In a novel application of a CIAT computer tool called FloraMap, researchers have mapped
out how future climate change will likely affect the distribution of wild peanuts in their
region of greatest genetic diversity, South America. The resulting scenarios paint a
precarious future for most of the 18 species analyzed.
The findings have major implications for efforts to protect wild peanuts in natural
habitats and, by extension, for the future availability of wild genes for breeding
programs. Wild peanuts possess significant disease resistance and other useful traits that
breeders could transfer to their more susceptible cultivated cousins.
When it comes to migration to new ecological niches, wild peanuts (comprising 68 known
species in the genus Arachis) are exceedingly slow. In contrast with plants whose seeds
are scattered by wind, rain, and birds, the propagation of wild peanuts takes them no more
than about 1 meter per year. The main reason is that their fruit grows underground. This
rather sedentary reproductive behavior makes them highly vulnerable to climate change. If
they cannot adapt by moving, then they face extinction.
The research team, composed of scientists from CIAT and the International Plant Genetic
Resources Institute (IPGRI), obtained temperature and rainfall information for South
America, generated by a climate change model called HADGCM.
These data—estimates for the period 1961-1990 and predictions for 2041-2070—were
mapped onto the smaller-scale grid used by FloraMap. The geographic coordinates of the
sites where specimens of the 18 wild species have been previously collected were then
input into FloraMap. This allowed the projected distributions for the two time periods,
past and future, to be mapped and compared.
A key pattern the team was looking for was distribution overlaps, climatic zones where
wild peanut species potentially grew in the late 20th century and would likely continue to
survive in the mid-21st century. For three of the 18 species, overlaps were significant,
suggesting their chances of survival are high. In four cases the model predicted
significant reductions in and fragmentation of distribution. The really disturbing finding
was that for each of the remaining 11 species, there was no overlap. Without human
intervention these species are likely to die out.
Apart from climate change, wild peanut habitats are also threatened by human
encroachment and industrial development. For example, in southeastern Bolivia, thought to
be the center of origin of the cultivated peanut, construction of a gas pipeline through a
wilderness area will probably be accompanied by an influx of pioneer farmers and
livestock. Cattle in particular pose a major risk, since they have a strong preference for
wild peanuts and tend to eradicate them through grazing.
When David Williams, a wild peanut expert with IPGRI, learned of the pipeline project,
he and colleagues began planning a rescue expedition to collect wild species with Bolivian
scientists. "Finding the wild species that originally parented the domesticated
peanut, A. hypogaea, would be a major breakthrough for crop improvement," says
Williams. "The wild progenitors could serve as genetic bridges for transferring
disease resistance from other wild species to the domesticated
A. hypogaea by means of conventional breeding. This would enable peanut farmers to cut
costs, increase yields, and better protect the environment by reducing pesticide
applications," he notes.
But unfortunately, a complex controversy recently erupted in Bolivia over compensation
for environmental damage due to pipeline construction. Local groups, hearing news of the
planned peanut collection mission, perceived it to be yet another assault on the
environment rather than the protective measure it was conceived to be. In the hot
political atmosphere, the international team has been unable to obtain a collecting
permit.
Even so, a Bolivian NGO, Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (Friends of Nature
Foundation), is using the modeling results to plan conservation of the wild relatives of
peanut as well as of other crops. In addition, these results should provide Bolivian
decision makers with compelling new evidence of the importance of conserving globally
important plant genetic resources.
Fortifying beans and cassava
After several decades of success in boosting crop yields, plant breeders around the
world are now targeting their skills on a major and growing international health threat:
micronutrient deficiencies in the human diet. At CIAT researchers are investigating the
iron and zinc content of common beans and beta-carotene (the precursor of vitamin A) in
cassava. Fortifying these two crops with essential micronutrients through breeding is seen
as a powerful way to improve the health of vast numbers of poor people at low cost.
