UK partnership to support the uptake of new crop varieties by smallholder farmers, and advancements in agricultural and dissemination technologies

Food and nutritional security are major global, humanitarian concern. Currently one billion people, one sixth of the world's population, are undernourished. Projected population increase (reaching 9 billion in 2050), climate change, increased urbanisation, and the spread of crop pests and diseases add additional pressures on meeting global food demands. Achieving global food security will require the "sustainable intensification" of agricultural systems: producing more food, with less land and fewer inputs (e.g. water and chemical), while promoting the preservation of natural resources.

In developing countries the full realisation of the potential benefits of improved crop varieties and agricutural technological advancements is often not reached. Farmers often do not have access to quality seed of the new varieties, nor the agronomic information required for optimal production. In many developing countries, poorly functioning agricultural extension services are a major barrier to the implementation of advances in agricultural research and technologies. Adoption by smallholder farmers requires the implementation of suitable, community-based, farmer-led seed multiplication systems; methods of disseminating information about new varieties to ensure their uptake; and maximisation of production by smallholder farmers. These issues affect all crops which lack a strong formal seed system and are a bottleneck in achieving impact of outcomes from all public sector agricultural R&D.

Agri-Transfer is an interchange which pulls together the diverse and complementary expertise of three partner organisations to develop a workable and sustainable dissemination model for agronomic data collected on new crop varieties (using wheat as the test crop) to smallholder farmers in Kenya. The Agri-Transfer partnership includes the agricultural research institutions National Institute for Agricultural Botany (NIAB), Cambridge, UK and the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Njoro, Kenya, and two not-for-profit charitable development organisations, the Malaysian Centre for Commonwealth Studies (MCSC) and the Cambridge Malaysian Education and Development Trust (CMEDT).

As a pilot project Agri-Transfer will establish a wheat variety field trials and demonstration system in one of the four wheat growing regions in Kenya, Nakuru County. The project will work with a self-help, Farm Community-based Organisation (CBO) in Nakuru County, where farmers, under the direction of KARI and NIAB will run the wheat field trails. Use of an ICT-based platform, developed by MCSC/CMEDT, together with other methods currently used by NIAB and KARI, will be evaluated as methods of disseminating data obtained from the field trials to smallholder farmers.

Benefits to smallholder farmers

To date, one sixth's of the world population is unable to regularly access enough safe and nutritious food for an active and productive lifestyle. The main cause of food insecurity is poverty. Since the majority of the world's poorest people are smallholder farmers practicing in agriculture at a subsistence level, improving the productivity of these farmers is a pressing concern. Analysis of yield gaps, the differences between actual and potential yields obtained under particular agro-ecological conditions, indicates that just by applying existing agricultural technologies and knowledge farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa could double or treble on-farm productivity.

Agri-Transfer aims to develop a new model for the dissemination of information on improved wheat varieties, with the possibility to be scaled up for an initiative targeting a large number of farmers. The initial group of beneficiaries of Agri-Transfer are smallholder wheat farmers in Nakuru County, Kenya. Farmers will benefit directly by the opportunity to access information on new improved wheat varieties, including data on their performance under particular agro-ecological and agronomic conditions. This information is essential to allow farmers to make informed decisions about what they should grow on their farms and how they should grow it to maximise production. Smallholder farmers will also benefit indirectly from Agri-Transfer in two ways. (1) Agri-Transfer will be delivered with Community Based Organisations (CBOs) as key partners. Membership to farmers' groups is essential to increase the economic benefit that can be derived from selling excess production, as CBOs facilitate aggregating production, negotiating better sale prices and increasing links with other actors in the value chain. (2) Agri-Tranfer will demonstrate to smallholder farmers the value of investing in improved seeds and agricultural inputs for increasing returns from their land. This change in attitude is essential to make a shift from subsistence agriculture to farming as a business, and it will benefit other types of economic activities. Increased demand for seeds and inputs will ultimately also strengthen the national seed sector.

Benefits to the UK seed industry

Opening up agriculture in Africa to world markets through the growth of improved crop varieties and the uptake of advanced agricultural technologies would provide new commercial markets for the UK. NIAB's involvement in Agri-Transfer will provide opportunities to form new UK-Africa partnerships, providing opportunities for new project funding and identifying new agricultural markets and commercial opportunities, both for NIAB and the UK seed industry.