March 21, 2000 / E-Markets
Farmers and scientists are developing "miracle rice," "hardy corn" and other
innovative crops to help the 2.7 billion people who will be living in
water-scarce regions by the year 2025, says the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). CGIAR scientists have also
helped to create a new user-friendly database called World Water and Climate
Atlas for Agriculture that will serve as a high-tech tool for managing water
resources for farmers, agronomists, engineers, conservationists,
meteorologists, researchers and government policy makers. "The world is
facing a deadly water gap: some 20 percent more water is needed than is
available to feed the nearly 3 billion additional people who will be alive
by 2025, and there is no way to manufacture new water," says Ismail
Serageldin, CGIAR Chairman, as well as World Bank Vice President for Special
Programs. "Crops that are improved to flourish in low-water environments,
together with this powerful new tool, the Water and Climate Atlas, make up
one key component in an overall global water strategy." Serageldin is also
Chairman of the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, which was
formed to call public attention to the water crisis and to find solutions.
The World Commission will present its report on a vision for the future of
global water resources and their management at the ongoing Second World
Water Forum, March 17-22, 2000 in The Hague, the Netherlands. The
innovations that CGIAR is developing to help a water-short world include:
Hardy Corn: Researchers at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement
Center, known as CIMMYT, one of 16 CGIAR centers, have created hardy new
breeds of tropical corn that can increase harvests by 40 percent in the
tough environments of the developing world. One of the new corn varieties
was specifically developed to grow under drought conditions, with a much
higher yield than traditional corn gives in the same conditions. Drought
caused the loss of an estimated 24 million tons of corn in 1993 in the
developing world, a drop of 15 percent from the potential crop without any
drought. The new corn will also help the environment by allowing farmers in
the developing world to stay on what was becoming non-productive lands,
thereby saving virgin rain forests and other fragile tropical lands. Miracle
Rice: New, water-saving techniques are being developed that could save up to
25 percent of the water now used to grow rice, according to scientists at
two CGIAR centers -- the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based
in Manila, the Philippines, and the International Water Management Institute
(IWMI), based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The link between water and rice is
crucial, especially since fresh water is a scarce resource that is getting
scarcer. The number of water-scarce countries is expected to increase to 48
countries by 2025, peaking at 55 countries by mid-century, 2050. More than
half of the world's population will depend on rice as their principal food
source in 30 years. Rice production must increase by more than 40 percent
from the present production to avoid a rice shortage. But available land for
cultivation is expected to decrease because of erosion, desertification,
salinization, and rapidly increasing urbanization. Durable Wheat:
Researchers have been able to modify wheat, once mostly restricted to
temperate and subtropical zones, to make it productive even in hot climates.
One main reason for growing wheat is it requires less water than rice. Wheat
is also a cash crop that has relatively few natural insect enemies. Thanks
to years of intensive plant breeding work, modern wheats now have strong
built-in resistance to major diseases. That means poor farmers in developing
countries are assured of stable yields and can more easily adapt pest
management procedures that make maximum use of biological control measures,
minimizing chemical use. The World Water and Climate Atlas for Agriculture:
Scientists at another CGIAR center, the International Water Management
Institute (IWMI), along with Utah State University, have created a new
database that will serve as a high-tech tool for farmers, agronomists,
engineers, conservationists, meteorologists, researchers and government
policy makers. The Atlas integrates the available agricultural climate data
into one computer program and represents the most comprehensive,
quality-controlled climatic data set in existence, enabling users for the
first time to zoom in on any 1-square mile (2.5 sq. kilometers) region of
the globe and extract critical data such as precipitation and probability of
precipitation, maximum and minimum temperatures and average temperatures.
All of this data is converted into maps that clearly delineate climatic
conditions, no matter how remote an area of land may be, in a user-friendly
computer program that agronomists can use to assist even the poorest
farmers. The Atlas will help identify the agro-climatic conditions
appropriate for specific crops. The Atlas will serve the interests of small
and poor farmers in at least three ways: International funding agencies,
along with national and local governments, will have a much clearer picture
of how to direct increasingly scarce agricultural investments resources;
Extension agents can print and distribute data generated by the Atlas for
specific areas to help improve the performance of water resource and
irrigation systems, ultimately leading to improved crop production by poor
and small-scale farmers; By helping poor farmers to increase their incomes,
the Atlas would help to better preserve the Earth's environment -- where too
many people are poor, hungry or unemployed, preservation of nature, forests
and wildlife will deteriorate.
The Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research is a global
agricultural research network that works to promote food security, poverty
eradication and the sound management of natural resources in the developing
world (www.cgiar.org).
Future Harvest builds public understanding of the importance of
international agricultural research to global peace, prosperity,
environmental renewal, health, and alleviation of human suffering
(www.futureharvest.org).
(posted without permission)