The work at CIAT is part of a collaborative study, funded by Danish International
Development Assistance (Danida) and involving four Future Harvest centers, that examines
the potential for plant breeding to overcome micronutrient deficiencies. Based on the
promising results so far, researchers are planning an expanded initiative that will
include another four centers. The new project will bring together specialists in plant
breeding, genomics, human nutrition, and food policy to develop new varieties that help
combat micronutrient deficiencies among the poorest people in the tropics. CIAT will
coordinate the plant breeding across seven centers, while the International Food Policy
Research Institute (IFPRI) will coordinate work on nutrition and policy.
High iron and zinc in beans
"Nutrient deficiencies drain the health, stamina, intelligence, and productive
capacities of poor people," says CIAT bean breeder Steve Beebe. For example,
iron-deficiency anemia affects nearly 2 billion people worldwide. In young children it
impairs physical and cognitive development and immune response to disease. And in pregnant
women, it’s linked to higher risk of illness and death as well as to major health
threats to their fetuses and newborns.
Beebe and colleagues have analyzed CIAT’s core bean collection—more than
1,000 samples covering various classes of common beans. The aim is to get a better idea of
the genetic basis and variability of micronutrient content. Findings show the quantity of
iron differs markedly within and among bean types, with an average of 55 parts per million
(ppm). Zinc follows a similar pattern, averaging 35 ppm.
Results of preliminary experiments reveal several patterns and characteristics that
favor success for a bean breeding strategy and point researchers in the right direction:
- It appears that concentrations of iron, zinc, and other minerals in beans are
genetically correlated. So, selecting for high iron content, for example, would
automatically provide the added benefit of bean seeds with more zinc.
- Beans selected for high mineral micronutrient content can be expected to retain that
trait across different growing environments. This bodes well for new fortified varieties
having geographically wide impact.
- Mineral content is unlikely to conflict with consumer preference traits like grain size
and color. Since micronutrient fortification would be invisible, bean eaters would not
have an obvious reason to shun new varieties.
The bottom line, says Beebe, is that there appears to be enough genetic variability in
common beans to allow breeders to improve their iron content by up to 80 percent and their
zinc by up to 40 percent. The challenge now is to incorporate the necessary genes into the
bean types that interest farmers without losing valuable traits like high yield and
drought tolerance. To this end CIAT bean scientists are now identifying molecular markers
linked to the half dozen or so genes responsible for high mineral content. Molecular
marker technology will also help speed up selection of superior plants.
Carotene-rich cassava
Worldwide, between 140 million and 250 million children under 5 suffer from vitamin A
deficiency. Like iron deficiency, this tends to weaken the immune system. And in severe
cases it causes irreversible blindness.
The leaves and, to a lesser extent, the roots of some cassava varieties contain
significant concentrations of beta-carotene (vitamin A) and ascorbic acid (vitamin C).
Recent CIAT studies suggest that high beta-carotene concentrations also slow the
deterioration of roots after harvest. This means better storability and greater food
security.
The double benefit of root beta-carotene, combined with the fact that root processing
before consumption tends to make its vitamin C unstable, has led CIAT to concentrate on
enhancing root beta-carotene. A major consumer-related problem to resolve, though, is that
carotene-rich roots tend to be yellow or yellowy orange. While in some parts of Africa
people like this hue of cassava, the general preference in most countries is for white
roots.
Hernán Ceballos, manager of CIAT’s cassava project, notes that several strategies
are being pursued simultaneously to enhance the vitamin A content of cassava for regions
where the crop is important and vitamin A deficiency is severe.
First, yellow cassava varieties from Latin America are being crossed with African
varieties resistant to cassava mosaic disease, a major threat in Africa. The resulting
germplasm can then be distributed in areas where yellow roots are preferred. The research
is being done jointly with the Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical
Agriculture (IITA).
Second, researchers are trying to break the genetic linkage between root yellowness and
high beta-carotene content. This involves crossing white and yellow cassava varieties and
then selecting progeny that are less yellow but have good beta-carotene content.
