district in Rwanda and a smallholder system in Njombe in Tanzania. The groups modelled several scenarios from improving the dairy cow genetics and feed basket items to improving productivity and natural resource efficiencies. The participants were excited to see how fast the tool generates results and the potential the tool had in policymaking, proposal development and extension service to farmers.

The training ended with the participants giving feedback on ways the tool could be improved such as including the option of a bio-digester as a means of manure management, which is present throughout the region, to incorporate monastic species such as pigs to the tool as well as a tool to take into account children’s calorie intake when it comes to milk consumption.

The participants also discussed potential ways we could collaborate with them in future projects with the CIAT team offering support through technical backstopping of any potential research.

Responding to the challenge of improving data collection and monitoring of tropical forages in Colombia, CIAT, in cooperation with the Universities of Glasgow, Bristol, Cauca, and Antioquia, developed working tools and methodologies for the collection, processing, and analysis of images obtained through satellites and drones to be able to model and forecast the behavior of new forage technologies that have been adopted by Colombian producers, focusing on small- and medium-sized cattle farmers from Valle del Patía, Cauca.

This research is part of a project entitled ‘Advancing sustainable forage-based livestock production systems in Colombia’, which is gathering insights using interdisciplinary approaches to monitor changes in land uses and to develop technologies that will improve decision-making by producers. For instance, forecasting biomass or forage yield and its nutritional quality using multiple remote-sensing technologies.

Currently, CIAT’s Tropical Forages team is engaged in the development of these new technologies to analyze forage performance, facilitate research processes, and identify improvements in pasture genotypes. “Using drones, precision GPS, thermal and multispectral cameras, along with satellite-based information, researchers can monitor forage agronomic trials at different scales (plots and landscapes) and traits (biomass, vegetation index, chlorophyll content, vegetation coverage, vigor), which facilitates plant physiological diagnosis and dynamic assessment, as well as real-time decision-making,” said Jhon Freddy Gutiérrez and Juan Andrés Cardoso, researchers from the Tropical Forages Program.

Researchers, along with smallholders, collected different pasture samples in five farms from Patía, Cauca, including: Brachiaria brizantha cv. Toledo, cv. Marandú, Brachiaria hybrid cv. Caymán, Mulato II and Megathyrsus maximus cv. Mombasa. The samples are being analysed in the Forage Quality and Animal Nutrition Laboratory at CIAT, to validate and correlate the measurements being conducted with the new tools that will allow the identification of sustainable production solutions to reduce environmental impact of Colombian livestock production.

This research is funded by the BBSRC through the RCUK-CIAT Newton-Caldas Fund Sustainable Tropical Agricultural Systems Programme.

PATÍA, Colombia – A few years ago, Elena Patricia Ulloa and Jesús Velasco took a hard look at their small dairy farm and decided things needed to improve. Even during the best of times – which meant a year with lot of rain and a mild dry season – a dozen cows on six hectares of land didn’t produce enough for their family. A year of low rainfall, which is likely a growing risk due to climate change, could weaken or kill their livestock and make their economic situation more precarious.

So they got involved with their local farmers association, took on some debt to invest in their farm, and undertook a slow transformation of their tiny operation. “There were mistakes at the beginning,” Ulloa said. But the lessons learned and hard work made them ideal candidates for a pilot project run by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and University of Cauca (Unicauca) for sustainable livestock intensification.

Two years later, milk output has more than doubled and they’re already planning their next phase of improvements.

Velasco attributes the increase in milk production to forage grasses selected by the Unicauca-CIAT (NUTRIFACA) team, through farmer-participatory and agronomic evaluations. The selected forages grow quickly and, compared to local naturalized grasses, provide greater nutrition and withstand intense dry periods. Rotating the small herd through sections of pasture separated by electric fencing and other management techniques are essential to maintain healthy grasses. Large shade trees provide respite from the withering sun for both the herd and the forages.

When investigators from CIAT and Unicauca first began working with smallholders in Colombia’s Cauca Department ten years ago, status quo cattle farming was the norm: cattle fed almost exclusively on native or naturalized grasses, and the animals roamed unmanaged and mostly treeless tracts of land that were at the mercy of the elements.

The project drew on one of CIAT’s strengths: its genebank, which holds in trust a collection of more than 23,000 accessions of tropical forages. Gutiérrez and colleagues scoured the repository for grasses that were ideal for Cauca farmers. Scientists selected the best varieties based on the traits required for specific areas. As well as increasing the health of the cattle, the deployed forages can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase water efficiency, and improve soil quality to help restore degraded lands, while helping increase animal productivity per unit area.

Gutiérrez said some 300 producers in Cauca benefited from programs and partnerships involving CIAT’s improved forages. He hopes the project’s next phase will reach nearly 1,000 producers in different climates in the Cauca area.

Meanwhile, producers like Ulloa and Velasco are planning their next investments, with or without continued external support. They plan to improve their water harvesting systems for the dry season and breed better animals to increase their herd’s production further.

Most importantly, they say they no longer need their eldest daughter’s help on the farm and that she can go to university and pursue a career as an odontologist.

CIAT and the Papalotla Group, a worldwide leading company in the production of improved seeds for tropical hybrid pastures, signed the agreement “Sustainable intensification for environmental benefits”. This agreement follows a long-term collaboration between both organizations, achieving a wide dissemination of hybrid pastures developed by CIAT and distributed by Papalotla, such as Cobra, Cayman, Camello, Mulato, and Mulato II. This agreement allows the Papalotla Group to produce and commercialize the new hybrids developed by CIAT in three lines: Brachiaria hybrids currently being developed, B. humidicola and Panicum hybrids.

Therefore, this agreement focuses on streamlining the links between CIAT’s Tropical Forages Breeding and the end users, to guarantee delivery and adoption of the products and, finally, the program’s impact. The Forages Breeding Program is characterized by being the only one to successfully handle a complex biological system (tetraploid apomictic hybrids) to potentiate multiple desirable characteristics in forages, such as resistance to drought, flooding, and pests; higher productivity and nutritional quality; among others.

Since the release in 2001 of Mulato, the first hybrid bred by CIAT and selected by Papalotla, it is estimated that it has been planted to more than 750,000 hectares worldwide. Nowadays, the Papalotla Group has disseminated CIAT hybrids in 52 countries around the world to meet the growing demand for improved forages, technology, and knowledge that guarantee profitable and sustainable livestock production and thus improve farmers’ livelihoods.

Besides the desirable characteristics of improved forages, this new agreement will focus their efforts on developing products that also reverse environmental degradation, such as higher productivity per area to use less land, and contribute to reducing greenhouse gases from livestock activity, in line with global initiatives to mitigate climate change and build sustainable food systems.