Presentacion de 11th Asian Maize Conference which took place in Beijing, China from November 7 – 11, 2011.

1. Sustainable Intensification of
Maize Legume cropping
systems for food security in
Eastern and Southern Africa
SIMLESA :
Geographic focus
Initial Experiences and
Ethiopia
Lessons to Asia
Kenya
Malawi
Mozambique Mulugetta Mekuria, Shiferaw B,
South Africa Prasanna B.M, Rodriguez D and
Tanzania
Dixon J

2. Problem setting
Why SIMLESA and Origins of Program idea
• Persistent hunger & poverty in east and southern Africa
* droughts and famine; food (price) crisis; global financial
crisis (GFC)
• History of Australian contributions to global food security since
the middle of the last century: establishment of FAO; and
ongoing support to establishment of CGIAR; and ongoing
support
• During 2008 additional budget allocations sought for specific
food security programs in Asia and Africa (including one
part focused on maize-legume systems )
• consultations and scoping studies to initiate a food security
initiative in ESA- Hence SIMLESA in March 2010

3. http://apsrunet.apsim.info/simlesa/
Clusters of food insecurity
SIMLESA Countries
Why are we where we are?
Low productivity of maize-legume cropping systems
Lack of functioning input and output value chains
Poor availability of improved seeds
Scarce agricultural research capacity
Potgieter, Davis and Rodriguez, 2010

4. Dual Challenge to SSA
To double food production, and significantly increase incomes
and livelihood opportunities, while
• Ensuring resilience and sustainability of farming systems on
essentially the same land area,
• Adapting to climate change and the increases in costs of
fertilizer, water, and labor.
SIMLESA goes right to the heart of this challenge

5. Vision of Success
• To increase maize and legume yields by 30% for
benefitting farmers
– through improved maize and legume varieties and
associated management practices,
– with adoption enabled and motivated through the
development of markets and value chains, from input
supplies to output markets.
• To reduce downside yield risks by 30% To benefit
500,000 farm households within 10 years.

6. SIMLESA aims at increasing farm-household food security and
productivity, in the context of climate risk and change, through
the development of more resilient, profitable and sustainable
maize-legume farming systems
Socio-economic More productive, Improved range of
characterization resilient and maize and legume
sustainable varieties available
Input and output smallholder maize- for smallholders
value chain legume practices,
tactics and
Whole farm strategies
resource allocations
Mainstreaming Gender, M&E , Spill overs, Scaling out
and capacity building
30% increase in maize and legume yields and 30% reduction in risk
500,000 households over the next 10 years

7. 3 Is
INTEGRATION (SYSTEMS)
INNOVATION PLATFORMS
IMPACT ORIENTATION

8. Baseline surveys, Farming systems
and SE studies modelling
Reported Farmers' Sources of Income
Researcher
100%
80%
other
craft
petty trade
managed trials
beer brewing
60%
self-employment
40% remittance
hiring-out labour
20% livestock sales
vegetable sales
0% crop sales
Arumeru Karatu Hanang
Farmer-
managed trials On-farm trials
Farmers Researcher and
Community
experimenting extension
awareness
training
meetings
Farmer-to-farmer
exchanges SIMLESA, 2010

10. Governance and Organization
ASAREC
MoA A CIMMYT
Tanzania
IIAM
ICRISAT-
Mozambi
TL2
q
MoA
Malawi
KARI Australian
Kenya Partners
Project Steering
EIAR Committee South
African
Ethiopia Project Management: Partners
CIMMYT

11. Objective 1: Major achievements-2010
Household baseline survey
• Baseline survey completed in all
the five countries and on-going in
Malawi
• Interviewed 4600 farm households
randomly selected
• 29 districts located in two agro-
ecological zones and maize-pigeon
pea, maize-beans, and maize-
groundnuts , maize-soya beans
cropping system
• More than 580 villages
• Community survey data collected
from these villages

12. Achievements in Objective 2 (CA)
• Ethiopia: Second season 2011/2012 progressing vey
Field days ongoing
• Kenya and Tanzania Season two crops mid season stage-
Field days being organized
• Malawi and Mozambique-First Season results reported

13. Field Day –Hawassa –Ethiopia
16 August 2011

14. Objective 2: Establishment of on-farm exploratory trials by
farmers
Country Farmer groups # of Exploratory trials
Ethiopia 12 58
Kenya 8 48
Tanzania 8 48
Malawi 6 36
Mozambique 6 36
Total 40 226

15. Australian partners contributions
• Innovative relay & intercrop cropping systems
tested for Queensland
• Stress characterisation for Queensland
• Capacity building
• APSIM Training
• NARS trained on BNF
• African graduate student supervision at
Australian universities
• Support publications

16. Achievements in Objective 2 (CA) :
Field Visit Kenya 16 June

17. Objective 03
Identification of pre-release (within NVMTs) or newly released hybrids and OPVs
with potential suitability for the targeted farming system
Ethiopia Kenya Malawi Mozambique Tanzania
Hybrids BH661 KH500-39E MH26 CZH0511 Selian H308
BH543 KDH3 MH27 Olipa Selian H208
WH105 SAH779
KH500Q SAH638
KH631Q SAH636
H624
H520
KH533A
KM0406
OPVs Melkassa 2 KDV1 ZM523 ZM523 SA523
Melkassa 6Q Embu Synth ZM623 Tsangano SA525
Gibe 2 KKSynth2 ZM309 Chinaca
Gibe 3 WS303 ZM721
KM0403