The third and longer term strategy involves genetic transformation—"cut and
paste," as Ceballos calls it. CIAT scientists will use molecular markers to pinpoint
the few genes that act together to produce good root beta-carotene. These genes will then
be cloned, biologically packaged, and transferred to current varieties that appeal to
farmers and consumers. "With this strategy," notes Ceballos, "we’ll
improve the nutritive value of already successful varieties, thus bypassing many of the
steps involved in lengthy conventional breeding."
Biosafety: Progressing with caution
As the operator of a major agricultural biotechnology program, CIAT observes the
highest standards of biosafety. Strict enforcement prevents experimental genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) from accidentally entering the natural environment of Colombia,
our host country.
Today, there is much public debate—and confusion—over GMOs, namely organisms
that have had foreign genes inserted into their DNA through genetic engineering. A key
concern is that genetically modified plants may interbreed with the same or similar
species or wild relatives
—a process known as geneflow—thereby transferring foreign genes and disrupting
the ecosystem. Geneflow, a naturally occurring process, has been an important part of crop
evolution. So, the concern is not about geneflow itself but about the possible
consequences of introducing genes that are not present in the genome of a given species.
CIAT has been experimenting with transgenic methods since the early 1990s. It sees the
technology as one way to overcome inherent difficulties in conventional breeding of crops
grown by poor farmers. "We look for the most practical and safe method to improve
crops," says Aart van Schoonhoven, CIAT’s director of genetic resources
research. Transgenics, he says, is just one of several options for accelerating the
diffusion of high-quality germplasm to farmers.
CIAT’s Biosafety Committee has been operating since 1991 in close collaboration
with the Colombian government. On the one hand, representatives of two public Colombian
scientific agencies are members of the committee, thus ensuring national perspectives in
our biosafety work. On the other hand, CIAT has provided advice to the government on the
formulation of national biosafety regulations for GMOs. And it recently organized
biosafety training for Colombian and Latin American researchers and seminars for
journalists.
The Center also conducts research on biosafety issues. In 2000, Germany’s Federal
Ministry of Cooperation and Economic Development (BMZ) approved a collaborative project to
evaluate potential geneflow in two crops, beans and rice.
Gene-transfer work at CIAT has moved ahead steadily over the past decade, with research
on rice being the most advanced. In many ways transgenic rice serves as a model for the
Center’s biosafety work, not only in the area of enforcement, but also in biosafety
research, training, and information.
The most advanced experimental transgenic rice was developed with Rockefeller
Foundation support in the late 1990s. It’s resistant to the highly destructive rice
hoja blanca virus (RHBV), a major problem in Latin American rice fields. The foreign gene
comes from the virus itself. Developing durable resistance to this disease has been a key
aim of the research.
Once the transgenic rice was developed under safe laboratory conditions and, more
recently, tested in controlled glasshouses, the next step was to conduct outdoor field
trials. In 2000, CIAT received approval from Colombia’s National Biosafety Commission
to do so. Formal registration with the agency now also allows us to generate and import
transgenic plants for further germplasm development. The transgenic rice has since
graduated from the confines of the glasshouse to a biosecure outdoor plot at our main
experiment station. Precautions in the field trial are numerous and mutually reinforcing,
thus minimizing the risk of geneflow.
Biotechnology by and for farmers
A low-cost system for growing disease-free cassava planting material in rural areas
promises to boost production of this important crop in Latin America and beyond. Besides
putting more money in the pockets of small-scale farmers, the technology offers rural
communities a chance to launch a new type of lucrative and beneficial rural
agroenterprise.
The technology’s centerpiece is a farmer-operated tissue culture laboratory in
which inexpensive local equipment and materials substitute for high-cost components
typically found in a conventional biotechnology laboratory. Preliminary results show that
the cost of setting up such a rural laboratory is about 5 percent that for a conventional
facility.
"The main idea is to stop the cycle of disease transmission in cassava production
while increasing farmers’ income," says CIAT biologist/biochemist Roosevelt
Escobar. The technology was designed and initially tested by Escobar and colleagues with a
group of nine women farmers in Colombia’s Cauca Department. A national NGO, the
Agricultural Research and Development Foundation (FIDAR), also plays a central role in the
project, coordinating farmer participation and providing business management training.
