Farmers in Mali are engaged in some groundbreaking agricultural trials. After more than ten years of scientific research, the groundnut just got better and this version of the age-old staple offers faster growth and larger yields. just-food.com’s Aaron Priel looks at the development of the new groundnut, and the potential it holds for one of the world’s poorest nations.
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Agricultural researchers working in the desert nation of Mali in West Africa predict that within five years, thousands of farmers will be growing a new groundnut or peanut variety, “setting the stage for a dramatic increase in production”, according to a special report by Future Harvest.
The new disease-resistant groundnuts, developed after more than a decade of research, are the first new varieties of the nuts to be introduced in almost half a century. They are currently undergoing wide-scale testing by prominent farmers in each of the country’s three groundnut-producing regions.
Re-discovered research
Groundnut research was a priority up until the 1960s, but has received relatively little attention over the past 40 years, according to Farid Waliyar, an expert in plant diseases. Countries like Mali grew groundnuts for export to Europe, a market that has now all but disappeared, he said. “Even so, groundnuts are an increasingly important part of Mali’s rural farm economy. Last year, farmers produced 150,000 tonnes on about 180,000 hectares,” the report notes.
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By GlobalDataWaliyar, who has spent the last 12 years working in West Africa, is part of a team of crop and environmental scientists based at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). ICRISAT, one of the 16 Future Harvest centres, is headquartered in Hyderabad, India, but maintains a network of research stations across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Finding the potential
Groundnut yields in Mali, as in many other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, are only a small fraction of their potential. A farmer in the US, according to Waliyar, can harvest two or three tonnes per hectare, while farmers in Mali are lucky to harvest 400 to 500 kilograms.
Waliyar explains in Future Harvest’s report the challenges that faced groundnut researchers: “One of the biggest production problems in Mali is the large number of diseases that attacks the crop, but farmers have also to fight off insects and contend with poor soils and drought. Our job is to identify plant types that can be grown under local conditions without using chemicals or even fertiliser.”.
The new groundnut varieties are not only disease resistant, but consistently produce more than 1.5 tonnes per hectare, 50% more than traditional Malian groundnuts. Many farmers are actually producing up to 4 tonnes per hectare under experimental conditions, so the researchers’ goal of producing varieties that can yield 2 tonnes per hectare on ordinary farmers’ fields is already in sight.
The new varieties also have the advantage of maturing earlier than conventional groundnuts, which greatly reduces the risk of crop failures. Mali’s traditional groundnuts mature in about 115 days, while the new plant types are ready to be harvested in just 90 days.
This is a big advantage for a crop grown under unreliable rainfall conditions. “The sooner a crop is harvested, the lower the risk and the higher the profit. Groundnuts prices usually drop 50% or more when the bulk of the crop is harvested in October and November,” Future Harvest says.
Waliyar credits his counterparts at the Malian national research programme, the Institut d’Economie Rurale, and the NGO ADAF Galle, which provides organisational support. “These are major players and we would not have come so far without their help,” he notes.
Women’s work
In his opinion, however, the bulk of the credit goes to the women of Samanko. In Mali, as in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, groundnuts are predominantly grown by women. The harvests, though small by the standards of industrialised countries, help to feed their families and what is left is sold to pay for school fees and medical bills.
“[The women] are helping to lead their country’s agriculture to much higher levels of productivity and they are doing it in the face of great personal adversity,” Waliyar says. The women are members of a local self-help group in the village of Samanko, 25 kilometres south of Mali’s capital city of Bamako.
“In Mali, groundnut is considered a woman’s crop, so what women think has a big impact on the success of a new variety.”
Future Harvest is a non-profit organisation that builds awareness and support for food and environmental research. It supports research, promotes partnerships and sponsors projects that bring the results of research to rural communities, farmers and families in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Future Harvest supports the 16 food and environmental research centres that are primarily funded through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
By Aaron Priel, just-food.com correspondent
