In earlier issues, CGIAR News featured articles bylined by new center directors as a way of introducing them to the wider CGIAR community. This time we would like to present Timothy Reeves, Director General of CIMMYT, through an interview he recently granted. CGIAR News thanks the German development news service EPI (Entwicklungspolitische Informationen) for the permission to reprint the interview.
EPI : Professor Reeves, you recently took up the direction of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). What are the tasks which are to be given priority up to the year 2000 and/or 2050; what are you aiming at?
Reeves: CIMMYT's goal is the development of sustainable maize and wheat based systems for the poor in developing countries. The outcomes we seek to contribute to are food security, protection of natural resources, and the alleviation of poverty for many of the world's poor. In order to achieve this, the major tasks for our partnerships, with national programs, in the foreseeable future are:
The above are, of course, components of sustainable agricultural systems which must be economically viable, environmentally sound, socially acceptable, and politically supportable. Prior to arriving at CIMMYT, I was Professor of Sustainable Agricultural Production at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and I am committed to the pursuit of sustainable systems which meet the criteria above. A critical issue in agricultural sustainability is the question of balance-simply put, in the long run what we extract from the soil in terms of nutrients, water, and organic matter must be replaced in some way. In subsistence systems, and indeed in more sophisticated agriculture, this is often hard to achieve. Hence, one of our aims is to produce maize and wheat lines which are more sparing of soil nitrogen, more efficient in water use, and more resilient to both biotic and abiotic stresses. The challenges are great, but with continued investment in research and development I strongly believe the payoffs will also be great.
EPI: The CIMMYT acronym is closely associated with the Green Revolution which, approximately 30 years ago, gave signals as far as the struggle against hunger in the world is concerned. What are the tasks on which agricultural research has to focus in order to ensure humanity's food in the upcoming century?
Reeves: The Green Revolution was exciting and made a great impact on hunger and poverty, but few realize that the gains since that time are equally impressive. For example, during the 1980s alone more than 16 million hectares of developing country agricultural land came under new, higher yielding wheat varieties. And nearly all of the original Green Revolution varieties have been replaced with even more productive ones -- varieties that require little or no pesticides because they have durable built-in resistance and that are much more efficient in using available soil nutrients, water, and sunlight to produce grain. Our aim over the next 10-20 years is, together with our partners in the South and research colleagues in the North, to create a Double Green Revolution-a huge boost in food production, but one closely associated with efforts to protect our natural resources.
The world faces the greatest explosion in population it has ever faced-200 persons a minute added to the food queue -- a new Mexico City each three months, 100 million extra persons per year for the next 30 years at least! Not all will buy cars or computers or videos because the majority will be born into the poorer countries of the world. But all of them will require to be fed-and food of sufficient quantity and quality must be available or the world will fall into chaos caused by the death from hunger of countless millions. We cannot allow this to happen. Agricultural research is the cornerstone of addressing this huge challenge, for in many developing countries the vast majority of the population is involved with agriculture. As their agriculture benefits from appropriate research flows on, malnutrition and poverty are alleviated and disposable income generated. This income is most often used to improve education with the general corollary of reduced birthrates. The prospects for major breakthroughs in international agricultural research are exciting! With continued investment we will expect in the next 5-10 years to:
These breakthroughs will allow us to help alleviate poverty and protect the environment in the world's most needy areas. To succeed requires a partnership between CIMMYT, national programs, and willing financial donors. Together, we can prevail and prevail we must!
EPI: CIMMYT's sphere of influence is not exclusively concentrated on Latin America. What are your regional activities outside Latin America?