Start-up funding for farmer involvement in the micropropagation research was provided
by the Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) Program. Coordinated by CIAT,
this is a global, multi-institutional initiative of the CGIAR.
The laboratory procedure begins with disease-free cassava—in vitro
plantlets—supplied by CIAT. Transforming the plantlets into stem cuttings, called
stakes, for sale to local farmers comprises several steps involving rigorous attention to
cleanliness. For example, tissues are prepared in a sterile enclosure whose cost is about
one-tenth that of a high-quality flow chamber used by professional agricultural
laboratories.
The cuttings are cultured in sterilized glass bottles with a growth medium prepared
with off-the-shelf products from local shops. These are much cheaper than the custom
chemical products used in a scientific laboratory. For example, baby food jars substitute
for laboratory test tubes and spring water for bottled water. This do-it-yourself method
of preparing culture medium costs about one-quarter as much as conventional medium. And,
surprisingly, it results in plant propagation rates similar to or better than those in
CIAT’s laboratory.
"At first we were afraid we wouldn’t be able carry out the
laboratory work," says farmer Doris Castillo. "The equipment seemed
sophisticated. But now it comes as naturally to us as sowing seed."
After 4 to 6 weeks of in vitro growth in a simple bamboo-framed
greenhouse covered in plastic, the new cassava plantlets are ready to be redissected and
cultured in another round of micropropagation. Once a large enough quantity of plantlets
has been generated from the original CIAT germplasm, they’re grown in pots with soil
to promote root growth. Eventually they’re transferred to an outdoor nursery where
they grow into full-sized plants, ready for cutting into disease-free stakes that farmers
can plant in their fields.
Escobar is hopeful that this still-evolving tissue culture technology can also be
successfully applied to other crops like plantain, blackberries, and orchids.
Unmasking a major cassava disease
In joint work by CIAT and France’s Institute of Research for
Development (IRD), researchers have made considerable progress in identifying individual
strains, and three distinct groups of strains, of the bacterium responsible for cassava
bacterial blight (CBB). Called Xam, short for Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. manihotis, this
highly variable organism can result in cassava root losses ranging from 20 to 100 percent.
Given the importance of cassava as a staple food and income earner in Latin America and
Africa, the disease poses a serious threat to food security.
Cassava stem cuttings called stakes, planted each cropping season by farmers, are the
main repository of CBB. If infected, they allow the disease to persist from year to year
and to spread between fields. And transport of contaminated stakes between growing regions
spreads the disease even further afield. Latin America, the center of origin of cassava,
is also the region with the greatest diversity of Xam strains. CBB is also a problem in
Africa now, having been accidentally introduced there in the 1970s from Latin America.
The CIAT-based studies began in 1995 and built on earlier research by IRD in Africa.
The recent findings are based on analysis of numerous Xam samples collected from Colombia,
Venezuela, and Brazil. (Similar work is being done under a European Union-funded project
in Benin and Togo.)
The results have allowed the CIAT-based team to design a set of laboratory and field
methods for detecting the disease in cassava stems and seeds. This is a major step in
preventing its spread. Diagnostic techniques, including visual inspection procedures, have
been compiled into a manual for national and other users, available in Spanish and
English.
Laboratory methods are based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) as well as two older
techniques, dot-blot hybridization and ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay). As key
tools for certifying that cassava stakes and seed are disease-free, they promote safer
exchange of germplasm within and between countries and help prevent the spread of Xam
strains to uninfected areas.
"I’d like to see all the products we developed made available to national
research programs and farmer groups," says Valérie Verdier, an IRD plant pathologist
and coauthor of the manual, which also includes disease-prevention advice for growers. She
expects high demand in cassava-producing countries.
Just as important as their role in disease control, the recent advances in CBB
characterization and diagnostics aid selection and breeding of CBB-resistant germplasm.
"Now we have a better picture of the resistance of the cassava material available in
CIAT’s core collection," says Verdier. Scientists are also using the
Center’s molecular genetic map of cassava to identify regions of the cassava genome
responsible for CBB resistance. To date they’ve identified 19 molecular markers,
paving the way for marker-assisted selection and breeding of resistant materials.
