JULY

Robert Sutherst visits University of Minnesota to refine crop, pest and disease occurrence simulations and write-ups using CLIMEX joint with Jason Beddow, Jawoo Koo and Philip Pardey.

Philip Pardey makes a presentation prepared jointly with Jason Beddow, Jawoo Koo and Stanley Wood in the session Epidemiology and Food Security: Historically Linked, Future of Promise convened by Serge Savary at 2008 American Phytopathological Society's Centennial Meeting, held in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Liang You attends the XXI Congress of The International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing in Beijing, China. He presents a paper co-authored with Stanley Wood and Kate Sebastian.

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JUNE

Stanley Wood and Philip Pardey visit Srikant Vasan, Gates Senior Program Officer, at Gates Headquarters, Seattle, to review HarvestChoice and CGIAR-CSI spatial data and information technology capabilities and opportunities.

Stanley Wood presents “Spatially-Explicit Analyses for Informing Policies for Enhancing Productivity Investments” at AGRA's Senior Policy Makers’ and Private Sector Convening at Windsor Golf and Country Club, Nairobi.

Yvonne Pinto, Gates Project Officer, and Julian Smith, Gates Consultant, visit with faculty in the Department of Applied Economics for a briefing on HarvestChoice pest and disease mapping and modeling efforts and a discussion of how this work may be useful for new Gates Foundation initiatives under consideration. Faculty from the departments of Plant Pathology, Entomology, Agronomy and Plant Genetics give updates on the University of Minnesota’s input to the Gates funded Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat initiative and other research underway. Meetings end with tours of the Bio-Level 2 and Bio-Level 3 High Security Containment Facilities and the Cargill Microbial and Plant Genomics Building.

Program

Participants: Jim Anderson, Jason Beddow, Brian Buhr, Martin Carson, Leslie Delserone, Ruth Dill-Macky, Michelle Hallaway, Frances Homans, Terry Hurley, William Hutchison, Carol Ishimaru, Rob King, James Kurle, Al Levine, Ian MacRae, Philip Pardey, Yvonne Pinto, Bruce Potter, David Ragsdale, Julian Smith, Brian Steffenson and Robert Venette.

Jason Beddow meets with Glenn Hyman in Raleigh, North Carolina, to discuss Glenn’s role as a pest and disease survey facilitator and to set up pilot tests of the V-GET™ Release Candidate in preparation for the full-scale launch of pest and disease surveying efforts.

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MAY

Philip Pardey visits Washington, DC, to work with the IFPRI HarvestChoice team on finalizing web content for a major upgrade to the project website and collaborate with Jennifer James and Stanley Wood on HarvestChoice research.

Akin Adesina, AGRA , and Peter Hazell Imperial College London , meet in Washington, DC, with Stanley Wood, Jawoo Koo, Kate Sebastian, Maribel Elias, IFPRI, and Maximo Torero, IFPRI, to review progress on analysis being undertaken by HarvestChoice to support the AGRA Policy Strategy Convening scheduled to take place in Nairobi from June 23-25.

Stanley Wood meets with Robert Hijmans at IRRI , Los Baños to review progress on climatology downscaling, and rice crop modeling work that Robert is undertaking with the support of HarvestChoice.

Philip Pardey presents "Rethinking Research Strategies for Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa" at an Agricultural Economics and Industrial Organization seminar, University of California, Davis. A global overview of the state of R&D investments in general and agricultural research investments in particular is addressed as well as details of the organization, structure and conduct of agricultural R&D in sub-Saharan Africa. Philip describes the novel, spatially explicit, bio-economic modeling methods being developed and deployed by the HarvestChoice initiative.

Stanley Wood attends the Integrated Pest Management CRSP 2008 Annual Meeting: Advancing Regional and Global IPM CRSP Programs in Manila. Stanley reports on HarvestChoice's contributions to IPM CRSP's global impact assessment being led by George Norton and presents HarvestChoice's pest and disease work being led by Jason Beddow and Philip Pardey for which he will solicit collaboration from IMP CRSP scientists.

Jennifer James, a visiting researcher with HarvestChoice, attends "Household Panel Surveys in Africa: Technical Review Meeting" convened by the World Bank. The meeting's focus is on strategies and methods for improving the quality and policy relevance of household-level data on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.

Akin Adesina, Vice President, Policy and Partnerships, AGRA meets with Stanley Wood, Nick Minot, Jawoo Koo, Kate Sebastian, and Ria Tenorio in Washington, DC, to plan HarvestChoice support for preparation of the AGRA Policy Strategy.

Stanley Wood attends the National Academies' Board on Agriculture Resources' (BANR) Spring 2008 Reception. BANR is the major program unit of the National Research Council (NRC) responsible for organizing and overseeing studies on issues of agricultural production and related matters of natural resource development, including forestry, fisheries, wildlife and land and water use.

Robert Jones, Senior Vice President for System Academic Administration, University of Minnesota, chaired a conversation with Philip Pardey on “Rethinking Research Strategies for Agriculture in South Africa and Tanzania” in the Arthur Upson Room, Walter Library, in preparation of University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks’ trip to the area.

