Icrisat big ideas partnership portfolio

Sciencewithahumanface
Developing
on-farm
practices and
technologies
Diversifying
farms
Introducing
processing
technologies
Breeding
higher
performing
crop varieties
Driving
market
development
Facilitating
assistance
to market
access
Approach for Adoption
Cross-cutting issues
Participatory approach and partnering – working side by side
Building capacity – at a national and local level
Integrating communications - to build awareness and share knowledge
Monitoring and evaluation – for feedback and adjustment
Policy support – work closely with government to encourage the needed policies
Integrating nutrition
Empowering women – women are consulted, involved and supported to lead
Sustai
nable Intensification
Analyzing
key problems
and
opportunities
Managing
soil and
water
Integrati
ng Social Dimensi
on
Building Agribusiness
es
ICRISAT’s holistic approach
to agricultural research for development
January 2014
About ICRISAT: www.icrisat.org
ICRISAT’s scientific information: http://EXPLOREit.icrisat.org

2 A concept note for
Ensuring nutritional security in rural India
Our Commitment
We innovate to help poor communities
in Africa and Asia:
₋₋ Fight hunger and poverty
₋₋ Reduce malnutrition
₋₋ Revitalize the environment
We work across the whole value chain and
have science-based solutions at all stages.
ICRISAT has specialized knowledge on
the drylands, which covers 55 countries
in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and are
inhabited by 2 billion people, 644 million of
whom are poor.
These regions are most vulnerable to climate
change with very little rainfall, degraded soils
and poor social infrastructure.
We have specialized skills on crops
of immense value to the nutrition and
economics of the semi-arid tropics – dryland
cereals (sorghum and millets) and grain
legumes (chickpea, pigeonpea and peanut).
The Solutions
We don’t bring just one part of the solution. By
analyzing key problems and opportunities, we
work along the whole value chain:
▪▪ Sustainable On-farm Intensification
₋₋ Managing soil and water
₋₋ Breeding higher performing crop
varieties
₋₋ Diversifying farms
₋₋ Developing on-farm practices and
technologies
▪▪ Building Agribusinesses
₋₋ Introducing processing technologies
₋₋ Facilitating assistance to market access
₋₋ Driving market development
What is unique about this approach?
▪▪ It is multidisciplinary, combining
social understanding with biophysical
advances and business.
▪▪ All solutions are science based and
continue to be monitored and evaluated
scientifically.
▪▪ It not only works at the different stages
of the value chain but can make the
linkages from farmer to agribusiness to
markets.
▪▪ We take it further than a value chain
approach – with an Inclusive Market-
Oriented Development (IMOD)
approach. This requires:
₋₋ being ‘inclusive’ of the stakeholders
in developing solutions, and ensuring
that all stakeholders, including the
smallholder farmers and the women,
benefit from the development.
₋₋ being market driven in the
developments moving the poor farmers
from subsistence to a commercially
oriented profitable business.
Our Capabilities
Multidisciplinary high class science
from natural resource management, genetics,
bioinformatics and phenotyping to economics and
social sciences.
On the ground in Africa and Asia
with offices in Kenya, Malawi Mali, Mozambique,
Niger, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and India.
Strong networks
as we work in partnership at all levels – local,
national, regional and international.
Participatory methods
have been developed and are used as part of
our work, involving the farmers through to the
government and private industry where change is
needed.
Recognized as independent
As an international non-profit organization that
has worked in Asia and Africa for over 40 years,
our scientific and independent credibility are well
founded.

BIGIDEAS
ICRISAT has identified the biggest hurdles and opportunities critical for the
development of agriculture and agribusiness in the drylands.
The drylands cover 40% of the world’s land, where one-third of the people depend
on agriculture and over 600 million of these people are among the poorest in
the world. Climate change is also making the drylands a tougher environment to
develop and survive.
Here are the ‘Big Ideas’ that can be life changing:
1. Climate resilient communities for improving rural livelihoods
2. Sustainable management of natural resources – a proven model
3. Dryland cereals – breeds for the future
4. Grain legumes – breeds for the future
5. Feed and fodder value chain development – mitigating shortages
6. A center of excellence in nutrition and food safety
7. Nutritional security reaching the rural communities
8. ICT agro-advisories – sustainable business models
9. Travelling Village Knowledge Fairs – for upscaling proven technologies
10. Empowering women through livelihood options
11. Identifying new opportunities for business and development
12. Innovation Hubs to empower smallholder farmers to improve their livelihoods
13. Global agribusiness incubation model
BIG IDEAS
for partnerships in the drylands
January 2014

Smallholder farmers are reliant mainly on rainfed areas.
With climate change – increasing variability in the rainfall intensity and unusual
heavy rainfall events followed by long dry spells – there is a need to build the
resilience of these rural communities.
There are solutions to reduce the vulnerability of the rural communities to impacts
of climate change.
We recommend
Location specific customized adaptive strategies developed through
participatory approaches.
Establish a climate change information network to empower the rural
communities using innovative knowledge delivery systems in the rural areas.
Build the capacity of different stakeholders for developing climate resilient
agriculture and enabling policies and institutions for scaling-up.
BIGIDEAS1 Climate resilient communities
for improving rural livelihoods
January 2014

