marker-assisted selection in wheat - ictsd

Chapter 22 – Marker-assisted selection: policy considerations and options for developing countries 457and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS) whichworks both locally and internationally,Ministries of Planning are developingdisaggregated poverty maps to help targettheir interventions for greatest benefitsto the poor. Recent examples include thehigh resolution Kenyan poverty mapsdeveloped by the Bureau of Statisticswithin the Ministry of Planning with theassistance of the International LivestockResearch Institute (ILRI), the RockefellerFoundation, the World Bank and the WorldResources Institute (WRI) (Ndeng’e et al.,2003), and the International Rice ResearchInstitute’s work linking poverty and ricesystems in Bangladesh (www.irri.org/science/progsum/pdfs/DGReport2000/FP1.pdf).• Rapid rural appraisalsThese are systematic but semi-structuredactivities conducted by teams with bothtechnical and social science backgrounds,usually as part of farming systems research(see below and Crawford, 1997). Theirchief characteristics are that they take onlya short time to complete, tend to be relativelycheap to carry out and make use ofmore “informal” data collection procedures.The techniques rely primarily onexpert observation coupled with semistructuredinterviewing of farmers, localleaders and officials. In substance, the techniquesof rapid rural appraisals (RRA) areexecuted over a period of weeks, or at mostmonths, rather than extending over severalyears. To date, RRA has mainly been usedin the field of rural development as a shortcut method to be employed at the feasibilitystage of project planning.• The farming systems approachThis groups farm households with similarcharacteristics and constraints andtherefore from a R&D perspective has thepotential of promoting technology andknowledge spillovers. Unquestionably,the most authoritative study of the linkbetween farming systems and poverty isprovided by Dixon, Gulliver and Gibbon(2001). These authors describe 72 majorfarming systems throughout the developingworld based on available natural resources,patterns of farm activities and householdlivelihoods, intensity of production andtheir relationship to markets. They alsodescribe the needs of those living withinthem (with an average agricultural populationof about 40 million inhabitants), thelikely challenges they face and opportunitiesopen to them in the next 30 years, andthe relative importance of different strategiesfor escaping from poverty and hunger.In sub-Saharan Africa for example, of the15 major farming systems identified, boththey and the IAC (2004) gave priorityto four systems based on the economicvalue of production and the extent of malnutrition,namely: the maize-mixed; thetree-crop based; the cereal/root crop based;and irrigated systems. However, NARESneed to undertake similar priority assessmentsto complement such analyses.• The “rural worlds” conceptThis categorizes rural people as capitalintensive farmers, mixed commercial/subsistencefarmers, the near or totally landlessand those without any economic activity(OECD, 2006).While each of these approaches hasmerits and limitations for targeting interventionsbased on geography and population,they all embrace the principle of engagingfarmers and rural consumers/households indiagnosing problems and identifying possiblesolutions adapted to their particularcircumstances.