Person: Smale, M.
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Smale
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M.
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Smale, M.
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0000-0002-0986-5081 30 results
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- Transferring diversity of goat grass to farmers' fields through the development of synthetic hexaploid wheat(Springer, 2020) Aberkane, H.; Payne, T.S.; Kishii, M.; Smale, M.; Amri, A.; Jamora, N.
Publication - Reaching into the past to tackle new challenges: improving wheat by conserving wild ‘goat grass’(CGIAR Genebank Platform, 2019) Aberkane, H.; Kishii, M.; Amri, A.; Payne, T.S.; Smale, M.; Jamora, N.The availability of synthetic hexaploid wheat (SHW) widens the genetic base for bread wheat improvement. ICARDA and CIMMYT hold 1,570 accessions of goat grass (Aegilops tauschii). More than 600 accessions were used to develop 1,577 SHW since 1986. Over 10
Publication - The potential for wheat production in Africa: analysis of biophysical suitability and economic profitability(CIMMYT, 2013) Asfaw Negassa; Shiferaw, B.; Koo, J.; Sonder, K.; Smale, M.; Braun, H.J.; Gbegbelegbe, S.D.; Zhe Guo; Hodson, D.P.; Wood, S.; Payne, T.S.; Abeyo Bekele GeletaA key staple in Africa, wheat is increasingly in demand in sub-Saharan Africa as a result of income growth and rapid urbanization, but sub-Saharan countries and Africa as a whole respectively produce only about 30% and 40% of their domestic requirements, causing a heavy dependence on imports and making the region highly vulnerable to global market and supply shocks. Conducted jointly by CIMMYT and IFPRI for 12 sub-Saharan African countries, this study used geographic information systems, simulation models, and economic analyses to conclude that the countries are using less than 10% of their potential for profitable wheat production. Unlocking that potential will require changes in attitudes, policy and donor support for adapting farming systems, empowering African farmers, and developing value chains for seeds, input supply, and output markets.
Publication - Wheat harvest technology in Punjab's rice wheat zone: combines, laborers and the cost of harvest delay(PARC, 1987) Smale, M.Combine-users in Punjab's rice-wheat zone tend to be large owner operators who harvest a total of over 20 hectares in either wheat or rice. Although a slightly higher proportion combine rice, those who combine wheat hand-harvest a 'smaller percentage of their total crop area. In wheat, the percentage of crop area hand-harvested is likely to depend on animal herd sizes, since most combine-users previously sold wheat straw and now meet their dry fodder needs by hand-harvesting some area. By comparison, the proportion of rice area that is hand-harvested may reflect the crop's varietal composition and the wetness of the farmers' fields. The relationship of varietal composition, field condition, and rice area combined merits further research attention. At present, imperfect information in the custom combine market probably dominates these decision-making criteria. Many farmers stated that they would have combined a larger area if they had known of or had obtained combine services earlier. In Indian Punjab, Laxminaryan et ale also found that the majority of combine-users hand-harvested some acreage, both because they needed wheat straw for fodder and "they experienced difficulties and uncertainties in obtaining the services of the combine". The youth of the industry and the high cost to companies of "advertising" their services, or establishing and maintaining close contact with their clients, undoubtedly contributes to some contractual difficulties. Most combine-users had only one or two years of experience renting combines, and knew little about the machine itself or the companies from which they hired the combine. Most contracts were verbal. About half of the farmers were informed of combine availability by company representatives, and about half. were informed by other farmers. Despite any difficulties in communicating with the companies, farmers estimated that, on the average, combines arrived only 3 days after rice crop maturity and 5 days after wheat crop maturity. A number of farmers experienced no delays because their contracts were negotiated in the fields when combines arrived in the area. Farmers recalled that in hand-harvesting wheat, over the three years preceding the shift in technology, they waited a comparable period for contracted laborers to begin harvesting their fields. Although initial delays may be similar, the difference in average harvest duration with the two technologies is dramatic. For these large farmers, combines cleared the wheat fields 8 days after crop maturity, including delays. Hand harvesting the same fields, laborers did not complete cutting and threshing until 28 days after crop maturity. Yield comparisons indicate that, as a consequence of shattering losses associated with long harvest duration, farmers' wheat returns increased by over 10 percent when they- shifted technologies. At current rental and wage rates, with yield increases, farmers gain net revenues when combining wheat, despite the loss of wheat straw sales. Although average yield increases associated with combining were even higher in rice, these were partially offset by lower prices received for broken rice. At current wage and rental rates, farmers lost net revenue when combining rice. The slight loss in rice revenues may be offset by timely planting of wheat, or if the farmer combines both crops, by the gains in wheat revenues. Further research should investigate the comparative harvesting costs for rice more thoroughly. Hand-harvesters operating over 10 hectares (potential combine users) also tended to be owned-operators who themselves contracted and supervised harvest laborers. Most of them paid heavily in grain, straw, and other in-kind payments for wheat harvest labor. Although they tended to contract labor well before crop maturity, a large proportion of them experienced both preharvest labor delays and delays