Scientific solutions and proof of concept
Selected villages will be studied and climate adaptive
strategies developed, implemented and evaluated.
A proof of concept will be established by building
climate resilient communities.
The solutions will be context specific including:
▪▪ Taking into account the local catchment level,
including the multi-sectoral activities.
▪▪ Enhancing crop, soil, water and other inputs
use efficiency to increase production and
profits.
▪▪ Diversification of on-farm and other livelihood
options.
▪▪ Other methods for sustainable intensification
on-farm.
▪▪ Harnessing the power of new scientific tools
like ICT, GIS, simulation models and remote
sensing.
▪▪ Considering the whole value chain through to
processing and markets.
Approach
▪▪ Participatory development of solutions
that engage and empower the community.
▪▪ A consortium of different institutions
to harness the power of public-private
partnerships.
▪▪ Involvement of women and youth to build
sustainability of the interventions.
▪▪ Enabling institutions and policy guidelines
to support the science-based solutions.
Scaling up
The proof of concept for climate resilient
communities will be clearly defined models, sites of
learning and have an inventory of tested adaptation
and mitigation strategies.
Established information networks in one community
will be tapped for information sharing in other
communities.
Involvement
Support development of proof of concept for
selected communities.
Assist with the scaling up of a network of climate
resilient communities.
Contact
Suhas P Wani, Research Program Director (Acting),
Resilient Dryland Systems
Email: s.wani@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS2
 Be water neutral
 Rejuvenate the land
 Sustainable intensification of agriculture
 Inclusive of the smallholder farmer
This proven Bhoochetana* model, applied in India, is now being taken to Africa.
The achievements
Major boost in soil fertility and capacity to resist drought – through micronutrient fertilizers (Zinc,
Boron and Sulphur (Gypsum) and organic compost
Enough water, despite poor rains – with the use of agroforestry, dams, gullies and micro-irrigation
to conserve rainwater – make sustainable groundwater use and prevent soil runoff
Introduction of improved crop varieties suited to the environment, coping with climate change
and the markets.
Sustainable management of natural
resources – a proven model
January 2014

The results in Karnataka state, India in the first 4
years included:
20-66% crop yield increase
5.6 to 11%% rise in food production across the state
over 3 years as compared to stagnant growth in the 5
previous years
$1 invested = $3-14 return
3 million farmers over 3.7 million ha, made up to
$500 net gain per ha in one season
Total net benefits of $230 m
This innovative model has not only increased
agricultural productivity and incomes for the farmers
and the agricultural growth for the state but has
transformed the way the Department of Agriculture
thinks.
The approach
What made this successful included:
▪▪ On-farm improvements
- Assessing soil health through community
participatory and science-based stratified
sampling using GIS.
- Balanced fertilizer recommendations
based on area specific soil testing as
opposed to the previous blanket state-wide
recommendations.
- Diversifying crop farms to include
livestock for additional income and manure.
- Research experiments undertaken
in the presence of the full range of
team members from the Department
of Agriculture, State Agricultural
Universities, Department of Statistics and
Economics, farmers and scientists from
ICRISAT.
▪▪ Capacity building and knowledge sharing
Capacity building was undertaken with all
partners.
- Farmer field schools were conducted.
- Over 10,000 farmer facilitators and
45,000 lead farmers were trained to
give farmer-to-farmer demonstrations and
advice. They also serve as a link between
the government and the farmers and are
a way to deal with the weak extension
system.
- Farmer-to-farmer videos are now being
used for sharing knowledge further.
- A tablet-based extension system is also
being piloted for scaling up the knowledge
sharing
- Capacity building is being carried out
with all institutes involved to change
the mindset to focus on benefiting small
holder farmers and to take collective action
to achieve this.
▪▪ Partnering
- Strong support was achieved by partnering
with the government, farmer groups and
local community groups.
- Farmers are a key partner in the program
and needed to register to participate. This
ensured that efforts were demand driven
and in a model of ‘participatory research
for development’.
- A ‘consortium’ approach was set up to
involve institutes that generate and transfer
relevant knowledge. This helped in the
convergence of line departments.
- Public-private partnerships for extension
and farm inputs were set up by linking
farmer cooperatives with suppliers
of improved seeds, bio-fertilizers and
micronutrients. By bundling inputs with
knowledge, farmers in the remote rural
areas could be reached at a minimal cost.
• Empowerment of women in the
community
• Communication campaigns to build
enthusiasm
• Regular monitoring and evaluation
- This was undertaken by the high powered
state coordination committee with weekly
video conferences with all 30 districts
involved. There was transparency and open
evaluation across all the districts.
Involvement
Apply this proven model to specific sites or have it
up-scaled across a state or region.
Contact
Suhas P Wani, Acting Research Program Director
– Resilient Dryland Systems & Principal Scientist
(Watersheds); Email: s.wani@cgiar.org
*Bhoochetana means “rejuvenating the soil”. It was used to name a project led by ICRISAT’s Research Program
on Resilient Dryland Systems

BIGIDEAS3 Dryland cereals –
breeds for the future
▪▪ Grown by 33 million smallholder households in the drylands of Africa and Asia
▪▪ Sorghum is dietary staple of 500 million people, millets of 90 million people in
the drier areas of Africa and Asia.
▪▪ Grown in rural and marginal, often harsh environments with limited market
opportunities.
Dryland cereals like sorghum and millet are drought tolerant, often the only
food and fodder crops for smallholders in the dryland regions.
Highly nutritious, dryland cereals crops contribute to reduction in malnutrition.
They are easy to produce and has high multiple uses (food, fodder, biofuel,
beverage) – offering many livelihood opportunities for farmers and agribusiness
entrepreneurs.
Growth in demand for dryland cereals will be driven not only by population growth
but by new markets, such as increased demands by middle-to-upper classes for
health food, weaning foods for infant, and especially as livestock feed and fodder.
January 2014

