“The narrow foundation on which the world’s food systems rest is showing dangerous cracks,”- CIMMYT Scientists and Partners, VACS Programme.
By Maile Matsimela, digital editor at African
Maize, rice and wheat account for more than half of all calories consumed globally and for decades, that dominance has gone largely unchallenged in research, policy and investment. But scientists at CIMMYT and their partners under the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) initiative argue that this narrow concentration carries a profound and growing risk.
“The narrow foundation on which the world’s food systems rest is showing dangerous cracks,” the researchers state.
They point to three converging pressures:
- climate variability making harvests increasingly unpredictable,
- accelerating soil degradation, and
- the stubborn persistence of chronic undernourishment across sub-Saharan Africa.
A category of crops that have sustained African communities for generations has been, as they describe it, “systematically marginalised in research and investment”, leaving productivity stagnant while major staples made compounding scientific gains. It is a gap their programme was specifically designed to close, the VACS team emphasises.
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Seven Crops, One Argument
The VACS team did not arrive at their conclusions lightly. They describe a rigorous process beginning with roughly 150 candidate crops, evaluated by 80 international experts across criteria of nutrition, climate resilience, market feasibility and economic impact. From that field, seven crops emerged:
- finger millet
- amaranth
- okra
- pigeon pea
- sesame
- Bambara groundnut
- taro
All seven, the researchers note, outperform common reference crops on key nutritional metrics, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, folate and vitamin A. All seven demonstrate above-average drought and heat tolerance, they add. And crucially, the scientists emphasise, all seven are already culturally embedded across African farming communities – trusted staples; not foreign introductions.
The economic evidence they cite is striking. Nigeria’s okra production, they point out, is valued at over USD 2.4 billion annually. Sub-Saharan Africa already produces 21 percent of the world’s pigeon pea, the researchers state, a market worth USD 3.3 billion today and projected to double by 2035. In Tanzania, they report, the team developed a Target Product Profile for white early-maturity sesame covering an estimated 1.3 million hectares, specifying five essential traits and ten value-enhancing attributes.
“For too long, these crops have been treated as a footnote in the global agricultural narrative,” the scientists say. “What we are demonstrating through VACS is that they deserve to be the headline.”
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Business Unusual
The VACS researchers are pointed in their criticism of the past. Earlier interventions, they argue, were driven by “short-term, trait-by-trait logic” that produced isolated results without systemic change. “Doing more of the same,” they warn, will not close the gap. What is needed, they insist, is what they call “business unusual.”
Central to this approach, the scientists explain, is an inversion of the traditional research sequence: markets first, science second. Country-level product design teams, comprising researchers, seed companies, processors, policymakers and farmers, define market segments and trait priorities before breeding begins. Across more than 20 countries, the researchers say these teams mapped 46 market segments, prioritising 20 based on clear evidence of demand.
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From Lab to Field
Even the best variety fails without the systems to deliver it, the researchers emphasise. They identify this “last mile” failure as a defining weakness of past efforts. VACS tackles it through a public-private-producer partnership model linking research institutions, seed companies and farmer groups in a coordinated seed system, they explain.
Implementation, they report, is already active in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, Malawi and Zambia. The maendeleo pack, a trial seed package, lets farmers test improved varieties affordably before full adoption. Women and youth, the scientists stress, are positioned as seed producers, traders, and village advisors. They are active agents, not passive recipients because they already anchor production and trade for many of these crops.
Sustaining it all, the team argues, requires investing in people. VACS has embedded 28 graduate scholars – 10 master’s students and 18 doctoral candidates – from eight countries across 16 African universities. “This investment in human capital is not supplementary to the science,” the researchers state. “It is the science. Without locally trained, locally embedded scientists, there is no durable crop improvement.”
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