Reeves: CIMMYT has a global mandate for maize and wheat germplasm improvement. However, we often work in conjunction with our sister centers. For example, in western and central Africa we join forces with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, and with the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas in the West Asia/North Africa region. Our main research emphasis is on developing more efficient and productive maize and wheat varieties. We develop generic varieties with built in resistance to pests (so little or no pesticides are needed to ensure good yields) and with better tolerance to environmental stresses like drought or less fertile soil. Our colleagues in national research programs can either release these varieties directly to farmers or use them in their own breeding programs. Beyond breeding, however, we participate in several major collaborative research projects focused on sustaining natural resources in agriculture. One of these is in South Asia and is aimed at reversing a trend toward lower productivity in the vast rice/wheat cropping system of that region, a system that feeds more than 150 million poor people. Another is in Central America and focuses on erosion control in maize-based hillside cropping systems. And in Africa we participate in several research networks that address problems of soil fertility and conservation, as well as the development of new, resource conserving technologies for the region's maize and wheat areas. We also engage in social science research that, among other things, helps us and others to better allocate scarce research resources. Finally, in addition to all this, we provide training for national program scientists, develop more effective research methods, and provide a range of information products and services. There are over 4,500 alumni from this program worldwide.
EPI: Scientists and researchers, but also discerning politicians, regret the insufficient support given to agricultural research at the national level. Is this a result of inadequate lobbying or to a lack of recognition that 10 or 15 billion people can no longer be fed along conventional lines?
Reeves: In answer to that question, I'd like to quote Dr. Norman Borlaug, father of the original Green Revolution. He writes that agricultural scientists, responsible environmentalists, and policy makers have a moral obligation to warn the political, educational, and religious leaders of the world, as well as the general public, about the magnitude and seriousness of the arable land, food, population, and poverty problems that lie ahead We clearly must do more to educate decision makers and the people who put them in office, to remind them that food does not come from the supermarket, but rather from the farm, and that agricultural research has been and will continue to be the well-spring of new technologies needed to feed our rapidly growing population while preserving our environmental resources. We cannot slacken our efforts; we must in fact redouble them in the face of the gravest food, population, and natural resource problems ever faced by humankind. Policy makers, those who fund agricultural research of all kinds, and the general public must be made to realize that the consequences of failure are unthinkable, and that our very humanity demands that we act, and act now!
EPI: Could it be necessary that international agricultural research has to redefine itself in order to become more forceful and efficient and, at the same time, more convincing in its public presentation?
Reeves: I would say that, yes, we need to continue to adjust our research efforts because the problems we are trying to overcome are changing. While I've been active in the area of agricultural sustainability for most of my professional life, it has only been in the last five to ten years that the importance of sustainability-of protecting the natural resources in agriculture upon which future generations will live-has received the more widespread attention it deserves from those who invest in research. That does not mean we should give up on research aimed at producing new, more productive varieties. Rather, it means that we must recognize that crop productivity is increasingly being limited by factors other than new varieties alone, and that our improved plants will not achieve their true potential in farmers fields if we do not address some of these other basic problems. As for public image, rest assured that the new generation of agricultural scientists recognize the importance of better communication with a wide range of audiences, and will be making every effort to be more convincing, both about the problems we all must face, as well as the solutions that agriculture research can provide. At last agriculturists have realized that public relations is just that-relations with the public.
EPI: Word and action of agricultural researchers are vital not only for the Southern hemisphere. Don't the so-called Eastern Reform Countries also expect assistance and support in solving their food problems?
Reeves: We think so, and we have good relationships with various countries in the East. We have been providing researchers there with some experimental wheat varieties suitable for the region for a number of years now, have hosted several visiting scientists at our research headquarters in Mexico (and invited many more), and most recently we've conducted workshops-in Russia and in the Ukraine-to get acquainted with the work of researchers there and to familiarize them with ours. Based on those and other interactions, we feel that a high priority activity for the region in the near future is to reestablish a system for exchanging experimental wheat varieties and sharing research information. Training is also an important priority, both to help the region's excellent agricultural research staff stay current in their disciplines, and to attract young, high quality scientists to agriculture. We can only hope that governments there, perhaps with the aid of donors outside the region, will choose to invest more resources than currently in long-term agricultural research. In the end, we can only help, but we will be very pleased to do so.
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