When Farmers Become Patrons of Research

A unique, long-standing partnership between farmers in northern Mexico and CIMMYT has benefited producers throughout the developing world. The farmers in the association are turning once again to science to help them face current challenges.

Looking like an enormous, ungainly bird spreading its huge wings to dry, a new sprinkler irrigation device sits on the edge of an experimental wheat field in CIMMYT’s research station in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, northwestern Mexico. The highly visible contraption is one of two recent donations to CIMMYT supported mainly by a group of private farmers, the Agricultural Research and Experimentation Board of the State of Sonora (Patronato for short), in conjunction with state and federal governments. The other donated equipment is a drip irrigation system that lies mostly underground. Together, these systems will avoid water wastage and give scientists precision control over the amount of water applied, helping to simulate varying degrees of drought and develop droughttolerant wheat varieties.

Pedro Bracich, Patronato’s general manager and CIMMYT field superintendent Rodrigo Rascón, will use a new irrigation system from the Patronato to improve water use efficiency on the 200 hectares of land occupied by CIMMYT’s experiment station in the Yaqui Valley.

Patrons and Beneficiaries

Patronato, the driving force behind the donation, was responding to what is likely the toughest challenge Valley farmers have ever faced. Eight years of unrelenting drought have dried up regional dams, drastically reducing the supply of irrigation water and causing a deep economic recession. In this desert environment, farming depends upon irrigation, and lack of water means that very little land is currently being cropped. Unemployment is high in the Valley.

True to its history, Patronato’s reaction—donating minimum irrigation equipment to facilitate research—reveals a visionary strategy. Says one of Patronato’s co-chairmen, Jorge Castro Campoy, “We are convinced that research will provide the long-term solution to our problem.” In fact, CIMMYT is working in northern Mexico and locations worldwide to test new wheats that produce up to 30% more grain under tough, dryland conditions than other high-yielding varieties for semi-arid environments.

As with all Patronato’s contributions to CIMMYT, Valley farmers will be among the immediate beneficiaries of the research, but by no means the only ones. Ultimately, a far greater number—perhaps millions—of people all over the world will reap the fruits of Patronato’s investment. “Many people here are not aware of what Patronato’s contributions have meant for poor wheat producers the world over, but in other countries they give us credit,” says Castro. He and a group of fellow farmers recently traveled to Spain, where they heard appreciative comments about Patronato’s contributions.

Patronato and CIMMYT Roots Entwine

Patronato descends directly from a group of farmers who, having personally experienced the benefits of agricultural research, began supporting Dr. Norman E. Borlaug’s pioneering wheat improvement efforts in the 1940s (see box below). “When Borlaug arrived, Valley farmers were struggling to survive because their wheat varieties regularly succumbed to stem rust, a pernicious wheat disease,” says Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio, a CIMMYT researcher based in the Valley. “After they began sowing Borlaug’s rust resistant wheats, they doubled their harvests and became firm believers in agricultural research.”

To ensure that research activities in the Valley would continue, in 1955 the farmers, with government help, bought land and made it available to the Ministry of Agriculture for an experiment station (called CIANO, Northwestern Agricultural Research Center) where research would be conducted in collaboration with Borlaug and his colleagues. Thus began a mutually beneficial relationship between Yaqui Valley wheat producers and Borlaug’s team of scientists. Over time, the former evolved into Patronato and the latter became CIMMYT.

Extraordinarily fruitful not only for Patronato and CIMMYT but for much of the world, the relationship continues to this day. Starting in the 1960s, when the semidwarf wheat varieties developed by Borlaug and his colleagues in Mexico kept millions from starving to death in India and Pakistan, CIMMYT varieties and other wheat technologies have made a big difference in the lives of many. Endowed with many useful traits (disease resistance, wide adaptation, heat and drought tolerance, among others), the modern varieties have helped raise yields and produced enough food to feed millions of people in the
developing world.