Lutz Goedde and Sherry-Lee Abrahams of the Market Access Program of the Gates Foundation meet with Stanley Wood, Liang You, Jawoo Koo and Ria Tenorio in Washington, DC, to review HarvestChoice inputs to development of a Market Access grant for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

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APRIL

John Butler, Grant McKenzie and Chad Fennell give a programmatic and technical overview of the HarvestChoice project to the Digital Library Federation (DLF) 2008 Spring Forum. The DLF consortium explores and promotes the pioneering use of electronic information technologies to extend library collections and services. This presentation highlights work done by the HarvestChoice project team to integrate bibliographic and spatial data for use by the HarvestChoice community.

Stanley Wood attends CGIAR System wide Livestock Program meeting in Addis Ababa to review assessment of drivers of change to crop-livestock systems and to work with Mario Herrero in further exploring linkages between the HarvestChoice cropping system evaluation platform and on-going livestock systems analysis.

John Dimes, Robert Hijmans, Jawoo Koo, KPC Rao and Stanley Wood meet in Nairobi to discuss technical issues and milestones with regard to generating cropping system characterization, modeling and validation outputs for scenarios of cropping system development in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

CGIAR CSI Meeting at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya, sponsored by HarvestChoice, to discuss research activities, priorities for collaboration, and increasing support for GIS/RS/spatial analysis efforts across the CGIAR. CGIAR CIO, Enrica Pocari reports on a CGIAR/CH2M Hill/HarvestChoice survey of CSI members, and CH2M Hill offer proposals for enhancing the capacity of CSI to serve as a strategic focal point for delivery of spatial data and analysis to better serve the needs of the global agricultural research and development community.

Fengrong Zhang, professor, China Agricultural University, visits IFPRI and works with Stanley Wood and Liang You. They discuss the potential collaboration between the HarvestChoice team with the Land Use Center of China Agricultural University.

Jawoo Koo participates in the 38th Biological Systems Simulation Group Conference in Temple, Texas. Jawoo introduces HarvestChoice activities to the U.S.-based biophysical modeling community and presents progress on the crop systems evaluation platform and a case study on the fertilizer profitability assessment on smallholders' maize farming in East and Central Africa.

Liang You presents "Strengthening Capacity for Evaluating the Economic Impacts of Agricultural Research and Development: The Case of DREAM" at the IFPRI-convened forum on "Advancing Agriculture in Developing Countries through Knowledge and Innovation" held in Addis Ababa.

Stanley Wood participates in the Food Security and Environmental Change Linking Science, Development and Policy for Adaptation Conference at the University of Oxford, UK, moderating a session he organized on findings from recent international assessments on the linkages between environmental change and food security (IPCC, MA, GEO4, IAASTD). Prabhu Pingali summarized and closed the session. Stanley also presents HarvestChoice work on spatial variation in the profitability of imported N fertilizer use in maize-based systems in East Africa.

Jennifer James, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, initiates and leads efforts to harmonize farm household production data being extracted from agricultural census and nationally representative production surveys available for SSA to support HarvestChoice production system characterization and economic evaluation activities. Jennifer’s time is split between University of Minnesota and IFPRI through to August 31, 2008.

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MARCH

Stanley Wood meets with Carmen De Vicente (Generation Challenge Program), Glenn Hyman, George Norton and Nienke Beintema (ASTI by phone) to discuss the use of HarvestChoice, GCP and ASTI information to help better prioritize GCP investments in improved drought, salinity, and phosphorus deficiency tolerance in rice, and improved resistance to cassava pests and diseases in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Joe Guo, Jawoo Koo, Siwa Msangi, Mark Rosegrant, Tim Sulser, Stanley Wood and Liang You participate in a one day retreat at IFPRI to improve harmonization of databases and methods across BMGF studies on cropping systems productivity (HarvestChoice), smallholder-focused irrigation (Ag. Water Management Strategy) and food-energy tradeoffs (Biofuels).

Jason Beddow, Philip Pardey and Stanley Wood meet with Serge Savary and Laetitia Willocquet of IRRI at the Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota to review V-GET™ (the online pest and disease occurrence survey instrument being developed by HarvestChoice) and to discuss modeling options concerning the assessment of crop losses from spatially specific injury profiles involving multiple pest and diseases per crop.

Stanley Wood visits the HarvestChoice team at the University of Minnesota to develop content for the HarvestChoice website and plan future HarvestChoice research and meeting activities.

Meetings included: Jason Beddow, Laura Bipes, John Butler, Michelle Hallaway, Rob King, Louise Letnes, Philip Pardey and Amy Praught.

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FEBRUARY

Stanley Wood meets with Mario Herrero and An Notabaert of ILRI in Washington, DC, to examine opportunities for closer linkages between the crop spatial allocation and crop production system modeling work of HarvestChoice and the livestock production system characterization work of ILRI. A prototype study is planned for summer 2007 to be undertaken by interns from University of Edinburgh working in Washington, DC.

Stanley Wood participates in the technical meeting of the rapid scoping study for the BMGF Agricultural Water Management proposal. He presents the results of the analysis of HarvestChoice data on assessing the potential benefits (increased gross revenues) of adoption of AWM technologies in sub-Saharan Africa under a number of scenarios/assumptions.

