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Visiting Scientist to Explore Benefits of Bean Research as Tool for Combating Poverty and Environmental Destruction

Expert on Tropical Agriculture in Berne and Zürich
6-8 October to Meet with Swiss Government Officials, Scientists; Will Hail Switzerland's Role in Combating Hunger in Rwanda

September 1998

During visits to Berne and Zürich, Dr. Grant M. Scobie of the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) will present details about the benefits for small farmers and poor consumers made possible by Swiss-funded research on common beans in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. He will also report on an innovative research approach that offers the rural poor new ways of overcoming poverty, while improving their management of natural resources.

Scobie said that Switzerland is one of CIAT's key investors and committed nearly US$2.9 million during 1998 to the Center's research in Africa and Latin America. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) provides funding for CIAT, which also enjoys close ties with the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the Swiss Centre for International Agriculture (ZIL).

"The economic impact of Swiss-funded research on beans for Africa has been especially remarkable in Rwanda," Scobie noted. According to a nationwide survey conducted there just before the genocide in 1994, 43 percent of Rwandan families were growing improved varieties of climbing beans introduced from Latin America in the late 1980s. It was estimated that the new varieties increased production by as much as 66,000 tons per year, generating extra income of about US$15 million annually.

"This is quite an important contribution to Rwanda's food security," Scobie said, "given that beans provide 32 percent of all calories and 65 percent of all protein consumed in the country."

A new survey conducted in late 1995 found that, despite the violence and turmoil that had engulfed Rwanda, the proportion of farmers growing the new climbing beans had increased to nearly 50 percent. "What attracts farmers to these varieties is their disease resistance and high yields," Scobie said. "Because they grow upright on stakes rather than spreading over the ground, improved climbing beans produce a lot of food in a little space, and that's vital for a land-starved country like Rwanda."

In recent years the improved varieties have been introduced from Rwanda to parts of western Kenya and southwestern Uganda, where bean production was previously decimated by disease. "It's an extraordinary technology that can thrive under conditions like those in Rwanda and even be exported to other countries," Scobie remarked.

Farmers in the poorest areas of Latin America have also registered large gains from new bean varieties. "Total bean production in the region has risen 25 percent—from 4.2 million tons in the mid-1980s to 5.3 million 10 years later," Scobie said. "And since the area planted to beans was essentially static during that period, we can safely assume the growth in production resulted from higher yields. In fact, numerous field studies in the Andean Mountain zone and Central America show that improved bean varieties were a key factor in boosting yields."

On the strength of these achievements, Scobie explained, CIAT is developing a new approach called "integrated research with a landscape perspective." Rather than focus just on key commodities, like beans, this research attacks poverty and environmental destruction on a wider front, with the aim of improving the decisions people make and the practices they apply in managing the land to produce food and make a living.

"With a landscape approach, we work both from the top down and the bottom up," Scobie said. "First, we provide key decision makers—from the national to local levels—with simple but powerful information tools. These draw on the latest developments in satellite imagery, geographical information systems, and computer modeling. At the same time, we develop farmer participatory methods that give rural people a meaningful role in local research for grass roots development. Though more complex than just improving specific crops, the landscape approach provides our best hope for reducing poverty, while protecting natural resources in Africa and Latin America," he added.

"A key purpose of my visit is to call attention to the economic benefits of Swiss-supported research for the poor in Africa and Latin America," said Scobie. "I also want to underscore the importance of this country's pioneering role in strategic research that is finding better ways to reduce poverty and preserve major agroecologies throughout the tropics. We look forward to continued Swiss support and to technical cooperation with advanced scientific institutions in this country."

CIAT is a nonprofit, nongovernment research organization dedicated to reducing hunger and poverty and to protecting natural resources in developing countries of the tropics. It employs about 85 internationally recruited scientists from nearly 30 countries. About three-fourths of these scientists operate from the Center's headquarters in Cali, Colombia, while the rest are based in 12 other developing countries. CIAT receives financial support from more than 45 national governments, international agencies, and private foundations. Most of these funds are administered by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Scobie, a native of New Zealand, became Director General of CIAT in July of 1995, following a long career as an agricultural economist, specializing in the economics of research investment and in world food supplies. He has investigated and taught these subjects for 30 years, travelling widely throughout the developing world. He has published extensively, including three books, six book chapters, and 40 journal articles—two of them award winning.

As Director General, Scobie is charged with leading CIAT toward the fulfillment of its two-pronged mission in the tropics: reducing hunger and poverty through increased agricultural productivity, while protecting the environment through better management of natural resources.

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