during the harvest, when laborers sometimes left their fields to work for other farmers. The estimates provided by hand-harvesters confirm the substantial costs of harvest delay. Based on a three-year average and farmers' recall, a large hand-harvester in the rice-wheat zone can expect a 10 to 12 percent yield loss in years of longer delays. In 1986, laborers cleared the fields of these large farmers an average of 27 days after crop maturity. At "crop maturity," the average moisture content of the wheat was only 10.5 percent, which is dry by agronomists' standards. Given the dryness of the crop, and the increased rainfall probabilities associate~ with prolonged harvest duration, yield losses are not surprising. As compared to the custom combine market, the harvest labor market appears personal in nature. Despite increased labor mobility and commercialization in Gujranwala District, the, locus of the wheat harvest labor market seems to remain the village and nearby villages. Eighty-five percent of the farmers hired labor from their village of residence. Farmers tended to know most of the laborers they hired, and most laborers claimed the village where they were harvesting as both their residence and their home. Many of the laborers hired from outside the farmers' villages lived in nearby villages. Certain exceptions were discovered, such as several farmers who hired contract labor teams through the local grain merchant and transported them to the farm by tractor trolley. These cases are probably atypical. Unlike the conditions described for Sind (Seager) and for Indian Punjab (Singh and Laxminaryan) migrant labor is not a recognizable feature of the Gujranwala wheat harvest, with the possible exception of village residents working in nearby towns who 'return home for the harvest, and are more properly termed "·commuters."
Publication - A note on multi-stage sampling with list frames: the PARC/CIMMYT survey of wheat harvest technology(PARC, 1987) Smale, M.In collecting farm-level data for the purpose of initiating social science research on selected cropping systems, many researchers in Pakistan use random sampling of villages with nonprobability sampling of farmers within villages. Given typical timing and logistical constraints, this relatively low-cost method often provides sufficient data to meet information needs. Studies generated through non-probability sampling provide useful background information, and often serve to identify critical issues for further research. When the purpose of a survey is to generate estimates of population characteristics for policy-makers, the reliability of the estimates becomes more important. The major shortcoming of non-probability methods is the researcher's inability to calculate sampling errors and confidence intervals because the probability of selecting the elements of the sample is unknown. For this reason, such sampling methods are often termed "nonmeasurable" or "judgment" designs (Hansen, Hurwitz, and Madow, pp. 8-9). In many research settings, however, non-sampling errors constitute a large part of total error of estimates. Nonsampling errors are common to both probability and nonprobability surveys, and their magnitude and direction can rarely be measured (Casley and Lury, pp. 86-88). During March and April of 1987, the PARC/CIMMYT Collaborative Program in Economics sponsored a pilot survey on wheat harvest technology in the rice-wheat production area of the Punjab. In the harvest technology survey, the team experimented with a form of multi-stage probability sampling using list frames. While the sample design described in this note reflects specifically the type of information needs identified for this survey, the lessons learned in the implementation of the method may have general implications for similar sample surveys undertaken by Pakistan's social science researchers.
Publication - Crops that feed the world 10. Past successes and future challenges to the role played by wheat in global food security(Springer Verlag, 2013) Shiferaw, B.; Smale, M.; Braun, H.J.; Duveiller, E.; Reynolds, M.P.; Muricho, G.Wheat is fundamental to human civilization and has played an outstanding role in feeding a hungry world and improving global food security. The crop contributes about 20 % of the total dietary calories and proteins worldwide. Food demand in the developing regions is growing by 1 % annually and varies from 170 kg in Central Asia to 27 kg in East and South Africa. The developing regions (including China and Central Asia) account for roughly 53 % of the total harvested area and 50 % of the production. Unprecedented productivity growth from the Green Revolution (GR) since the 1960s dramatically transformed world wheat production, benefitting both producers and consumers through low production costs and low food prices. Modern wheat varieties were adopted more rapidly than any other technological innovation in the history of agriculture, recently reaching about 90 % of the area in developing regions. One of the key challenges today is to replace these varieties with new ones for better sustainability. While the GR ?spared? essential ecosystems from conversion to agriculture, it also generated its own environmental problems. Also productivity increase is now slow or static. Achieving the productivity gains needed to ensure food security will therefore require more than a repeat performance of the GR of the past. Future demand will need to be achieved through sustainable intensification that combines better crop resistance to diseases and pests, adaptation to warmer climates, and reduced use of water, fertilizer, labor and fuel. Meeting these challenges will require concerted efforts in research and innovation to develop and deploy viable solutions. Substantive investment will be required to realize sustainable productivity growth through better technologies and policy and institutional innovations that facilitate farmer adoption and adaptation. The enduring lessons from the GR and the recent efforts for sustainable intensification of cereal systems in South Asia and other regions provide useful insights for the future.
