Adarsha Revisited. Impacts of CGIAR research

Revised 12 September 2010 at 0450 hours Manila


MANILA - Investors in agriculture research must be exulting with the report of Mitch Renkow and Derek Byerlee that the efforts of CGIAR centers have "yielded strongly positive impacts relative to investment" (2010, "The impacts of CGIAR research: A review of recent evidence," Food Policy, in press). Investors need to be reassured that "research investments represent money well spent." Science is not a commodity thing that bean counters can count on the palm of their hands.

Renkow & Byerlee single out crop genetic improvement, CGI research as "having had the most profound documented positive impacts." I´m not surprised. As one writing and editing and reading on agriculture, fisheries, forestry and natural resource reports, reviews, news and views in the last 35 years, I can easily understand where it´s coming from. CGI refers to higher yields, higher resistances to pests, diseases, and stresses like drought. An increase in yield is instantly palpable to the researcher who would likely publish it ASAP, if he can. It is also immediately tangible to the farmer anywhere, without him having to understand that such an increase may have been due to the new variety´s resistance to pest or disease, or resistance to drought. The poor farmer will not be bothered about such technical considerations as plant morphology and marker-assisted selection & breeding. I have a difficulty understanding the last one myself!

The authors´ impact report on CGIAR as a whole system is welcome. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

As background, CGIAR, which is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, has 15 centers in a new arrangement it calls a Consortium:

ARC (Cotonou, Benin)
Bioversity (Rome, Italy)
CIAT (Cali, Colombia)
CIFOR (Bogor, Indonesia)
CIMMYT (Mexico City, Mexico)
CIP (Lima, Peru)
ICARDA (Aleppo, Syria)
ICRAF (Nairobi, Kenya)
ICRISAT (Patancheru, India)
IFPRI (Washington DC)
IITA (Ibadan, Nigeria)
ILRI (Nairobi, Kenya)
IRRI (Los Baños, Philippines)
IWMI (Colombo, Sri Lanka)
WorldFish (Penang, Malaysia).

(If you´re interested in the acronyms, here they are: ARC, Africa Rice Center. Bioversity, Bioversity International. CIAT, Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical. CIFOR, Center for International Forestry Research. CIMMYT, Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo. CIP, Central Internacional de la Papa. ICARDA, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas. ICRAF, World Agroforestry Centre (it used to be the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry). ICRISAT, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics. IFPRI, International Food Policy Research Institute. IITA, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. ILRI, International Livestock Research Institute. IRRI, International Rice Research Institute. IWMI, International Water Management Institute. WorldFish, WorldFish Center.)

15 centers in 14 countries, an impressive list; that´s quite a lot of arms reaching out simultaneously if people don´t watch out. Hence I appreciate the new concept of the Consortium, which is designed to "provide leadership and coordinate activities among the Centers" and to initiate "the formulation of the Strategy and Results Framework and the development of Mega Programs under the strategy" (cgiar.org). I think that´s systems approach.

I also note that the Renkow & Byerlee report focuses on 4 program thrusts of the CGIAR System: crop genetic improvement, pest management, natural resources management, and policy research. As the authors state, they do not include knowledge production and dissemination, germplasm collection, and capacity building for lack of published papers from 2000 to 2009, as I understand. I don´t think that´s systems approach.

As raw materials for their economic analysis of the outputs of the CGIAR System, Renkow & Byerlee make use of technical reports on research impacts that have appeared in peer-reviewed publications after 2000. I have 2 problems with that:

One, there is a limited number of researchers authoring, much less getting published in technical journals.
Two, getting past your peers who review your paper is like the camel passing through the eye of the needle a great deal of the time.

The quality of papers is strained, but there are too few of them that pass the straining test. I should know. I was based in Los Baños and for almost 6 years from January 2003 I was Editor in Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science, PJCS published by the Crop Science Society of the Philippines; this was a 27-year old journal at that time, requiring first aid, fearfully late in coming out with its scholarly issues. Given all the prestige, not to mention the remuneration nowadays of US$ 1000 for every paper published in an ISI journal by scientists under the University of the Philippines System, not peanuts in these parts, I know for a fact that journals within the UP Los Baños campus always have a hell of time producing an issue 3 or 4 times a year. If it happens to The State University, it happens to all the others.

