The Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) SAA-Use Case Nigeria project held its planning workshop from 14 to 17 February at the IITA-Kano station.
While briefing the participants on the aims and objectives of Excellence in Agronomy, Mandla Nkomo, the Chief Growth Officer, mentioned that the EiA project wants to achieve modernized agronomy and deliver Good Agronomic Practices (GAP) for the benefit of the farmers. Mandla also talked about how to achieve a more significant impact. Part of the process led to a decision that they, as a team, will develop some research areas, including systems transformation and how they influence policies from a food and agricultural perspective. The process also led to genetic innovation, which CGIAR is known for globally because they have developed crop breeds in several sectors.
Nkomo further explained that within agro-food systems, they look to develop approaches, generate evidence, and provide tools and toolkits to drive the agenda of much more resilient agro-food systems in the world. The agro-food system is under much pressure from climate change and needs a crop lens. There are many challenges around yield, production quality, soil depletion, and the inability to get more crops.
EiA is the second-largest initiative under resilient agro-food systems within CGIAR. EiA has set itself as an agenda with an initiative to provide sustainable intensification and climate change adaptation solutions from an agronomic perspective. Therefore, we create such use cases when we work with partners like ourselves. Use-Cases are essential in generating responses to partners’ needs in the field.
“Based on that need, they develop solutions often perceived as bringing together the arm of CGIAR Centers. IITA, Africa Rice, and CDA came together to support the National Agricultural Research Systems in the places where we work. When the initiatives are over, the capacity and impact should be sustainable,” Nkomo continued.
The EiA looks to help farmers make better investing decisions and ensure extension agents (EAs) can interact with them and give them the best advice to influence their practices.
Nkomo also said the Use Case is important because Nigeria’s northern part is the country’s food basket. If good agronomic practices are applied, the impact will be huge, not just for Nigeria but even for neighboring countries. And to do that, we must make the tools we are developing become transformative in improving farmers’ yield quality and profitability and ensure there is nutrient and resource use efficiency. And soil health is also essential as that will feed Nigeria in the future.
He hopes that with the Use-Case, they can provide much better agronomic advisory services for farmers. “That will require a network of partners, the CGIAR centers, and the demand partners to properly help understand the needs, shape the solutions together, and deploy them at scale. As a team, we must ensure millions of farmers have access to quality agronomic information about growing maize, rice, and cassava,” he added.
In his presentation on Assessing User Needs and Experience, Thompson Ogunsanmi, the Scaling Scientist for African Agronomy Cassava Initiatives (ACAI), spoke about things to understand, such as planting windows, needs, variety, time to plant, the importance of yield estimation, and the certainty of losing your yield. He also highlighted the importance of knowing your target yield, the farm size, and how much manure to apply. “Meeting and having a focus group discussion (FGD) is essential to obtain an excellent agronomic practice,” said Ogunsanmi.
Dr Ali Ibrahim, AfricaRice Systems Agronomist, also presented on Safe Planting Windows, achievements, and the way forward. He said Pepin Van Oort first developed Rice Cropping Calender Construction with Climate Change (CCC) at AfricaRice. Van Oort et al. (2016) documented the method and rationale for the CCC model.
Ibrahim further discussed that AfricaRice had developed a simple version of RiceAdvice, the RiceAdvice Lite. The tools designed, and the ones yet to be designed, help provide recommendations regarding nutrient management for farmers. The previous version required much information, particularly knowing who provides the recommendation and the farmer. In contrast, the new version requires simple information for recommendations for farmers. He said the tool runs in Microsoft Excel, available on most computers. The device is available on the Google store, where anyone can download and use the ODK form of the RiceAdvice Lite with NutrientExpert (NE).
In an interview, Ibrahim said the objectives of sharing results with partners are to make sure the tools developed are working, and they are happy with the results and can also proceed with scaling the tools. The partners are excited about the results because the tools developed performed remarkably in all the states where validation trials were conducted.
Dr Bello Mohammed, Maize Fertilizer Recommendation Expert at the Centre for Dryland Agriculture (CDA-BUK), also mentioned that he acquired many benefits during the workshop. They also identified weak points from the tools developed in the Use-Case and the areas that need improvement.
Contributed by Sarah Sallau
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