Publication - Diagnostic research to enable adoption of transgenic crop varieties by smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa(Academic Journals, 2003) Smale, M.; De Groote, H.Diagnostic research is important in helping to create an enabling environment for promising biotechnology products in smallholder agriculture, before rather than after release. The biotechnology products that now hold promise for poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa are those that tackle economically important, biotic or abiotic problems not easily addressed through conventional plant breeding or pest control, in crops that serve for food as well as cash, while posing little risk of endangering trade. Two biotechnology products we have selected for social science research in East Africa, Bt maize in Kenya and pest and disease resistance in the East African highland banana, meet these criteria. Preliminary research suggests that the expression of the trait is much more visible to farmers in maize than in bananas; for either crop, for different reasons, bottlenecks will be encountered in planting materials systems; and despite differing crop reproduction systems, transgenic varieties of either share the same environmental hazard of heightened genetic uniformity in the inserted trait relative to conventionally bred varieties. Aside from the performance of the technology, many factors that have incidence at national, regional, and farm levels will affect the likelihood that farmers will adopt transgenic varieties. Social science research can help pinpoint necessary complementary investments.
Publication - Estimating the economic impact of breeding nonspecific resistance to leaf rust in modern bread wheat(American Phytopathological Society (APS), 1998) Smale, M.; Singh, R.P.; Sayre, K.D.; Pingali, P.L.; Rajaram, S.; Dubin, H.J.Breeding for resistance to rust diseases in wheat is an example of productivity maintenance research. Productivity maintenance research is necessary to avoid contractions in the wheat supply curve that result from changes in the biological or physical environment. In this study, the benefits of incorporating nonspecific resistance to leaf rust caused by Puccinia recondita into modern bread wheats (Triticum aestivum) have been estimated using data on resistance genes identified in cultivars, trial data, and area sown to cltivar in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora State, Mexico. In the most pessimistic scenario, the gross benefits generated in the Yaqui Valley from 1970 to 1990 were 17 million U.S. dollars (in 1994 real terms). Even when costs were overstated and benefits were understated, the internal rate of return on capital invested was 13%, well within the range recommended for use in project evaluation by the World Bank. Substantial economic benefits likely are associated with development of nonspecific resistance in many wheat-producing areas of developing countries where farmers change cultivars slowly because of delays in cultivar release, incomplete seed markets, and economic factors related to adoption or where disease pressure is heavy and the costs of treating disease outbreaks is high.
Publication - Chimanga cha makolo, hybrids and composites: farmers' adoption of maize technology in Malawi, 1989-90(CIMMYT, 1992) Smale, M.; Kaunda, Z.H.W.; Makina, H.L.; Mkandawire, M.M.M.K.; Msowoya, M.N.S.; Mwale, D.J.E.K.; Heisey, P.W.During the 1989-90 and 1990-91 cropping seasons, researchers from CIMMYT and the Evaluation Units of the Malawian Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) collected data to profile farmers' adoption behavior and varietal choices, and to elucidate how farm household factors influence farmers' selection of maize varieties in Malawi. This paper is a brief summary of selected findings for the 1989-90 season. More complete data and interpretation can be found in CIMMYT Economics Working Paper 91/04.
Publication - Dimensions of diversity in CIMMYT bread wheat from 1965 to 2000(CIMMYT, 2000) Smale, M.; Reynolds, M.P.; Warburton, M.; Skovmand, B.; Trethowan, R.; Singh, R.P.; Ortiz-Monasterio, I.; Crossa, J.; Khairallah, M.M.; Almanza Pinzon, M.I.To the extent possible, this paper summarizes scientific evidence on the scope of the genetic base in modern bread wheat varieties in the developing world from 1965 to the present, drawing on previously published research and new analyses of experimental
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