It is my very great pleasure to be here today. I have so many fond memories of K-State, and it has been too many years since I have had an opportunity to come back and visit.

I am deeply honoured to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award. Truly, I would not be here today were it not for the fine education I received at Kansas State. It has served me in good stead for the many decades that I spent as a field scientist and as a researcher, and it is still serving me well in my work as a manager and as an advocate for rural development. The Department of Entomology was prestigious, even in my day, and I am pleased to see that it remains one of the foremost teaching and research institutions for entomology.

Today is a glorious fall day and the campus looks more beautiful than ever. But imagine, if you can, what it was like for a young African, who had never travelled outside of his own country, arriving in Kansas in 1972, on a very cold Fourth of January.

I had been awarded a Ford Foundation scholarship after finishing my Bachelor’s degree in Nigeria. And I was very excited about the chance to continue my studies in the United States.

I had seen pictures of Manhattan and I knew all about the city of skyscrapers….

I didn’t know that there were two Manhattans.  And I believe there are even more!

I didn’t know that Manhattan, Kansas would have snow as high as my head. I didn’t know that people could walk around with steam coming out of their mouths.  I had never seen anything like it before.

In 1972, the African student population was still very small here in Manhattan. My first apartment, on Fairfield Avenue, was owned by an elderly couple. When they found out they were renting to an African they decided they didn’t want to rent the room out any more.

Luckily, there was a wonderful woman at the international students’ office who convinced them that they shouldn’t turn me out. I stayed, and became close friends with the couple who rented the rooms across the hall. In my four years at K-State, I learned to love the mid-west. Even in winter. Even today, it strikes me as more natural, and the people more human.

Know your community

I was lucky to do my graduate work here, under the expert guidance of Professor Ernst Horber.  Professor Horber taught me many things that helped me throughout my career as an entomologist. Much of what I learned from him was not specific to our field of research, and two things stand out as being valuable for all scientists.

The first is that you must be constantly observant and constantly vigilant. Research is 95 per cent routine and 5 per cent chance. If you don’t have your eyes open, you will miss that chance. The major discoveries I made as a research scientist were both a result of chance.

The second thing he taught me is that while there is a joy in research for research’s sake, you also have to understand the context of your work. If you don’t, it will never get beyond the lab. 

Dr Horber embodied what a Land Grant University like Kansas State is all about – applying research and teaching to improve the lives of local people. To do this, you must know the local environment, and you must know the local community.

Since leaving Kansas State, I have seen the wisdom of this approach, both in my years as a research scientist in Africa and in India, and now, in my relatively new role as head of a United Nations agency.

As scientists and researchers, we put most of our emphasis on the biological and physical experiences. Over the years, I have learned that sociology – and many of the other, softer, -ologies, are every bit as important when moving science from the theoretical to the practical.

If there is one thing I would like you to come away with today, it is an appreciation that your work in agricultural research can transform people’s lives. But to do this, you – as scientists – need to look up sometimes from your collection jars, your computers and your lab tables and apply the same rigour of thought to understanding the social dimension of your local communities.

The cassava mealybug threat

As a young researcher in the Congo DRC – or Zaire as it was called at the time  – I turned my attention to ways of eradicating the cassava mealybug.

Cassava is one of the world’s most important food crops for poor people. Throughout the tropics, its roots and leaves provide essential calories – and income. Around 600 million people in Africa, Asia and Latin American depend on cassava – also known as yucca and manioc – for their survival.

As early as 1977, I was aware that the cassava mealybug was a potential threat to the food security of millions of people. So I started researching the multiple ways of controlling the pest. Naturally, through host plant resistance, but also through cultural approaches and biological control. The Integrated Pest Management approach was not a la mode in those days. But as the first field-based entomologist on cassava pest control in Zaire I could try my hand at anything. In 1978, I introduced the first potential predators from the then-Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control in Trinidad.

We had planned to travel from Kinshasa to Bukavu and Kivu in eastern Zaire to release the predators, but were forced to abandon our journey after three days. Instead, we wilfully dumped our “magic wands” in farmers’ fields around the M’vuazi village in Bas Zaire. We will never know the impact of these initial accidental releases on the success story that followed years later.

