The Beauty of the Bottom Up: Making Crop Improvement Work for National Programs

Food Security

As you read this, 800 million of your fellow humans are struggling to obtain enough food to get through the day. Food security is one of the grand challenges facing our world, and donors know this: each year they spend billions of dollars on agricultural research initiatives in developing countries in the fight to end hunger. Yet do these well-meaning efforts have the unintended consequence of imposing solutions from the top down?

It is no secret that agricultural research for development has historically operated in this way. International experts develop and implement ideas, technologies, and products for people and places they often don’t have deep knowledge or understanding of, without enough contribution from local actors at the inception stages. Donors may make decisions based on their goals and missions, that may not always reflect local needs. National partners often implement the crop improvement visions developed thousands of miles away. The result? National agricultural research systems are overwhelmed with an influx of experts, ideas, projects, and directives, with little breathing room to assess possibilities and offer meaningful input about what they really need to drive change in their countries. 

Are we limiting our effectiveness by not taking enough time to stop, listen, and give these programs more space to set their own priorities?

National Agricultural Research Institutes (NARIs) play a central role in research and development of agricultural products that would help their countries attain food security. At NARIs around the globe, plant breeders are working to optimize crop varieties that will provide higher yields for men and women farmers, contain more nutrients, adapt to a chaotic climate, taste better, and possess countless other desirable traits demanded by the people in their communities. NARIs sit at the middle of the U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy’s core goals, which are to boost economic growth, promote resilience, and improve human nutrition. But more often than not, NARIs lack the agency to map out their long-term visions, despite generous support from donors. 

This is problematic, because we know that change is more sustainable when it comes from within. Transformative solutions start with the people most committed to and invested in growing the very food they need for food security: the farmers, processors and consumers in the countries where we work. Some of these solutions could be very simple and contextual, emerging from thoughtful research conducted by NARI research teams. Yet, caught up in the latest science, sexy technology, and voices of prominent experts, these ideas may never see the light of day.

At the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement, we want to seed a change that makes the science work for NARIs, and not the NARIs work for science. We are committed to empowering researchers at the NARIs where they work to come together to find sustainable solutions to the problems they face. Based in Cornell’s Department of Global Development, the project is a 5-year, $25 million USAID investment supporting crop improvement programs in East and West Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean as we work together to harness the leading science, technology and innovation to make healthy food more accessible, reliable, and responsive to the needs and preferences of target countries. As scientists, we believe we must work from the ground up—from the soil to the food on the table and from local breeders to the entire population.

Our goal is to support NARIs in developing and implementing localized crop improvement tools, technologies, and methods. First, we are using our technical expertise to curate and discover tools, technologies, and methods that hold promise to improve the effectiveness of crop improvement for NARIs. Second, we are opening funding calls for NARIs to work with us to co-create and adapt these tools to make them work for their visions and goals. Last but not least, we are working with NARIs to redefine impact so that it does not solely mean productivity increases, but rather a positive change for men, women, youth, and children, and meaningful improvements in nutrition and resilience.

We are choosing to open our funding opportunities in areas where Feed the Future works. We don’t want to cherry pick who will benefit from this Innovation Lab. We are only accepting applications led by NARIs and we are structuring a co-creation process to support all potential applicants to put forward the best possible proposal. In doing so, we hope to position NARIs to be in the driving seat for grants that will help them fulfill their own vision. We are really looking forward to putting out the call in Spring 2020, as there are so many NARIs that we would be honored to work with. 

We can’t talk about food without talking about the social, economic, and environmental factors that heavily influence food security. At the Innovation Lab, we are committed to gender equality, youth, nutrition, and inclusion. We will award projects that seek to address gender- and youth-based constraints through crop improvement, prioritize activities that show potential for economic inclusion for women and youth, and include traits to address malnutrition and increase resilience. To ensure follow through, we are requiring team members to have relevant gender expertise, and we are allocating funding for cross-cutting research. 

We are committed to a long-term vision that allows NARIs to thrive. We work with NARIs not only on technical areas, but also on operational (financial management and monitoring and evaluation) and policy (enabling environment). We build training opportunities for early-career researchers so that they can earn plant breeding degrees at partner institutions while getting specialized training in leadership development and entrepreneurship. Lastly, we leverage existing curricula with Makerere University in Uganda and the Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation(GREAT) to ensure that NARIs efforts prioritize gender equality, youth involvement and diversity. 

Eyes wide open to the challenges and pitfalls that await us, we remain optimistic in this endeavor. 

Stay up to date as we launch our vision at ilci.cornell.edu and walk hand-in-hand with our national partners in the journey to self-reliance.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement 

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement collaborates with local scientists around the globe to develop resilient crop varieties preferred by the farmers and people in the countries we support. Our mission is to end hunger and build together a more prosperous world. We support scientists where they are to produce more healthful food that can withstand growing pressures from disease, pests, and climate change. Our Innovation Lab harnesses the leading science, technology, and innovation to breed crops that are more accessible, reliable, and responsive to the needs and preferences of everyone around the globe.

Field Notes

The Chicago Council is pleased to launch a new blog series, "Breaking Ground," to explore how food systems innovation and agricultural research and development can empower farmers and feed the world. A special subsection of this series, "Field Notes," features voices from Feed the Future Innovation Labs and CGIAR centers.