Demand for cereals in the target regions is
forecast to increase by about 40% by 2020
(over the 2000 baseline). In the face of
drought and changing climate, improving
the resilience of sorghum and millets to
meet this demand is a must.
We are now working on crop improvement
products and associated technologies
for dryland cereals for over 11.8 million
hectares in Africa and Asia directly
benefiting 5.8 million smallholder
households with a total of 34 million
beneficiaries (including value chain
operators).
These benefits are not only via improved
food security and nutrition, but also through
opportunities to increase cash income by
way of off-farm sale of food, feed and fodder
to meet the demands of the increasing
urbanized population.
The problem and opportunity
Production of dryland cereals is constrained by
limited farmer access to seed of improved varieties,
as well as knowledge about them.
The degraded and low fertility soils often found in
dryland environments, as well as drought, are major
constraints, and research continues to focus on
improving the resiliency of new varieties and hybrids
to these harsh environmental realities.
Farmers need to learn about and adopt new
management practices, without which improved
varieties and hybrids usually have little or no
advantage over traditional cultivars.
Grain quality, its storability, and fodder quality are
important considerations to farmers, and can limit
the adoption and production of new cultivars.
Finally, pests and diseases can severely constrain
dryland cereal production.
We will elevate and strengthen our research for
development efforts to improve the resilience of
sorghum and millets in the face of drought and
changing climate.
While genetic tools are now available in breeding,
improving cultivars for complex constraints requires
a multi-discipline approach at a large scale.
Beyond the physical constraints of their harsh
ecologies, dryland cereals also face biotic stresses
that are difficult, if possible at all, to be addressed
through traditional methods.
Our dryland cereals R4D value chain
approach
1) We will use modern approaches to design
more resilient dryland cereals like sorghum
and millets that require key breeding targets for
specific environments. Here, we will need:
▪▪ phenotyping to dissect the genetics of critical
traits
▪▪ developing/accessing analysis and decision
support tools in modern breeding
▪▪ creating new cultivars that combine improved
resilience traits with improved productivity,
resistance to biotic stresses, and grain
qualities.
2) We will develop develop a platform to
create resilience trait – based on different
biotechnologies that will create traits not
available in existing germplasm.
The idea: Some of the biotic constraints that
sorghum and pearl millet face in their ecologies
do not have a game-changing solution from their
cultivated or wild genepool: they require the
creation of that resistance.
Involvement
Partner with us in developing dryland cereals for
the future and expanding the scale of our R4D
operations through investments in:
- large scale throughput phenotyping
- increasing size of network of testing
locations and the quality of data collection
- training future breeders
- integration and use of full potential of
genomics, physiology, modeling, biometrics
and informatics to enhance genetic gain
especially for drought tolerance
- a high throughput platform for generating
thousands of events and screening facilities
- exploring non-transgenic ways of creating
resistances.
Contact
Stefania Grando, Director, Research Program on
Dryland Cereals, ICRISAT.
Email: s.grando@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS4 Grain legumes –
breeds for the future
▪▪ 600 million of the world’s most vulnerable people depend on legumes for food
and fodder
▪▪ 200 million hectares of grain legumes are grown globally
▪▪ US$24 billion in market value at the farm gate per annum in the developing countries
Grain legumes are protein rich foods that balance cereal-based diets and are the
least resource demanding option to improve the nutrition of poor people.
Grain legumes supply up to 60% of daily protein intake for the poor in parts of sub-
Saharan Africa, and 13% for hundreds of millions of poor in South Asia.
Farmers both consume and sell grain legumes, benefiting from food and income gains.
Grain legumes can take their nitrogen from the air in place of fertilizer, contributing
enormously to sustainable intensification and raising food production.
With grain legumes’ large production and market, we are aiming for an integrated
approach to research for development (R4D) to ensure that current and future
generations of smallholder farmers and poor consumers will benefit.
We need to invest heavily in basic and strategic research, and involve innovative
research to chart new areas to enhance the genetic gain from crop improvement.
January 2014

Production of grain legumes is being displaced by
cereals, leading to higher legume prices and negative
nutritional impacts
Inadequate seed production systems and the lack of
access to seed by distant smallholder producers are
particular bottlenecks to the adoption of improved
varieties.
In some regions the per capita demand for
legumes is decreasing. As countries develop and
become wealthier, legumes confront competition
from other foods.
Grain legumes are also susceptible to climate change
– both drought and heat can severely limit their
productivity. Developing new resilient varieties is
urgently needed.
Overall demand for all grain legumes in low-income
food-deficit countries (LIFDC) is expected to double
from the current 30 million tons to 62 million
tons in 2050.
We need to elevate and strengthen our research for
development efforts to increase the productivity
and production particularly of chickpea, pigeonpea
and groundnut in the rainfed areas of Asia and sub-
Saharan Africa.
Our grain legumes R4D approach
1) We will use modern approaches to enhance
genetic gain to improve productivity of grain
legumes:
- genome sequencing
- generating large-scale genotypic
information by developing/ accessing
analysis and decision support tools in
modern breeding approaches.
- phenotyping for drought adaptation traits,
and high-throughput phenotyping for
diseases.
2) We will develop insect smart crop
production systems, particularly for
pigeonpea and chickpea, through the use of:
- transgenic approaches of insect
resistance, and
- introgressing insect resistance from wild
species using genomics-based approaches.
3) We will harness the potential of doubled-
haploid (DH) and heterosis approaches in grain
legumes – promising tools to develop new
high-yielding crop varieties of crops such as
chickpea, pigeonpea and groundnut.
These pro-poor technologies make possible
the selection of individuals with desirable gene
combinations and to propagate them as clones,
beneficial in developing countries, where farmers
would be able to save hybrid seed for the following
crop.
Involvement
Partner with us in advancing the development
of high-throughput platform and deployment of
modern breeding approaches in crop improvement
programs.
Contact
Rajeev K Varshney, Director, Research Program on
Grain Legumes, ICRISAT.
Email: r.k.varshney@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS5 Feed and fodder value chain
development – mitigating shortages
Both a problem and business opportunity: farming systems are unable to
meet the rising demand for feed and fodder due to the demand-driven livestock
revolution.
For example in India, there is a deficit of 24% dry fodder, 33% green fodder and 37%
concentrates and this deficit is further growing owing to the increasing demand for
milk and meat products.
A holistic approach is recommended, developing the whole value chain for
feed and fodder. This will range from breeding for feed/fodder to processing,
storage, policies and market access.
January 2014

