Presentation hold by Girma Tesfahun Kassie, Researcher Socioeconomics Programme at CIMMYT, Zimbabwe, as part of the second panel of the 30th edition of the Brussels Briefing on “Agricultural resilience in the face of crisis and shocks", organized by CTA in collaboration with the ACP Secretariat, the EC/DEVCO, Concord, and IFPRI on 4th March 2013. More on: http://brusselsbriefings.net/

1. Brussels Briefing n. 30
Agricultural Resilience in the Face of Crises and Shocks
4th March 2013
http://brusselsbriefings.net
Drought-resilient crops and resilience systems of
benefit to small-scale farmers
GirmaTesfahun Kassie, Researcher, Socioeconomic
Programme, CIMMYT, Zimbabwe

2. Drought Tolerant Maize and Coping
with Agricultural Risk in Sub-Saharan
Africa
Girma T. Kassie, Tsedeke Abate, Jill E Cairns,
Kai Sonder, Bekele Shiferaw

3. Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa
(SSA)
• Inherently vulnerable and risk
prone Number of poor (<2 USD d-1) in maize
growing areas
• Downside risk rural
communities face emanates
from both expected and
unexpected deviations from
the norm in one or more of
– environmental factors,
– institutions and policies, and
– individual or group level
circumstances.

4. Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa
• The most important downside risk:
– production risk manifested through
unpredictably variable agricultural
yield
• This risk is enormously enhanced in
SSA due to the uncertainty
surrounding rainfall in terms of
– frequency
– temporal and spatial distribution
– intensity of drought

5. Drought risk
Nature Climate Change (2011) 1, 42-45.
For every degree day above 30 C, yield is
reduced by 1.7 % under drought (compared to
1% under optimal conditions)

6. What does the future hold?
Maximum temperature changes - 2050 Annual rainfall differences (%)-2050
Tmax difference
(oC)
(19 GCMs, A2 scenario)
Advances in Agronomy (2012) 144, 1-58

7. Potential contribution of improved
technologies
• Improved varieties and management
options have offset yield losses by ~40%.
• Drought and heat tolerant maize varieties
will play a fundamental role.
• Drought tolerance maize is of enormous
global importance, which virtually no crop
or farmer in the world can afford to be
without.
Nature Review Genetics 2,815-822

8. What are CIMMYT and partners doing?
• Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa
– initiated in 2006 in 13 countries
• Progress to date Hybrids OPVs Commercial
– 55 drought tolerant
hybrids and 54
drought tolerant OPV
maize varieties
released
Performance of new varieties in farmers’ fields
relative to most popular maize varieties in
Southern Africa

9. Facilitating farmers access to
improved varieties
80
70
70
60 55
1000 MT
50
41
40
29
30
19
20
9
10
1 3
0
2013
2009
2014
2015
2010
2016
2011
2012
Seed production of improved maize varieties

10. Expected benefits of drought tolerant maize
• Benefits estimated in terms of economic gains from
increasing maize yields and the economic benefits from
reduced year-to-year variability in yields
• 532 – 870 M USD
• 100% replacement of old varieties with drought tolerance
maize would increase income by 0.9 – 1.5 billion USD (with
most of the benefit in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe)
• Largest gains accrue in the 0-20% PFS zones
• Risk benefits important part of total (up to 30%)
• Highest poverty reduction in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Nigeria
(more than 4 M people out of poverty)
• 95% return in 8-9 main countries (especially Nigeria, Kenya
and Malawi)

11. Household level drought risk management
• Risk management is part of regular farm management
activities of farmers
– manifested through selection of enterprises and
allocation of their resources.
• The way farmers choose their enterprises and allocate their
resources explain the intricacies of risk perception and risk
efficient farm management.
• Comprehensive understanding of risk perceptions and the
resultant decisions is crucially important.
• Examples of resource allocations based on expectations:

12. Land allocation to crops under different levels of drought
stress
Less stressed Highly stressed
Optimal Drought Optimal Drought
Crop stress stress
Maize 6.16 2.61 5.51 7.50
Sorghum 37.60 21.67 72.70 38.30
Tef 22.95 28.72 12.56 30.00
Chickpea 2.51 13.84 4.30 11.70
Haricot bean - - 4.93 12.50
Lentil 4.93 8.88 - -
Faba bean 4.72 3.39 - -
Field pea 5.75 6.40 - -
Wheat 7.18 4.44 - -
Barley 3.65 3.26
12
Emmer wheat 4.54 6.79

13. Land allocation vis-à-vis risk expectation in
Malawi
Yield < Yield > Fertilizer Fertiliser Credit
Maize type Decision normal normal accessible inaccessible accessible
Local variety Decrease area 1.34 0.67 0 12.08 0
Same area 57.7 63.76 34.23 79.87 42.28
Increase area 40.3 35.57 65.77 8.05 57.72
N 149 149 149 149 149
OPV Decrease area 0 2.27 0 15.91 0
Same area 31.8 59.09 27.27 70.45 27.27
Increase area 68.2 38.64 72.73 13.64 72.73
N 44 44 44 44 44
Hybrid Decrease area 8.62 0 1.72 24.14 1.72
Same area 51.7 51.72 22.41 67.24 27.59
Increase area 39.7 48.28 75.86 8.62 70.69
N 58 58 58 58 58

14. Land allocation vis-à-vis risk expectation in
Zambia
Yield < Yield > Fertilizer Fertiliser Credit
Maize type Decision normal normal accessible inaccessible accessible
Local variety Decrease area 50.6 0.6 3 35.2 0.6
Same area 34.3 18.5 11.6 62.7 25.7
Increase area 10 79.7 85.1 1.8 72.8
N 335 335 335 335 335
OPV Decrease area 69.3 0.6 4.1 76.3 0.9
Same area 18.7 9.5 7 13.3 15.5
Increase area 10.8 88.3 88 9.2 81.6
N 316 316 316 316 316
Hybrid Decrease area 65.1 0.9 7.8 75.2 1.5
Same area 21.2 9 1.8 14.3 12.8
Increase area 12.5 89 90.1 10.1 84.8
N 335 335 335 335 335

15. Conclusions
• Drought and the negative risk associated with it will always be a
bottleneck to maize production, particularly in SSA.
• Drought is unavoidable - the focus shall be on adapting to the
patterns in moisture level and coping mechanisms for erratic
scenarios.
• In designing and implementing interventions that aim at
contributing to the risk coping ability of farmers, it is essential to
take into account heterogeneity within the farming communities.
• Drought tolerant maize varieties are being developed and would
play a key role in enhancing the resilience smallholder farmers in
SSA.
• Research so far has shown yield gains are being made in maize on
farmers’ fields in SSA.
• That is a good news!

16. THANK YOU SO MUCH!