the Symposium on Wheats for More Tropical Environments - cimmyt

13In Bangladesh. many farmers' fieldspreviously produced less than one-halfton of dryland rice per hectare per yearin rotation with <strong>the</strong> main rice crop. In1984. that same land produced in <strong>the</strong>neighborhood of 2.5 tons of wheatunder similar conditions and withsimilar irrigation schedules. This typeof progress gives us hope for being ableto meet <strong>the</strong> needs of <strong>the</strong> populationchallenge.In a recent publication. Derek Byerleereported that. in 1981-82. worldwidewheat imports exceeded 100 milliontons for <strong>the</strong> first time. That is animmense amount of wheat being tradedto feed <strong>the</strong> world's people. Perhapsmore disturbingly. 61 million of those100 million tons were going fromdeveloped countries to developingcountries: much of it was going to <strong>the</strong>recently emerging developing-countrymarket economies to sustain domesticfood supplies. Twenty years ago most of<strong>the</strong> trade was between developedcountries. from <strong>the</strong> United States andCanada to Europe and Russia. Now 27developing countries. many of whomare represented here today. areimporting more than 500.000 tons ofwheat per year to sustain domestic foodsupplies: 17 of those 27 are importingmore than a million tons.CGIAR asked CIMMYT to put moreemphasis on developing wheats formore tropical environments. CIMMYTmanagement. <strong>the</strong>n,as now. agreed thatthis was an important challenge. Itwould. however, be a long-term project.and progress would be slow. It is easierto increase production in goodproduction environments than it is inpoor production environments. and<strong>the</strong>re was still an immense challengefor increasing yields in <strong>the</strong> betterenvironments. Therefore. CIMMYT wasnot sure how much of its resourcesshould be diverted toward <strong>the</strong> moretropical. more difficult productionenvironments. We suggested that. if <strong>the</strong>CGIAR could prOVide extra-core specialproject funding. CIMMYT would bepleased to accept <strong>the</strong> challenge andcoordinate <strong>the</strong> efforts to develop wheatsbetter adapted to more tropicalenvironments.In <strong>the</strong> CGIAR system. <strong>the</strong>re was a goodfriend representing an organization whocame forward qUickly and said. ItAcceptthat challenge. Let us fund it. tt Thatperson is with us today. and he is yournext speaker. Let me present to youWilliam Mashler of <strong>the</strong> United NationsDevelopment Programme.An increasing dependency on staplefoods from abroad is a serious economicand political problem for manydeveloping countries. In recognizingthat problem several years ago. <strong>the</strong>Technical Advisory Committee of <strong>the</strong>