Farmer Donations Underpin Patronato

The modern incarnation of Patronato has expanded to include all farmers, large and small, in Sonora, its home state. Patronato supports research activities on wheat, maize, and a range of other crops all over Sonora. Its main purpose is strengthening the development of modern agricultural technologies that will enable producers to raise their yields sustainably. Besides collaborating with CIMMYT, Patronato partners with CIANO, INIFAP (Mexico’s national agricultural research program), and others to achieve its aims.

As in the beginning, Patronato’s main source of funding is still producers’ voluntary donations based on their crop production per hectare, though state and federal institutions also contribute. Unprecedented in the developing world, Patronato farmers have willingly made direct monetary and other contributions to research for at least 50 years. Their enduring faith in science has been rewarded many times over, and will no doubt continue to produce useful results for themselves and their counterparts worldwide.

For further information: i.ortiz-monasterio@cgiar.org

CIMMYT Director General Masa Iwanaga, Norman Borlaug, and US Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman at a ceremony in Washington, DC, in honor of Borlaug’s 90th birthday. The more than 200 guests included FAO Director General Jacques Diouf, USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, World Bank Vice President and CGIAR Chair Ian Johnson, and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who spoke in tribute to Borlaug. Veneman also announced the Norman E. Borlaug Agricultural Science and Technology Fellows Program inaugurated by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Norman Borlaug: 60 Years Fighting Famine and Poverty, and Gofing Strong

When a young wheat researcher named Norman Borlaug arrived in the Yaqui Valley, northwestern Mexico, in 1945, the research station there was sadly dilapidated. Its condition reflected the sorry state of wheat farms in the Valley, devastated each year by stem rust. Undeterred, Borlaug literally used his own two hands to set up experimental wheat plots. This was part of his research for a joint initiative between the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture and the Rockefeller Foundation aimed at raising Mexico’s production of basic food crops, wheat and maize included. His efforts were watched by surrounding farmers, who at first deeply distrusted him. But they had a change of heart the year stem rust razed the Valley’s wheat fields—all, that is, except Borlaug’s experimental plots. Soon local farmers were growing his rust resistant wheats and doubling their harvests.

Not satisfied, Borlaug continued working on a wheat plant which, besides resisting rust, would produce much higher yields. He transferred dwarfing genes from the Japanese wheat Norin 10 to his test materials. The resulting varieties had short, sturdy stems that held up under the weight of the extra grain they produced. In 1962, Mexico released the first semidwarf wheats. A few years later those varieties were adopted in South Asia and allowed inhabitants to go from near starvation to surplus in a couple seasons. This was the start of the so-called “Green Revolution”—a rapid and widespread transformation from traditional to more science-based farming. In 1970 Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize, partly for the millions of lives saved by the Mexican-born wheats.

A Long-lived and Productive Legacy

In the 1960s the Mexico/Rockefeller Foundation collaborative project evolved into two research organizations: INIA (later INIFAP), Mexico’s national agricultural research institute; and CIMMYT, an organization founded to combat poverty by increasing the productivity, profitability, and sustainability of maize and wheat farming in developing countries.

Borlaug’s philosophy and approaches became a big part of CIMMYT, embodied in effective practices such as “shuttle breeding.” Borlaug and his colleagues had developed semidwarfs quickly by running two breeding cycles per year instead of one: a winter cycle in the northern desert of Sonora and a summer crop in the central Mexican highlands. This not only fast-forwarded selection, but also exposed test varieties to radically different day lengths, temperatures, altitudes, and diseases. The resulting plants were broadly adapted; that is, they grew well in numerous environments. Shuttle breeding continues today within Mexico and between CIMMYT and partners in places like China. Hands-on, field based training, and CIMMYT’s international testing systems for maize and wheat are other Borlaug legacies.

Still very active, Dr. Borlaug turned 90 in 2004. He has remained an indefatigable promoter of agricultural research to help the poor in the developing world, a commitment that we are proud to share.

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January, 2005