Solutions that are science based
The value chain development will include:
▪▪ Breeding programs that focus on:
- dual-purpose cultivars with high fodder
quality
- high-tillering, fast growing, multi-
cut forages with high palatability and
digestibility
- water and nitrogen-use efficiency
- disease and pest resistance
- feed resources free from/with low HCN,
lignin, polyphenols, Oxalic acid, Aflatoxin
▪▪ Best-bet options for quality fodder production
and mechanization of production and
processing
▪▪ On-farm efficiencies and intensification
▪▪ Efficient utilization of common property
resources
▪▪ Fodder warehouses establishment
▪▪ Advocating subsidizing/custom hiring of the
machinery for fodder processing and better
utilization
▪▪ Reviewing quality assurance of animal feeds
▪▪ Encourage and facilitate decentralized small
scale business enterprises around feed and
fodder
▪▪ Strengthening linkages between various actors
– NARS-Milk Federations, Governments and
NGOs
Background on selected crops,
adaptation and feed value
Sorghum and Pearl Millet
Sorghum and pearl millet are among the important
dual-purpose and forage crops. Sorghum is a
prominent forage crop in India occupying 3 m
ha area out of total 8 m ha forage area in the
country. Therefore there is large private sector
interest in forage seed production and distribution.
High biomass production, high palatability and
digestibility, regeneration ability, drought tolerance
(sorghum and millet need less water than maize
per unit of biomass produced) and adaptability
to a range of climatic and soil conditions make
these crops most suitable for increasing the forage
production across the world. Besides, sorghum and
pearl millet are tolerant to salinity and heat. While
the fresh and dry stover have high digestibility, the
sweet sorghum bagasse based feed blocks are found
to be at par with commercial feed blocks terms of
animal intake and productivity.
Chickpea and Pigeonpea
Chickpea is a cool season crop grown on residual soil
moisture and highly responsive to applied inputs.
Its fodder is used as high protein fodder mixed
with cereal straw and is fed to the cattle/goats as a
nutrient-rich supplement augmenting the feed from
the main cereal source. Pigeonpea is an important
grain legume crop of rainfed agriculture. Owing to its
drought tolerance and soil fertility enrichment ability
it finds an important place in sustainable cropping
system. By virtue of fodder quality attributes such
as high nitrogen content and in vitro organic matter
digestibility coupled with higher vegetative growth it
augments excellently to mitigate fodder shortage in
semi-arid tropics.
Groundnut
Cultivated in more than 100 countries groundnut is
one of the major dual-purpose crops grown for its
haulms as well as for pods in dry tropics. The haulms
are rich in protein with high in vitro organic matter
digestibility. This makes groundnut a preferred dual
purpose crop. Further there is a high diversity for
traits related to its haulm quality as fodder and with
little or no trade-offs between pod yield and haulm
yield. Groundnut de-oiled cake (after extraction of
oil) is a prized concentrate feed for all classes of
livestock. Its low fiber and high protein contents
make it an even more valuable ingredient for poultry
rations.
Involvement
Invest in the feed and fodder value chain.
Contact
A Ashok Kumar, Senior Scientist (Sorghum Breeding),
E-mail: A.AshokKumar@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS6 A center of excellence in nutrition
and food safety
The safety, quality and nutritional value of the food we eat is of fundamental
importance to our health and well-being. Lack of the right amount of the vitamins,
minerals and other essential nutrients and safe food, affects physical and mental
growth and results in an overall negative impact on the society and economy.
Private food testing laboratories typically lack the flexibility to explore and innovate
new technologies and do not provide services to assist small to medium enterprises.
National research laboratories focus mainly on fundamental research and do not
address the agribusiness needs.
Export markets are often not accessible to small agribusinesses due to the lack of
affordable food testing services necessary to comply with statutory requirements of
importing countries.
A Center of Excellence in Nutrition and Food Safety is identified as a
critical need and opportunity – with the primary objective of developing
high-throughput, innovative and low cost testing protocols for achieving
nutritional security and food safety.
The Center of Excellence in Nutrition and Food Safety
The Centere of Excellence shall catalyze the availability of nutritious and safe foods through
advancements in four key areas:
1. Nutrition
▪▪ Development of high-throughput, innovative and low cost testing protocols
- Rapid screening protocols for nutrients, plant metabolites and bioactives shall be
developed and validated
- Rapid methods to assess in vitro bioavailability of micronutrients and phytochemicals will
be developed in order to validate the bioavailability of micronutrients.
- The rapid testing protocols shall be applied to assess and improve the nutritional status of typical
diets and food preparations of the poor
January 2014