People power in the Amazon
Indigenous women in the Colombian Amazon have teamed up with CIAT researchers to combat
a grave impediment to cassava production: root rots. These fungal diseases turn otherwise
edible cassava roots into foul-smelling mush. Every year they destroy
20 percent of the world’s cassava crop and, in badly infested areas, the figure can
be as high as
70 percent.
Enhancing host plant resistance is widely seen as the best way to manage root rots.
This requires intensive germplasm selection to identify cassava lines that resist the
fungus and have other desirable traits. The fact that the disease-causing fungus
Phytophthora is a highly diverse organism, consisting of many species and many strains
within those species, complicates the work.
Participatory research in nine communities around Mitú in southeastern Colombia’s
Vaupés Department complements CIAT’s laboratory and field experiments. In a
diagnostic survey in 1997, local farmers clearly identified root rots as the key
constraint of cassava production. Center researchers then consulted with the women to
design comparative cassava-growing experiments. These were conducted by participants in
their chagras—small forest plots that are slashed and burned and then planted to
cassava and other crops like pineapple, plantain, maize, yam, and sugarcane. The
participatory research was funded by Colombia’s World Bank-supported National Program
for the Transfer of Agricultural Technology (PRONATTA).
"We wanted to know the farmers’ preferences for growing cassava, so we could
give them exactly what they wanted," says CIAT plant pathologist Elizabeth Alvarez.
"The women are so happy and proud to be selecting varieties themselves."
Based on long experience cultivating cassava in the forest, the farmers laid out their
own criteria for good crop growth as well as preferred traits at harvest time. The
participants then cultivated a mix of traditional and improved materials on four plots in
different communities and compared their performance.
The women shared results among themselves and with other farmers in the region, with
help from local development agencies. An important outcome of this work is a handbook on
diagnosing cassava production problems and evaluating options, especially germplasm. It
makes extensive use of drawings, since farmers in the region speak different dialects of
the local language, Tukano, and many cannot read or write. In addition, a collection of
indigenous cassava varieties has been assembled and conserved locally. This will help
maintain the biodiversity needed for good crop health and food security.
While building farmers’ capacity to evaluate and select suitable resistant
varieties is important, better soil management is also needed, says CIAT agronomist
Germán Llano. Population growth around isolated towns in the Amazon is intensifying
pressure on the forest. Under shifting cultivation fallow periods and crop rotation have
been reduced in recent years. The resulting declines in soil fertility, combined with high
soil humidity, provide a perfect environment for proliferation of root rot fungi. CIAT
scientists recently continued their participatory experiments, this time to evaluate the
effects of soil enhancement on the yield of local cassava varieties.
Integrated agroenterprise projects
The temperate zones will forever envy the tropical world its treasure house of plant
diversity—exotic fruits, aromatic herbs, medicinal plants, delicate flowers, and food
staples like cassava and arrowroot, also used for industrial purposes.
Despite the biological wealth at their doorsteps, tropical farmers have all too often
encountered failure in publicly sponsored attempts to add value to existing crops or
launch new ones. The architects of these projects were sometimes far too concerned with
the production side of the equation. Scant attention was paid to the real needs of
industrial and individual consumers and to the support services vital to sustaining small
businesses.
CIAT’s agroenterprise specialists—with support from the UK’s Department
for International Development (DFID) and Canada’s International Development Research
Centre (IDRC)—have designed a new participatory method for creating viable business
opportunities for small tropical producers. It’s based on analysis of strengths and
weaknesses in the overall marketing chain, followed by design and execution of integrated
agroenterprise projects. Under preparation as a CIAT training manual, the method stresses
competitiveness, job creation, higher value added, and the involvement of many
contributors to the marketing chain. It has been tested in hillside communities of
Honduras and Colombia and in the forest margins of Peru.