18. Farmers’ assessment of newly released and pre-released
maize varieties
• Assessment was done for newly released varieties, pre-released
varieties, and farmer maize varieties
• Evaluation involves socio-economists, maize breeders and
agronomists in collaboration with farmers and extension staff

19. Capacity building
• Graduate level training/scholarships -AusAID and ACIAR
– 5 PhD enrolled in 2011 in Austrian Universities
– 30+Msc,3 PhDs registered in local Universities
– 2012 Candidates being selected
• Specific short term training in
– CA Principles for research ,extension, NGO,staff and
farmers
– socio economics, M&E, Impact assessment for NARS
– breeding and seed systems
– Gender Mainstreaming; APSIM

24. For SIMLESA to succeed, it must align with realistic
value chains
• Seed supply
• Fertilizer supply
• Equipment for CA based
technologies
• Postharvest technologies
• Insurance providers
• Price information providers
• Traders and processors
…
Do you know them? Are the appropriate
providers involved?

25. For SIMLESA to succeed, it must draw on
appropriate component technologies
• CA based practices
• Drought tolerant maize
• More productive legume varieties
• Postharvest technologies
• Improved integration of livestock options
• Cell-phone managed insurance approaches
The Challenge:
How do we combine them so they
optimize food security, incomes,
resilience and sustainability?

26. Looking at the bigger picture:
What are we targeting?
– Farms that strongly base their food and income
security on maize and legumes
What do we do? –
Interventions that maximize farm-level productivity,
income, resilience and sustainability in these farming
systems, based on farmers own resources and long
realistic value chains.
How do we work? – Innovation systems approach which
means strong partnership with relevant actors

27. African Maize systems are different than Asian Systems
“In east Asia, if you invent an improved rice variety, every farmer for hundreds of
miles around can use it because the land and climate are much the same. In Africa,
soil and climatic conditions are much more diverse and farmers a few hundred yards
apart may need different seeds.” Larson, World Bank on The Economist Feb 24 issue
2011
The African maize system
• Maize is a major staple food
• Characterized by mostly uni- modal
rainfall
• Maize- legume intercropping and
rotation is common system
• Production of single crop per year.
• Small scale irrigation development is
at stage of infancy
• Average yields less than 3t/ha,
• Seeds and fertilizer access and
availability is a major constraint

28. Asian Maize Systems
• Maize-legume intercropping system with maize as main crop
clearly revealed the yield advantages (over sole maize cropping) as
well as soil nitrogen enrichment
• Maize dominated cropping systems were found in the mountain
and hill regions of Nepal, whereas paddy dominated the cropping
system in the plain (terai) region
• The drivers of Asian maize production systems are the increased
demand for maize for feed
• system is most dynamic in the low land rice based systems(Gulati
and Dixon, 2008) where rice is the cultural crop as maize is for
Africa.
• . Research undertaken in some of the Asian countries also led to
identification of specific legumes that fit well as an intercrop in the
maize-legume systems.
• In Asia the constraint might be inputs quality rather than access

29. Initial Lessons from SIMLESA
• The systems and participatory approaches - are not new for
Asia
• Recognizing management of system integration is a
necessary condition to properly implement maize legume
intensification
SIMLESA’s 3Is are relevant to an Asian SIMLESA in a different
way: How can we to develop it?
• Adopt the value chain approach from the start; link together
input value chains, farmers, output chains
• Implement a systems diagnostic process as early as possible
• Start the project by including the private sector early- because
you need them to develop and agree on a seed road map

30. Initial Lessons from SIMLESA
• Undertake PVS and farmer evaluation methods to
enhance and speed up release of farmer accepted
and preferred maize and legume varieties and
• Promote sustainable agronomic practices including
CA options
• Cognizant that input access and availability is not a
major constraint in Asia, there is a need insure that
farmers use the right/optimum amount and quality
of inputs.
• Conduct studies on the economics of input use

31. What could an Asian SIMLESA look like?
• Maize-rice collaboration projects base on
SIMLESA framework
• Maize-rice-legumes + livestock in some places?
• Maize-legume System opportunities: South Asia
(Bangladesh- Nepal-eastern India under CA)
• Mekong (Laos-Cambodia-Vietnam-Thailand)
Philippines; Indonesia

32. Conclusions
SIMLESA’s initial findings reveal that and an integrated
systems approach in designing and promoting technologies in
partnership with a range of stakeholders using innovation
platforms framework, supported by science and partnerships,
would contribute to a productive, sustainable and resilient
maize –legume production systems.
For an ASIA SIMLESA to succeed we need to:
• Anchor it on a stronger leadership from agribusiness
• Support role of public sector and
• Ensure that it is farm income oriented to lead to
poverty reduction.

33. Kevin Rudd Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister
praises SIMLESA achievements in Africa
Addressing the 5th WCCA Brisbane 26-29
Sept.2011
“This particular project is helping to develop drought and disease-tolerant
maize and legume varieties and to educate farmers about new farming
technologies in conservation agriculture in five African countries. In the first
eighteen months of the program, we’ve helped train more than 150 agricultural
researchers from Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania and
trialled conservation agriculture in 215 fields owned by local farmers. It’s on
track to reaching its target of increasing crop productivity of maize and
legumes by 30% on around half a million African small farms within 10 years.”
“We need a new Agricultural Revolution of the 21st century if we are to feed a
further 3 billion members of the human family. As a responsible global citizen,
Australia stands ready to play our part” Kevin Rudd