▪▪ Development of new innovative processing
technologies and functional food products
- Develop innovative storage, cooking and
processing technologies to deliver nutritionally
enhanced diets and food products.
- This will include the development of
affordable therapeutic infant, maternal and
geriatric food formulations with enhanced
nutritional traits, addressing hidden hunger
and malnutrition, suitable for the poorer
communities.
- Development of functional food products that
can address different lifestyle diseases namely
diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
- Health claims of food products shall be
scientifically validated.
2. Food safety
▪▪ Affordable and food safety testing provided
- High-throughput, innovative and low-
cost testing protocols will be developed
and validated for screening of microbial
contaminants, mycotoxins, chemical
constituents (heavy metals, pesticide
residues etc.) and allergens.
- These tests will be set up so they
facilitate the compliance to domestic and
international regulations.
- They will also ensure food safety, especially
in the diets of the poor and malnourished.
- They will work with regulatory authorities
to be a proficiency testing provider in
countries where there are currently no
proficiency testing provider for food testing
laboratories, e.g. in India.
3. Policy support
▪▪ Guide governments and other agencies
on national and local schemes that target
the poor in regards to the food nutrition and
safety. Assist with formulating guidelines and
regulations to ensure nutritional security and
food safety.
▪▪ Serve as a national referral laboratory in
the areas of nutrition and food safety.
4. Promotion and capacity building
▪▪ Undertake advocacy with industry, farmers and
government in support of highly nutritious and
safe foods that target the poor.
▪▪ Provide open sharing of knowledge and
technical information.
▪▪ Recommend appropriate food recipes,
storage and cooking methods to enhance
nutritional value and safety.
▪▪ Capacity Building
▪▪ Conduct trainings to enhance knowledge
of nutrition and food safety and innovative
cooking and storage methods.
▪▪ Capacity building of technical staff involved in
the area of nutritional product development,
implementation of food safety regulations and
food testing laboratories.
▪▪ There will also be capacity building of field
staff involved in community-based nutritional
health/food safety improvement programs.
Facilitating establishment of a Center of
Excellence in Nutrition and Food Safety
in other countries
Set up and support can be provided by ICRISAT and
its Agribusiness and Innovation Platform which
has experience in working on value addition, food
processing, food safety and capacity building:
~ Establishing 22 agribusiness incubators in India
and more in Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and
Africa.
~ Setting up 5 food safety laboratories in Africa.
~ Training and consultancies for food processing
and agribusiness.
~ Researching across the whole value chain
incorporating the social and physiological
disciplines.
Outcomes and benefits
▪▪ Lead to more nutritious and safer diets of the
poor, contributing to overcoming malnutrition
and serious lifestyle diseases.
▪▪ Address lifestyle diseases through interventions
at the dietary level and advocacy.
▪▪ Facilitate networking between farmers,
researchers, and industry for efficient
knowledge transfer in the area of nutrition and
food safety.
▪▪ Facilitate new food processing and agribusiness
industries domestically and for export through
product development and food safety efforts.
Involvement
Support the establishment of a Center of Excellence in a
country or region, building a sustainable business model.
Contact
Kiran K Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Agribusiness
and Innovation Platform; E-mail: k.sharma@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS7 Nutritional security reaching
the rural communities
Malnutrition has been declared as the greatest single threat to the world’s
public health by UN’s Standing Committee on Nutrition.
Smallholder agriculture can play a strong role in reducing malnutrition in
resource-poor rural communities, through a broader partnership with the health,
nutrition and education sectors.
We recommend integrating nutrition and agriculture developments and working
from both the demand and supply side.
We need to mainstream nutrition into agricultural development. We can do
this by:
A. Growing nutri-resilient crops – crops that are highly nutritious as well as
better able to cope with drought and poor soil.
B. Incorporating nutrition needs along the whole agricultural value chain.
C. Cross-sectoral partnering forged with agriculture, health and education
sectors.
Young school children
in rural India eating
millet chappatis with
rice and vegetable
curry.
January 2014

According to the UN World Food Program, more than
900 million people in the world do not get the
right or nutritious food to eat.
About 50% of child deaths under the age of five in
developing countries are linked to undernutrition.
Malnutrition at an early age may lead to reduced
physical and mental development and also limits
capacity to learn.
Past agricultural advancement that has focused on the
quantity of food are often blamed for malnutrition.
Let’s start in the rural areas – of the 3 billion people
that live in rural areas (nearly half of the humanity),
about 2.5 billion are involved in agriculture and
1.5 billion (half of the rural area population) are
resource-poor smallholder farmers.
The solution
A. Grow nutri-resilient crops – crops that are
highly nutritious as well as better able to cope
with drought and poor soil. Identifying and
focusing on nutri-resilient crops of the future is
an important component.
B. Incorporate nutrition needs along the whole
agricultural value chain.
▪▪ Biofortification – breeding micronutrient-
rich crop varieties – using a combination
of conventional, genomics and molecular
breeding.
▪▪ Seed production and delivery systems for
dissemination to improve farmers’ knowledge
or access to seeds of improved varieties.
▪▪ On-farm crop and livestock diversity.
▪▪ Crop management interventions to
improve grain micronutrient concentration.
▪▪ Addressing major food safety issues such as:
₋₋ incorporate resistance to aflatoxins in
groundnut breeding program
₋₋ introduce on-farm and storage
practices that reduce the risk of
aflatoxin infections
₋₋ introduce to farmers, simple cost-
effective aflatoxin testing kits.
▪▪ Post-harvest processing and value
addition.
▪▪ Influencing policy to support nutrition
security.
▪▪ Educating and building demand for
nutritious foods.
C. Cross-sectoral partnerships forged with
agriculture, health and education sectors.
Engaging the right partners across agriculture,
health and education is essential to ensure a
sustainable impact on nutrition.
Taking a holistic approach to mainstreaming
nutrition will require multiple approaches,
ensuring the availability of nutritious food
through to the demand for more nutritious food.
ICRISAT can work with the public and private
sectors and be the independent catalyst to
make this happen.
The approach
Key to the success includes the following:
▪▪ Participatory approach – involving
stakeholders and beneficiaries, including
women, in the research ensuring they are
helping identify the needs and direct the
research priorities.
▪▪ Capacity building – working alongside the
national system to build local capacity and
ensure that initiatives are sustainable.
▪▪ Integrating communications – to build
awareness and share knowledge along the
whole value chain.
▪▪ Empowering women – past successes in
agricultural research for development have
shown the critical need to ensure women
are involved in programs and empowered
to take action. Nutritional programs in
particular will require women’s inputs to
provide direction as well as empowering
them to act on the recommendations.
Methods to achieve this will be important
to apply at all stages of the value chain.
▪▪ Monitoring and evaluation – is
important at all stages of the work to
ensure inputs to continually direct the
research and adoption efforts.
Involvement
Reduce malnutrition through agricultural research
and development to stimulate the whole
value chain – from developing, growing, and value
addition of nutri-resilient crops; biofortification,
breeding and disseminating micronutrient-rich
crop varieties; and partnering with stakeholders to
mainstream health, agriculture, nutrition education,
and women empowerment.
Contacts
CLL Gowda, Deputy Director General-Research,
E-mail: c.gowda@cgiar.org
Joanna Kane-Potaka, Director, Strategic Marketing
and Communication, E-mail: j.kane-potaka@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS8 ICT agro-advisories –
sustainable business models
The latest ICT will be used to bring affordable and appropriate precision
knowledge solutions and inputs to smallholder farmers.
Customized agro-advisory services will be provided. This will be done by:
Bringing
together
private and
public enterprises
Developing
new sustainable
business models
Connecting
the ICT
platforms and
the content
January 2014