In Pucallpa, Peru, the Center is working with a local consortium of development
agencies and community groups—the Consortium for Sustainable Development of the
Ucayali Region (CODESU)—to promote production and marketing of cocona (Solanum
sessiliflorum), a tropical fruit. This forest species has enormous market appeal as fresh
produce, juice, jam, and ice cream flavoring, as well as an ingredient in liquor and spicy
sauces.
In designing an integrated agroenterprise project for cocona, local participants
examined production, processing, and marketing factors. As the fruit is still a minor
commodity, there are many bottlenecks to deal with. For example, lack of investment
capital and weak organization at all stages of the marketing chain were seen as major
impediments.
Nevertheless, market analysis indicates that, if various bottlenecks can be eliminated,
a bonanza awaits local farmers. Consumer demand for cocona is expected to explode in the
coming years. If the projections are right, production will need to reach 3,125 tons a
year, more than six times its current level.
"The participatory mode—getting the actors together to exchange ideas and
information—is a strong motivator," says Rupert Best, manager of CIAT’s
Agroenterprise Development Project. Over the past year, CODESU has been promoting its
agroenterprise project among potential service providers and participants. An association
of cocona producers is on the drawing board, and its promoters have interested local
investors in building a pilot processing plant.
In Colombia’s Cauca Department, similar agroenterprise development activities are
taking place—for dairy products, medicinal plants, and cassava starch. And in two
Honduran communities, local farmers and other participants in the food marketing chain are
concentrating on coffee and maize. Lessons from these pilot projects have allowed CIAT to
solidify its methodology for developing integrated agroenterprise projects. Now the Center
is broadening dissemination of the methodology through a training course for eastern and
southern Africa.
Soil scientists and farmers find a common language
CIAT and three partner organizations have developed a new decision-support tool, in the
form of a training guide, for identifying local indicators of soil quality in eastern
Africa. Based on earlier work in Latin America, the guide is helping farmer groups and
researchers develop a common language for jointly combating one of the gravest threats to
food security in the African highlands: soil degradation.
The traits that tropical farmers typically look for when evaluating soil are quite
different from those that researchers examine. Farmers have a long tradition of relying on
indicators like soil color and smell, native plants, and surface salt crusts. Soil
scientists, in contrast, measure factors such as biological activity, organic matter
content, plant-available nutrients, and pH. While both groups are searching for
essentially the same insights into soil quality, differences in their methods, vocabulary,
and training are a major obstacle to communication and joint problem solving.
The new English-language guide for eastern Africa—together with its Spanish
counterpart, which has been used in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Peru, and Venezuela—provides a solution. The guide explain how to elicit, organize,
and rank farmer perspectives and integrate them with those of soil scientists so that both
groups benefit.
"Farmers and technicians can use the resulting indicators to monitor and evaluate
the impact of technologies designed to improve the soil," says CIAT soil scientist
Edmundo Barrios. As a result, researchers gain valuable farmer feedback on the performance
of new technologies, expressed in language that everyone understands.
Scientists estimate that two-thirds of Africa’s crop land is degraded. Most
degradation is subtle and incremental, occurring over a period of years. So it may go
unnoticed until it’s too late for countermeasures. Both farmers and public officials
responsible for natural resource policies need reliable indicators of soil quality for
early problem diagnosis.
The African training guide is the result of multiagency collaboration that began in
2000 in Uganda. CIAT’s partners are the African Highlands Initiative (AHI),
coordinated by the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF); the
CGIAR’s systemwide Soil, Water, and Nutrient Management (SWNM) Program; and the
Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility (TSBF) Programme, based in Kenya.
After an initial train-the-trainer event in Uganda, several African trainees stayed on
to work with CIAT staff and colleagues to adapt the guide to eastern Africa. The resulting
version draws heavily on African examples of soil-quality indicators, particularly the
presence of certain types of weeds. "It’s interesting that you find plants of
the same genus but different species occupying similar niches in Africa and Latin America
and that farmers use these to identify similar soil conditions," observes Barrios.
The African guide was tested at a second training course, held in Tanzania in March
2001. Graduates of the Ugandan course served as instructors for personnel invited from
NGOs, universities, and other institutions in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Moreover, a new initiative is under way with Uganda’s National Agricultural Research
Organisation (NARO) for adapting other decision-support tools available from CIAT to
conditions in eastern Africa.
