The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is working across the globe to help farmers access the information and resources they need to future-proof their farms.
Farmers “need better information systems,” Bram Govaerts, Director General of CIMMYT tells Food Tank. “You can no longer make decisions based on your past experience because the situation is changing so much” as a result of the climate crisis.
The research organization, a member of CGIAR, makes data and information systems available to producers while training them on new agricultural techniques that heal the soils so they can farm most effectively. CIMMYT also helps them access seeds to grow crops that are more resistant to droughts and pests.
“It is no longer about increasing the yields and production,” Govaerts says. “It is about making sure that you have a minimum amount of yields and production independent of the climate shocks and drought and heat.”
Govaerts believes the food system is already so fragile that an additional climate shock will push many communities “over the edge.”
That’s why CIMMYT is looking to build resilience. To do this, they now focus 50 percent of their programs on soil management, representing a “big shift” in their approach, Govaerts says. The organization’s research projects seek to improve the fertility and water retention of the land while increasing the soil carbon load.
They also seek to scale production and use of “opportunity crops,” nutrient dense foods including finger millet, pigeon peas, taro, and amaranth that help build healthy soils. “We want these crops to be equally climate resilient [as varieties of staple crops]…so we can incorporate them in our cereal systems because we know the cereal systems cannot be sustainable, resilient, nor nutritious without those crops,” Govaerts tells Food Tank.
The Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS)—an initiative launched by the U.S. State Department in partnership with the African Union and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization—represents one way that CIMMYT supports their growth.
“We are making available the rich knowledge, the infrastructure, the data systems that we have used to breed and improve wheat and maize,” Govaerts says, explaining that opportunity crops haven’t “advanced that much” as a result of limited research and attention they have received.
As VACS grows, it is evolving into what Govaerts describes as a movement. He points to the recent U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification in Saudi Arabia, where an encouraging number of announcements expressing interest in supporting the initiative.
And while VACS began in Africa, Govaerts says “there is interest in Central America, there’s interest…in the Pacific Island regions. So I really think [Special Envoy for Global Food Security] Cary Fowler has started something that we all now together need to keep going.”
Listen to the full conversation with Bram Govaerts on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” by clicking HERE to hear about the importance of balancing emergency food relief with the restoration of food production in areas affected by armed conflict, how CIMMYT’s Hub model removes bottlenecks to encourage local innovation, and why the world can’t wait for the U.N. conventions to set ambitious goals for a sustainable future.
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Photo courtesy of Dwight Sipler, Unsplash