This will lead to:
 Better on farm decision making
with timely and appropriate advice
and farm inputs (such as credit, seeds,
pesticides and fertilizers)
 Better access to markets and market
opportunities
 Better management of risks
(e.g. of climate, onfarm challenges and
market changes)
The problems that need addressing
Publicly funded agricultural extension systems played
a critical role during the green revolution leading
to sweeping efforts to transform farming methods.
However these systems are currently inadequate in
terms of infrastructure and human resources.
The need for such advisory services is still strong as
there are 500 million smallholder farms worldwide
and these farms produce about 80% of the food
consumed in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These
farmers are typically among the poorest people
and struggle with unproductive soils, poor access to
water, drought, little ability to invest, high risks and
more.
The advancement in ICT provides an opportunity to
provide agro-advisory services required and bridge
the technology divide for smallholder farmers.
ICT solutions are currently being implemented in
developing countries. However, there has been a
failure of financially sustainable business models.
The Approach
Setting up for sustainability is key for this initiative.
The approach will include:
Select crops and value chains to target
Identify and engage with private and public
partnerships
The private sector players will be recruited
on membership basis and the platform
will provide them a healthy competitive
environment to directly connect with the
end users.
Develop the business model
Connecting the ICT platforms that feed the
web and mobile devices with the content
relevant to farmers.
₋₋ Develop the integrated ICT platform
₋₋ Channel the information and
knowledge through the ICT platform
Promote the agro services with the
smallholder farmers through the private
and public partnerships.
The technology platforms and content
development
Existing proven platforms will be built into one
access point.
These platforms have been pilot tested by ICRISAT in
3 experimental hubs.
The platform supports tablet, smart phone and
computers.
The modules consist of a variety of information and
input delivery services. such as:
Soil health
Crop knowledge base
Improved farm management videos
Farmer-field-crop record database
Experts database
Buy and sell virtual transaction platform
Credit and insurance options:
Features include:
- Report generation such as market
intelligence and intelligent decision support
system for improving productivity and
profitability.
- Delivery through voice messages in 16
categories including:
weather . market . crop information .
government schemes . nutrition . health
- Local language capabilities
Involvement
Be an investor and catalyst to developing the
business model that can be implemented globally.
Or support implementation in specific regions with
customized agro-services.
Contact
G Dileepkumar, Global Leader, Knowledge Sharing
and Innovation
E-mail: G.Dileepkumar@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS9 Travelling Village Knowledge Fairs –
for upscaling proven technologies
We have over 40 years of scientific solutions developed and tested with farmers,
national systems and agribusinesses.
We want to make a quantum leap in impact on moving people out of poverty by
significantly upscaling these solutions.
To do this we can create traveling knowledge fairs
aimed at producers and consumers
traveling to villages annually
based on farmer to farmer and business to business knowledge sharing.
January 2014

Village Knowledge Fairs
These fairs are part of campaigns that are based on:
▪▪ Targeted marketing campaigns aimed at both
producers and consumers.
▪▪ Linking with state government, farmer
associations, community groups, finance
agencies and private industry.
▪▪ Identifying the technologies most relevant for
each state/region that are proven, available and
ready to be upscaled.
▪▪ Identifying and involving the necessary support
for technologies. This may include seed
supplies, smaller packaging, microfinancing etc.
▪▪ Developing a marketing plan for each state/
region. This can include a traveling roadshow
for farmers (targeting women as well as men),
via:
- farmer to farmer video messages
- conducting training courses based on
farmer-to-farmer and business-to-business
- using mass media for further
communicating the messages.
What will be offered
▪▪ Solutions to increase farm productivity, such as:
- High-performing crop varieties
- Soil and water management practices
- On-farm management practices
▪▪ Agribusiness developments, such as:
- Processing options
- Linkages to market information
▪▪ Information and demonstrations on nutrition
and products
▪▪ Advice to help villages set up their own mini
incubator platforms that facilitate sharing of
knowledge.
Management of the campaign
A brand will be built for the fairs.
The village knowledge fairs will become regular
events building interest and awareness.
Monitoring and evaluation will be undertaken
to track the effectiveness of the campaigns and
feedback for continual development.
Involvement
Take joint ownership of this initiative with ICRISAT
and be an integral part of the branding of the fairs.
Support can also be garnered through:
- Village-level farmer fairs
- Capacity building of farmer facilitators
- Village level nutrition awareness
- Setting up of local farming and agribusiness
incubators
Contact
Joanna Kane-Potaka, Director, Strategic Marketing
and Communication, E-mail: j.kane-potaka@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS10 Empowering women
through livelihood options
Women are far more likely than men to channel their income from agriculture
into the nutrition, health and education of their children.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN-FAO),
tackling gender differences could increase agricultural output by as much as 4%
each year, and lift an estimated 100 million people out of poverty.
We can make changes now through livelihood options for rural women.
Improved
child
education
Increase
income
Empower
them
Create
agriculture
and
agribusiness
opportunities
for women
Build
their
capacity
Increase
their
livelihood
options
Educate
them about
nutrition
Next generation
benefits
Better
family
nutrition
January 2014