In fact, I, a non-PhD and a non-crop scientist - at least, I graduated with a BS Agriculture to my name, from the high-standards College of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines, and had been editing for 26 years at that time - became the Editor in Chief of the PJCS because that journal had been perennially late in coming out every 4 months, or 3 times a year, and no PhD was willing to handle the dirty job for a non-PhD level salary. When I applied, the President of the CSSP told me they could afford to pay me only so much, and I said, "I have no problem with that." The fee per issue was small, but the challenge was big, and I knew that if anyone could do it, I could. I was thinking more of the challenge: Getting a journal that was behind 9 issues (late by 3 years) up-to-date and after that, making it world-class, that is to say, accepted and entered in the journal list of the prestigious ISI Web of Knowledge (Thomson Reuters). You can do it, my good friend OK said; she knew me because I had helped her make the Philippine Agricultural Scientist ISI the previous year. In 3 years, I did the impossible 2 times. (If you want proof, see my "ISI, PJCS & The Web Of Science," 18 February 2008, Hilario´s Paper, Blogger; if you want a crisp story on this one-in-a-million achievement, see my "I, Kauffman Labs mogul. The biggest publisher in Asia," 18 August 2010, American Chronicle.)

The point I´m driving at is that, speaking as an Editor, I know published papers are hard to come by, whatever they are. To produce an issue of a journal, in practical terms, you have to have contributors with papers that come up to editorial standards, that is, they must be clear, concise, coherent, and comprehensive, the 4 Cs. Obstacle #1. Then you have to have those papers reviewed competently and fast. Obstacle #2. Then you have to edit, including look for missing images or errors in tables. Obstacle #3. Then you have to have those manuscripts desktop-published. Obstacle #4. Then you have to copyread many, many times if you want it perfect. Obstacle #5. Then you have to watch the printing.

In short, a quality published paper is like rain in an El Niño year - you thank Heaven when it comes.

To prove my point and closer to home, I have the paper of Renkow & Byerlee itself, and from the pdf file I gather these pieces of info: 12 pages in print, text alone more than 10,500 words, excluding text tables, never mind the graphs. The original manuscript was received by the journal (Food Policy, published by Elsevier) on 23 July 2009; it was reviewed by peers, sent back to the authors, and the revised paper was received back on 10 March 2010, or 8 months later, and it took the journal to accept it for publication an additional 40 days, 20 April 2010 - a total of more than 9 months. Additionally, note that above all the entries on that pdf, it says "Article in Press" - they have yet to come out with the actual paper issue. In other words, the pdf is a conversion of online camera-ready pages. And by experience, I know that that was fast. At UP Los Baños, it can take 2 years. (Our PJCS record, with my PhD friend Ted Mendoza, who was my coordinator for soliciting papers and having them reviewed quickly and well, was 2 months from submitted manuscript to camera-ready pages. Were we good? As to time management, we made that journal up-to-date in 3 years. As to quality, Web of Knowledge said we were good enough.)

Knowing all that, you couldn´t blame me if I expected that Renkow & Byerlee also solicited for the more numerous unpublished but officially submitted reports of impact manuscripts from CGIAR centers. To screen the unpublished papers fast, they could just have applied the Rule of the 4 Cs. If you use published papers only, you are using only The Rule of the Peers.

I also expected Renkow & Byerlee to present a list of criteria for measuring impact that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. That would have been SMART.

Finally, I expected the authors to attempt a systems approach in understanding the impacts of the CGIAR System, specifically, to additionally attempt to synthesize the impact of crop genetic improvement along with pest management along with natural resources management along with policy research along with knowledge production & dissemination along with germplasm collection along with capacity building. Taken separately, the parts are always less than the whole.

Since I´m more than familiar with this CGIAR center, I am going to give you my favorite example of Alexandre Dumas´ Three Musketeer´s motto, "All For One, One For All" - the ICRISAT story of the Kothapally watershed in India, but which I prefer to call the Adarsha watershed because the name came from the people themselves. The impact of this success story has reverberated in India of course, and in Thailand and Vietnam as of November 2008. This is a triumph of a partnership between the people and scientists of ICRISAT and their collaborators. (For more details, see my "Water Lessons of Adarsha. Education began with what scientists didn´t know," 02 November 2008, American Chronicle.)

The impact of Adarsha has been on a community (Kothapally), then a country (India), then other countries (Thailand and Vietnam). This year, A World Bank team visited Adarsha on 18 April 2010, and the team was astounded (ICRISAT Happenings, 1411). The team said, "This is a very prosperous village. Are we sure that we are in Kothapally? This village stands out from our normal imagination of a village in Asia or Africa." The team also said, "There are a lot of lessons we can apply in our rainfed and watershed programs in Rwanda, Malawi, and Nigeria in Africa as well as in different countries in Asia." This is investors´ money certainly well spent on science.

Let´s have more Adarsha-like impact stories, please!