Local action plans for natural resource management
In recent years CIAT and collaborating agencies have jointly designed nine
decision-support tools, in the form of training guides, to help tropical hillside farmers
manage their natural resources collectively and sustainably. The soil-indicators guide
described in the preceding section is one such tool. But it’s one thing to train
small groups of people and quite another to ensure that the acquired skills are applied to
real problems and that the results are fed back into the overall learning process.
"Training is not the end goal," says CIAT trainer Vicente Zapata. "The
experience has to be incorporated into the bloodstream of participating institutions. We
encourage them to adapt our decision tools to their daily work and needs." Action
plans, designed and monitored by the organizations whose personnel receive training in the
use of CIAT tools, are the key to success, according to Zapata. They provide a direct link
between training and development outcomes in rural communities.
There are many tasks in natural resource management (NRM) that small farming
communities may wish to take on. These include agroenterprise development, protection of
forests and watercourses, and the prevention of soil erosion. But before communities can
begin specific projects, there is much groundwork to do. Once basic food security has been
strengthened, they may then wish to set up organizational partnerships and build a common
knowledge base about local geography, land uses, and social needs. The CIAT tools cover
all these steps and more.
In developing and testing its NRM tools and training guides, CIAT has worked at various
reference sites, organized around well-defined watersheds, explains José Ignacio Sanz,
who manages the CIAT project Community Management of Hillside Resources. The reference
sites are located in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Colombia, and CIAT’s work there has
been strongly supported by the Canadian, Danish, and Swiss governments.
Training courses, however, have been held for groups in other countries as well. So
far, 15 courses on various tools have been offered to about
400 people in seven countries of Latin America and eastern Africa. Based on the training,
says Sanz, "participating organizations have drawn up about 35 concrete plans for
translating their new skills into collective action for improved natural resource
management."
Sandra Madrid, the executive director of a community-based NGO in southwestern
Colombia’s Valle del Cauca Department, is the key architect of local action plans for
eight small communities in the municipality of Bolívar. Different decision-support tools
were applied in different communities, depending on local needs.
"CIAT has given us the tools needed to gain a clear vision of what we can do to
solve local environmental and social problems," says Madrid. In the water-short
community of Ricaurte, for example, residents used CIAT’s participatory
resource-mapping tool to identify eroded areas in need of reforestation.
In another village, Aguas Lindas, the same CIAT tool helped residents document illegal
tree cutting. Once the issue had been raised publicly, the community rallied. The forest
damage was videotaped and shown to government authorities. The logging immediately
stopped. As Madrid notes, the very act of getting local people directly involved in
mapping the surrounding landscape, triggered joint action to solve a problem hitherto
ignored.
The Amazonian ecosystem and human health
From the standpoint of human health and wealth, the Peruvian Amazon is something of an
enigma. This vast landscape of lush tropical forests, rivers, and valleys possesses a huge
share of the Neotropics’ biodiversity and other natural resources. Yet, its
inhabitants, many of them new arrivals engaged in shifting agriculture, are extremely poor
and afflicted by chronic or seasonal illnesses.
An international, transdisciplinary team of researchers and development agents led by
CIAT is working to pinpoint the reasons for this apparent contradiction. Its aim is to
ensure that future interventions to improve human well-being take into account factors so
far played down by both research and public policy. These include sociocultural
differences, local biodiversity, natural seasonal rhythms affecting food availability,
people’s livelihood strategies, and their own perceptions of problems and goals. In
short, the team takes a holistic "ecosystem" approach to human health and
development.
Eight rural communities in the Ucayali Region of central-eastern Peru participate in
the project, which is funded by IDRC. Other contributors include Peruvian health and
fisheries ministries; indigenous and women’s groups; research groups from Peru,
Canada, and the UK; and PATH-Canada, a nongovernment health organization. Through
household and community surveys, the scientists have compiled a large database on the
health of local women, men, and children. This information is being correlated with local
resource-use patterns, ecosystem characteristics, and other information.