Even the farmers and their families do not have
enough to eat.
If you are worried about having enough to eat,
you are not concerned with nutrition levels.
If you do not know how you will survive
this year, you are not going to invest in the
condition of the soil for next year.
Children are only sent to school if there is
enough income that season.
There is a cycle among livelihoods, education and
health.
We know that engaging and empowering women is
critical in making a positive change within this cycle.
Rural women are the poorest in the world. The
number of rural women living in poverty has
doubled since the 1970s
Women farmers in developing countries are 20-30%
less productive than men.
This is because women do not have the same access
to key assets.
In Africa, for instance, women own just 1% of
the agricultural land, receive only 7% of available
extension services, and are able to access less than
10% of all agricultural credit.
Women are generally responsible for the food and
nutrition of the family.
Health is typically treated as a separate issue and is
not integrated into agriculture and rural livelihood
options.
Women are more vulnerable to discrimination and
social mistreatment.
If we can close the gender gap in rural areas we
can:
- Produce more food in developing countries
by 2.5 to 4%.
- Reduce the number of hungry people in the
world by 100 to 150 million people.
- Build more businesses.
- Have healthier future generations.
So how do we change things?
The focus is to implement agricultural and
agribusiness solutions for women that lead to better
and sustainable livelihoods.
The approach
1) Participatory analysis and solution building at
village level
- Bring together the women and the broader
community in a village, the players along
the whole value chain (e.g. traders and
processors) and scientific and business
experts.
- Analyse the barriers and opportunities
- Provide nutrition and health education
- Develop solutions together that are science
based and owned by the community
2) Implement the solutions. This can include:
- Training the women
- Giving access to needed assets
- Creating/strengthening self-help groups
- Building knowledge on nutrition and
health. This will include understanding
cultural norms and how to manage these,
food options and social interventions
to overcome malnutrition, and other
practices such as water, sanitation and
healthcare.
3) Continually monitor the approach,
developments and impacts.
Key for this approach:
It is based on sound diagnostic research and
incorporates strong scientific knowledge to
develop solutions and continues with scientific
backing in implementing and monitoring the
solutions.
It brings together health, education, livelihoods
and food security in a new and powerful way.
How you can be involved
Sponsor the whole program and be a global leader.
Engage with the wider general public by encouraging
their involvement to:
- sponsor a village;
- sponsor a women’s Self-Help Group; or
- sponsor a woman to run a business (through
training and providing assets).
Contact
Cynthia Bantilan, Director, Research Program on
Markets, Institutions and Policies
Email: c.bantilan@cgiar.org

BIGIDEAS11 Identifying new opportunities
for business and development
For almost 40 years ICRISAT has had investigators that live in villages in India
collecting in-depth data on the village dynamics, issues and actions. This has
been supported by a team of economists, other social scientists and business
modelers. This unique data set and strong team can be leveraged to identify agri-
business and development opportunities.
What can be achieved
By tapping into the village dynamics data, we can:
▪▪ Facilitate new business opportunities for the private sector to capitalize on,
that cater to the needs of the farmers and rural communities.
This will include strengthening the capacity of the private sector in using this
village dynamics data and knowledge bank to identify needs and business
opportunities.
▪▪ Facilitate development initiatives particularly where public-private-
community partnerships are needed and develop the implementation
modalities.
This will include strengthening the public sector capacity in the use of social
science data and insights from the villages for evidence-based decision making
and formulating pro-poor policies.
January 2014

The Village Dynamics data
This dataset is the longest ever time series panel
data with nearly 40 years of data collected by full
time investigators who live in the villages. It has
the most in-depth understanding of any village
level dynamics. It also includes the first and only
ever collated meso-level data in India. It also has
household and district level insights. The data covers:
Demographics
Crop production (inputs and outputs)
Livestock production (inputs and outputs)
Asset ownership
Consumption expenditure
Employment and wages
Land and soil
Market prices
Transaction
Rainfall
Gender disaggregation
Nutrition aspects
Gender empowerment factors
And more…
Identifying business and development opportunities
Deep insights of farmers’
needs and problems
which can be solved through public/private
partnerships
Knowledge Bank and clearing house
on village agriculture and emerging business opportunities, set up as an on-line portal
Deep insights of private sector
interests & needs
for information, knowledge and data for the
development of business proposals
The data warehouse, popularly known as the Village
Dynamics Studies Knowledge Bank, is an online
repository of panel data with user friendly data
retrieval system and online analytical processing
(OLAP) features. It is the first of its kind in the world
for management of rural household survey data,
providing online access to panel data and analytical
reports. It gives the users a number of options like
downloading Raw Data, Summary Reports and User
Defined Reports.
The Knowledge Bank integrated long-term Village
Level Studies panel dataset collected by ICRISAT for
the period 1975 to 2008 and data collected jointly
by ICRISAT and partners from 42 villages across India
and Bangladesh for the period 2009 to 2011.
Involvement
Select a region to implement or incorporate this
approach into all the locations of interest.
South Asia (India and Bangladesh) will be the initial
target region. Lessons from South Asia can then be
articulated for other parts of Asia and Africa.
Contact
Approach
The approach to identify and facilitate business and development initiatives is as follows:
Catalyst for stakeholder
partnering and support
Organize dialogues to increase interaction
between agricultural researchers, government
officials and private companies to increase
awareness about new opportunities and
actions required to realize
identified opportunities
Capacity building
of the private sector companies and public
sector organizations through face-to-face and
online training programs for:
- the use of village dynamic data for the
development of innovative business propositions
- database management and Knowledge Bank for
understanding key performance indicators and
evidence-based decision making.