It turns out that my research was prescient. In the early 1980s, the crop losses from the cassava mealy bug in sub Saharan Africa were running at 80 per cent.

I am proud to say that my early research set the stage for a massive and extensive Africa-wide programme for the Biological Control of the Cassava mealybug. By 1988, the mealybug threat was under control throughout Africa, saving at least 20 million lives and about US$2.2 billion in production. The cost of the Biological Control Programme that led to these savings was only US$20 million. For every dollar invested, a life was saved.

This work was done by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), one of the R&D centres of the CGIAR.  Incidentally, it was at IITA that I spent 6 months as a temporary research technician after my BSc in 1971 and 10 months as a post-doc in 1976 after I left KSU.  And it was IITA that posted me to Congo DRC in 1977 as a cassava entomologist.

I should add here that 18 years separate the cassava mealybug and NERICA rice stories, time during which I spent seven years in three countries in West Africa and 10 years in India.  But today’s lecture is not about my life history.

NERICA

Without taking you to the field, it is difficult for me to show you exactly what cassava crops mean to poor rural people. But for another discovery close to my heart – NERICA rice – I have a film,  “Made in Benin”, that can show you – far better than I can – the tangible difference that agricultural research can make in improving the food security and the lives of poor people in developing countries.

Before I start the film, bear with me while I introduce NERICA and IFAD.

NERICA stands for New Rice for Africa. For millions of people in West Africa, food means rice. But about 40 per cent of the rice consumed locally is imported. The high yields that were achieved in Asia during the Green Revolution have been difficult to replicate in the harsher African environment.

In 1991, researchers at the Africa Rice Center (known as WARDA in those days) – where I later became Director General – started working on creating rice varieties that combined the high productivity of Asian rice with the hardiness of local African rice species. The first progenies or ‘hybrids’ were just ready for testing in farmers’ fields when I became Director General in late 1996.

The NERICA rices offer many advantages to farmers. They mature in 90 to 100 days, compared with 120 to 150 days for traditional varieties; they demand less labour because there is less weeding time needed and they are drought tolerant. With minimum inputs, farmers have seen yield increases ranging from 25 to 250 per cent. There are now hundreds of new NERICA varieties.

The film you will be viewing shortly was made many years after my work on NERICA was done. Not only does it illustrate the powerful applications of research, it also gives a good overview of the work my institution – IFAD – does.

IFAD

IFAD stands for the International Fund for Agricultural Development. IFAD is unique in being both an International Financial Institution and a United Nations Agency.

As an International Financial Institution, we fund and mobilize co-financing for projects that invest in and support poor people who live in the rural areas of developing countries. The projects IFAD supports aim to make it possible for poor rural people to lift themselves out of subsistence and into the marketplace – improving their incomes and ensuring their food security.

I don’t need to tell you how important agriculture is. Justin Smith Morrill recognised the power of agriculture and science to lead social change when he introduced the bills that ultimately led to the creation of the land-grant universities in the 1800s.

I doubt that he would be surprised to know that even today, investing in agriculture is the best way of generating economic growth. Indeed, many studies have shown that GDP growth generated by agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. Agriculture has led the economic growth of countries such as Brazil, China and Vietnam. And today it is beginning to show some results in Ghana, Rwanda and Tanzania.

The film I am about to show you not only illustrates the impact of NERICA, it also shows the entpreneurial spirit of many smallholders and producers. 

As you can see from the experience of Brigitte Adassin, science is not only the key to unlocking productivity for poor farmers, it is also the key to unlocking their potential as entrepreneurs.

There are close to 1 billion poor and hungry people in the world today. That’s about one in six people of today’s population; a marginal improvement from one in seven people ten years ago. Agricultural research has an important role to play in creating the conditions to bring poor rural people out of subsistence and into the marketplace.

Biotechnology

In recognition of  the part that agricultural research can play in improving food security and reducing poverty, IFAD supports a wide range of research and development activities.

As we consider the capacity of agricultural research to support rural development, we have to use all of the available tools, technologies and science at our disposal. That includes biotechnology.