Recent health surveys reveal disturbing levels of anemia and parasitic infections. For
example, the incidence of moderate anemia among children ranged from 69 to 88 percent of
those tested. In one community all 146 children examined were moderately to severely
anemic. Vitamin A deficiency is also widespread, and malaria, dengue fever, and persistent
diarrhea are on the rise.
Seasonal flooding, during which rivers may rise by as much as 10 meters, has been
recognized as a powerful influence on health. It physically isolates communities,
periodically making transport to health services and markets extremely difficult. It also
undermines drinking water quality and affects cropping patterns, human migration, and
seasonal distribution of fish, game, and wild edible plants.
The project team is now working with the study communities to design local action
plans. These center on practical measures like nutrition education, testing for diseases,
water purification, small-scale food production, and better hygiene and sanitation.
The researchers have also noted the motivational power of participatory methods.
"The impact of having mothers, fathers, and children view their own parasites through
a microscope far surpassed the information value of stool and sample analysis," says
a recent IDRC project brief. "Parasites were no longer an abstract concept discussed
only by Ministry of Health professionals; they became real aspects of villagers’
daily experience with poor water quality and diarrhea. In each community villagers were
immediately mobilized and sought solutions to reduce water contamination and parasite
transmission."
Participatory methods prove their worth
Less than 3 years after Hurricane Mitch devastated agriculture in Honduras and
Nicaragua, rural people in both countries are again living the nightmare of food and seed
scarcity. This time, though, the threat comes from a severe and widespread drought. The
Honduran Secretariat of Agriculture and Livestock recently reported that in 57
municipalities more than 75 percent of the bean, maize, and rice harvests had been lost.
Mitch prompted a deluge of emergency aid, including a successful seed relief effort
organized by four Future Harvest centers, under CIAT coordination, and funded by the US
Agency for International Development (USAID) and Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA). But the new crisis has elicited a different response. Now, the Honduran government
and the Red Cross are seeking help in applying measures that can reduce agriculture’s
vulnerability to natural disasters.
In responding to this call, explains CIAT soil scientist Miguel Ayarza, who coordinates
the Center’s work in Central America, "we’ll draw on a growing repertory of
participatory approaches. These tools offer one of our best hopes for making hillside land
and communities more resilient in the face of periodic crises."
Some of the evidence supporting this claim has come from CIAT’s experience with
disaster relief after Mitch. For example, in areas of Honduras and Nicaragua where local
agricultural research committees, or CIALs, had been established with support from the
W.K. Kellogg Foundation, these farmer groups proved highly effective in targeting seed
relief.
Some CIALs have evolved into small agroenterprises that specialize in producing and
marketing high-quality crop seed. According to seed specialist Guillermo Giraldo, who
coordinated the Future Harvest centers’ emergency seed relief effort after Mitch,
networks of small farmer-run enterprises could provide the foundation for a national,
community-based seed system that guarantees adequate seed supplies in good times and bad.
Another participatory approach that rose to the challenge of Hurricane Mitch is a
community watershed management association called Campos Verdes (Green Fields). Consisting
of representatives from the 16 communities that make up the municipality of San Dionisio
in Nicaragua, explains CIAT scientist Jorge Alonso Beltrán, Campos Verdes expresses
farmers’ needs, conveys feedback to research and development organizations, and
mounts projects in response to local demand.
In the months following Mitch, explains Paulina Aguilar, a member of the
association’s governing board, "Campos Verdes organized two projects to deal
with the hurricane’s impacts on our community." One involved multiplication and
distribution of improved seed, while the other was designed to give the community a good
overall grasp of the state of the local environment and to identify areas that are
particularly vulnerable to continued degradation.
Under particularly trying circumstances, the CIALs, Campos Verdes, and other
participatory tools have proven their worth as engines of grass roots rural innovation. If
applied more widely, they could enable thousands of vulnerable people in vulnerable places
to cope better with natural disasters as well as more subtle changes in the local
landscape and economy.
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