BIGIDEAS12 Innovation Hubs to empower smallholder
farmers to improve their livelihoods
Smallholder farmers are very often disadvantaged from the larger development
process due to challenges of access – infrastructure, knowledge and market access
– and consequently caught in a vicious cycle of low investment, low risk taking ability,
low productivity and poor markets, and therefore low incomes.
The opportunity lies in supporting and empowering the smallholder farmers through
Innovation Hubs.
This is a combination of
▪▪ Innovation Platforms which bring together players along the value chain to
share issues and opportunities; and
▪▪ Incubation Hubs that assist and mentor entrepreneurs through new business
investments, supporting them during the start-up highest risk phase.
January 2014

How this works
combination of approaches that will significantly
build the livelihoods of smallholder farmers with a
much higher rate of success.
Implementation
The Innovation Hubs will initially be run as pilots in
25 hubs. Monitoring and evaluation will be carried
out throughout gathering lessons learned, and
ensuring that critical factors for success are adopted.
Plans are for 100 hubs in year 2 and major scaling up
to 1,100 hubs by year 5.
ICRISAT’s role will be to:
- facilitate the setting up of the Innovation
Hubs;
- support with the running of these hubs;
- ensuring the community is empowered in
the process;
- conduct monitoring and evaluation of the
process and its effectiveness; and
- undertake research to support business
initiatives and share scientific, market and
policy knowledge and expertise.
The Innovation Hubs will be self-sustaining through
a combination of community ownership and private
sector investments in a market-driven production
approach.
Involvement
Support an Innovation Hub and the research behind it.
Help grow these on a large scale.
Contact
INNOVATION HUB
Innovation Platforms
Linking the private sector,
government and communities
for identifying business
issues and opportunities
Incubation Hubs
A safety net and support
for new business
initiatives
Innovation Platforms bring together private sector,
government and the community – each partner
playing a complimentary role along the value chain.
There is vested or shared vision for partnerships.
Facilitating discussions through the innovation
platform will assist to:
▪▪ Link the farmers closer to the markets
▪▪ Identify market issues and opportunities
▪▪ Forge multi-disciplinary partnerships
▪▪ Develop business models/market linkages
▪▪ Identify evidence-based policy change support
that is needed.
Incubation Hubs complement and integrate with
the innovation platforms as they assist with the
implementation of business initiatives. They are a
safety net at the highest risk, early set up phase of
business development. This is important to help
farmers manage risks and enable them to invest in
new initiatives to grow and advance.
The Incubation hub provides:
▪▪ Customized market and business knowledge
▪▪ Assistance with access to inputs like
technologies and credit
▪▪ Protection/risk management at a viable cost
until scale is achieved
▪▪ Links to the value chain players
▪▪ Influencing required policies.
Many of these support activities are provided
through the network of the Innovation Platform
as well as being customized and accessed
through the Incubation Hub added expertise.
This approach brings together two proven initiatives
(Innovation Platforms and Incubation Hubs) in a
new and complementary way. This is a powerful

BIGIDEAS13 Global agribusiness incubation model
We see a huge need and value in fostering agribusiness entrepreneurship
in developing countries. To take this even further, we see an opportunity to
provide the connections to the global markets, for these entrepreneurs.
This can be achieved by:
Setting up agribusiness incubators in developing countries
Linking these agribusiness incubators to provide access to the knowledge,
technology, connections and markets in other countries.
January 2014

Problems and opportunities
There is a need to further develop the
agricultural value chains in developing countries,
to improve food and livelihood security and
economic growth.
This will also open opportunities for entrepreneurs
to take their products and technologies to the
market globally.
Small entrepreneurs in developing countries struggle
with less access to the needed resources, assets,
technologies, expertise and market information and
access.
Agribusiness entrepreneurship opens opportunities
for new businesses as well as for smallholder farmers
to build closer business link with the market and be a
stronger player in the value chain.
The solution
ICRISAT has already a proven model for
agribusiness incubators through the experience
of setting up 22 agribusiness incubators in India,
11 in Africa and others in Nepal, Philippines, and
Sri Lanka.
These are self-sustaining incubators set up through
private-public partnerships.
To scale up this model it is recommended to:
Set up agribusiness incubators in
developing countries
This will include significant expansion of the
number of incubators to reach a critical mass in
Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The incubators will be set up through private-
public partnerships with ICRISAT hand
holding the process of setting up and operating
in a network to form a Global Agri-Business
Incubators Network.
The incubators nurture and mentor
entrepreneurs, providing technical, business
and market information, as well as knowledge
on the access to credit and partners.
Link these agribusiness incubators
to provide access to the knowledge,
connections and markets in other
countries.
Linking the incubators across regions and
countries will allow knowledge and
technology sharing. This will be the channel
for small agribusiness entrepreneurs to grow
and tap other markets.
This is a technology transfer model that allows
two-way flow of knowledge and technologies,
for faster scaling up and building more
profitable businesses.
Expected outcomes
• Better entrepreneurship, enhanced technology
transfer and development of better market-
relevant agro-technologies for entrepreneurs in
developing nations.
• Enabling farmers to become a part of the value
chain and enhance their livelihood means.
• There will be a special focus on including
women farmers and agribusiness
entrepreneurs.
• Opening up of new avenues of partnership with
various public and private sector development
agencies/organizations.
Involvement
Be a partner in setting up agribusiness incubators.
Be a partner in expanding/strengthening this Global
Agri-Business Incubator Network, and contribute in
the scaling-up efforts to enhance productivity of the
agriculture sector.
Contact
Kiran K Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Agribusiness
and Innovation Platform; E-mail: k.sharma@cgiar.org

Icrisat big ideas partnership portfolio

Icrisat big ideas partnership portfolio

More Related Content

What's hot

Viewers also liked

Similar to Icrisat big ideas partnership portfolio

More from cropreg

Recently uploaded

Icrisat big ideas partnership portfolio