Agricultural biotechnologies, including Marker Assisted Selection, Marker Assisted Breeding, tissue culture and embryo rescue techniques can bring many benefits. They can boost productivity, improve the tolerance of seeds and plants to drought, temperature stress and pests, and make nutrient use more efficient.

Resource-poor farmers in developing countries stand to benefit most from agricultural biotechnologies. But we must also recognise that biotechnology is only a tool, not an end in itself. In the majority of developing countries, we are not yet able to optimize conventional scientific approaches such as the simple use of fertilizers and micro-irrigation, or the use of improved crop varieties.

The challenge, therefore, is striking the right balance. Biotechnologies, including genetically modified crops, can provide us with more resilient, more nutritious crops. It can help shorten our delivery and results time. But only when other simple approaches fail to produce the required results.

Agricultural biotechnologies are not a silver bullet. As responsible scientists, we must approach biotechnologies from an angle that looks not only at the agricultural context but also at the eco-systems for which they are intended. We must ensure poor farmers are able to gain access to the technology they need, and we must also consider whether there are likely to be adverse effects from new technologies.

Knowledge must flow freely between researchers and local communities

In order for science to truly improve the conditions of poor rural people, scientists must understand the environment where their discoveries will be used, and the needs of the people who live there.

Whether here in Kansas, or thousands of miles away in Guatemala, Bangladesh or Rwanda, there needs to be a genuine two-way flow of knowledge and information between scientists and rural communities.

At IFAD, we not only fund research, we invest in people-participatory technology development so that rural communities can help inform the work that scientists do. And we also support micro-finance programmes, the empowerment of women, advocacy and policy dialogue with governments, as well as lending our support to farmers’ organisations and their institutions.

Why is this important? In the case of NERICA, we have a superb product that has the potential to meet the rice needs of the entire continent of Africa, but this will only happen if it is adopted by small farmers, and today NERICA is still not reaching enough of them. IFAD is now exploring how to improve the multiplication and the distribution of NERICA seeds and how to engage the private sector in local production. This means working with government to create the right incentives for private sector involvement, to create markets, and to link smallholder farmers to those markets.  

Of course, research doesn’t have to be high-tech to be effective. When I was visiting an IFAD-funded project in Guatemala this summer, I met women who were able to grow vegetables year round, even during the dry season in small – sometimes as small as 10 by 10 – garden plots. They were able to do this by using simple gravity micro-irrigation systems. As a result, family nutrition has improved and the women hope they will be able to increase family income in the future by selling their excess crops.

An additional handicap was a 350 metre pathway to the district road – steep and impassable.  IFAD is now connecting them with a new road to a new market!

Conclusion

When you consider that average global expenditure on agricultural research as a percentage of GDP is only one per cent – and in most developing countries it is even lower – it might seem as if agricultural research is doomed to obscurity. But nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is, the world’s population is set to grow to more than 9 billion by 2050. That’s only 40 years away. And global food production will need to increase by 70 per cent in that time to meet demand.

The work that you are doing here, today, is vitally important. When I left Manhattan in November 1975, little did I know that I would end up living in a remote village in the Congo. Nor did I know that I would spend 10 years studying the sorghum shoot fly in Hyderabad, India. Least of all did I know that I would be heading one of the CGIAR Centers 21 years later, championing NERICA rice.

But let me assure you those 30 years as a field scientist, a researcher and a manager did prepare me for my current responsibilities, heading up a UN agency that is dedicated to agriculture and to rural development – and dedicated to improving the lives and livelihoods of the 2 billion people who live or work on the 500 million small farms in developing countries.

My greatest excitement is when I go to rural communities and sit down with the women, men and children who live in these remote places – whether in Rwanda or Ghana, in India, Brazil or in Guatemala – and we trade experiences. It is an indescribable joy to hear them proudly tell me how it is that they can now eat two or three meals a day, that their children can now go to school, that they have a new clinic down the road, that they have replaced their thatched roof with corrugated iron sheets. There are so many stories!

Truly, the greatest joy in life is when you can give happiness to your fellow human beings!

So with that, I would like to open our question and answer session with a question to you:  do you see your studies or your work as strictly personal and local, or can you envision it contributing to international partnership and global food security?

Manhattan, Kansas, 8 October 2010