Innovating in a dynamic technical context - Water Scarcity, Livelihoods and Food Security - page 117

crop varieties, access to seed and to fertilizer in small, cheaper packs, and rain-
water harvesting. The project made no breakthroughs (Siambi, 2011).
Project PN2 in hilly, degraded land in Eritrea defined problems as drought
stress, high fertilizer prices and land degradation. Technical innovations were
drought- and disease-tolerant crop varieties; fertilizer use; and practices to
conserve land and water. The project invested in participatory plant breeding,
variety selection involving women and village-based seed production. The
institutional sustainability of the seed systems, and whether farmers adopted
the new practices is not clear (Gomez-Macpherson et al., 2009; Grando et al.,
2010). Project PN6 in the Volta tested varieties, seed, fertilizer, credit and
rainwater harvesting (Asante, 2011).
Low yield and water productivity of rainfed staple crops in drought-prone
areas is a difficult problem. Projects tested crop varieties, soil fertility, water
harvesting, and input and product markets but struggled to get good results.
Water harvesting was laborious and risky, although it did not include small
reservoirs, groundwater for irrigation or building structures with machines.
These projects evolved from the Centers' (International Crops Research
Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, International Center for Agricultural
Research in Dry Areas and Centro Internacional para Mejoramiento de Maíz
y Trigo) on-going work (Low et al., 1991; Kumwenda et al., 1996; Waddington
et al., 1998; CIMMYT 1999).
A second group of projects explored how crop varieties and management
can deal with special conditions. For example, a project in the Mekong
introduced “drawdown” cropping in hydropower reservoirs that are drained
seasonally. The cropping calendar depends on the timing of the drawdown,
which is predictable, if risky. Project Mekong 1 tested early-maturing varieties
of rice and cassava with farmers and is scaling out a new cassava variety in
Vietnam (Sellamuttu, 2012).
Aerobic rice is another special condition. Project PN16 in China identified
and mapped environments where in some years there is not enough rain for
flooded rice and in other years too much for upland crops. Aerobic rice, which
can grow well either waterlogged or dryland, is a solution. The project tested
varieties of aerobic rice and crop management with the aim to extrapolate the
technology to other parts of Asia (Bouman, 2008; CPWF, 2012c).
Salty groundwater near the soil surface in the coastal Ganges is another
special condition. Project PN7 used available salt-tolerant varieties of rice,
oilseeds, pulses, fodder crops and vegetables to increase yields and intensify and
diversify farm systems. Salt-tolerant crops could be irrigated with groundwater
in the dry-season farming, which improved food security. Women participated
in selecting crop varieties. The intensified system gave more work for women,
good for some women and not for others. Over-strict rules on releasing crop
varieties was an institutional constraint (Castillo et al., 2007; Islam et al., 2008;
Ismail, 2009; CPWF, 2012g).
Improved varieties and better crop management, rotations, drainage and water
control transformed productivity and intensity of rice-based agroecosystems