Jawoo Koo visits Robert Hijmans at IRRI to collaborate on the development of the HarvestChoice Crop Systems Evaluation Platform. Progress has been made in many components of the platform, including the use of different crop models, development of programming interface, estimation of planting window, preparing soils and weather/climate data at grid-based regional scale.

Philip Pardey visits with Johann Kirsten, Frikkie Liebenberg, and Timothy Simalenga, Research and Technology Manager, Agricultural Research Council , to finalize HarvestChoice contract for a data rescue initiative in collaboration with the Statistics Division of FAO designed to retrieve, archive and make available agricultural censuses from countries throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Discussions were also held with Joseph Sebola, Ministry of Agriculture, regarding the launch of the University of Pretoria's Center for African Agricultural Research Policy (CAARP) and its relationship to the HarvestChoice project.

Julian Alston and Philip Pardey make presentations at the international workshop Ex Ante Economic Evaluation of Grape and Wine R&D convened by the Economics Department, University of Adelaide , in conjunction with the Grape and Wine Research Development Corporation . Presenters reviewed the modeling options that could be used to undertake ex ante analyses of the effects on baseline trends of consumption, production and trade of shocks such as water policy developments, disease outbreaks, altered wine trade barriers and subsidies, changes in taxes affecting wine investment or consumption, exchange rate movements and climate change.

Philip Pardey gives an overview presentation of the HarvestChoice project to Bruce Kefford, Deputy Secretary, Victorian Department of Primary Industry, and senior staff at the department headquarters, Parkville, Melbourne, Australia.

Jawoo Koo and Stanley Wood met with Paul Wilkens from the Decision Support Systems program of the International Center on Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development (IFDC) to discuss possible enhancements in the IDSS/CIA tool. The goal is to package climate, soils, germplasm and management data with intervention scenarios in a distributable user-based tool for modeling of cropping systems performance using HarvestChoice databases and scenarios.

Prabhu Pingali meets with the Washington, DC-based HarvestChoice team, to be briefed on HarvestChoice and its plans for 2008, and to share his emerging vision of the goals and priorities of the Policy and Statistics portfolio he leads within the BMGF Agricultural Development Program.

Philip Pardey meets with David Pannell in Canberra, Australia, to explore potential collaboration with HarvestChoice in modeling the occurrences and crop productivity consequences of weeds. Graeme Doole is to join this modeling effort.

Philip Pardey meets with Robert Sutherst and Gunter Maywald, at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Entomology Division, Brisbane, Australia, to review progress on additional functionality being programmed into the CLIMEX model to service HarvestChoice crop pest and disease modeling requirements. Philip also met with Gary Fitt, Deputy Chief CSIRO Entomology, Australia, who offered to assist HarvestChoice in the conduct of its online geo-referenced survey of crop pest and disease occurrences worldwide.

Gerrit Hoogenboom, Jawoo Koo and Stanley Wood meet to review progress on improving soils data layers to support regional analysis of soil fertility constraints and the impact of improved nutrient, tillage and related technologies and management practices. A workplan and timeline for developing improved soil datasets for crop productivity modeling was agreed (initially for sub-Saharan Africa using the beta version of the Harmonized Soil Map of the World and soil profiles from ISRIC's WISE database).

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JANUARY

HarvestChoice meeting held at IFPRI headquarters, Washington, DC, to review and decide on structure and content for HarvestChoice website re-launch scheduled for May 2008.

Participants: Chad Fennell, Zhe Gou, Michelle Hallaway, Jawoo Koo, Jitka Kotelenska, Grant McKenzie, Philip Pardey, Kate Sebastian, Todd Slind, Tim Sulser, Stanley Wood, and Liang You.

Stanley Wood attends the BMGF Agricultural Water Management Strategy proposal review meeting at FAO, Rome. The meeting examined the broad approach, study design and implementation plans and the harmonization of partner roles, but also laid out the details of a rapid scoping study of the potential payoffs from smallholder AWM technologies. HarvestChoice data and models are used for disaggregated assessment of potential benefits.

HarvestChoice and ESASA jointly convene a meeting to explore potential collaboration between the two projects in relation to the commercialization aspects of seed technologies throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically ESASA is interested in tapping the spatial database and analysis being developed by HarvestChoice to inform seed entrepreneurs/companies on market opportunities, and assess how intellectual property can be managed to stimulate commercial investment in seed production and marketing.

Participants: Peter Bloch, Sebastian Derwisch, Victoria Henson-Apollonio, Richard Jones, Carol Nottenburg and Philip Pardey.

HarvestChoice facilitates Elevator Pitch meeting convened by the East and Southern Africa Seed Alliance. (ESASA ) This meeting was used to brief the consultant – Richard Steckel – hired by the ESASA Team on the goal and objectives of ESASA, and to provide him with ideas and information needed to formulate a series of Elevator Pitches for marketing the project to potential investors.

Participants: Peter Bloch, Joe Cortes, Adelaida Harries, Robin Johnson, Richard Jones, Lloyd Le Page, Philip Pardey and Richard Steckel.