A US-led initiative to climate-proof crops heads to Central America

A U.S.-backed initiative to build climate-resilient food systems in Africa is now expanding to Central America, bringing a focus on indigenous crops — and healthier soils — to Guatemala. The announcement comes more than a year after the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils, or VACS, was first rolled out by the U.S. Department of State. Since then, according to Anna Nelson, the State Department’s deputy special envoy for global food security, the $150 million initiative has analyzed some 60 indigenous crops that have the potential to withstand climate shocks. It has also mobilized African countries, organizations, and the private sector to embrace a similar approach. Now, Guatemala will be the first country touched by VACS in the Western Hemisphere. The nation’s minister of agriculture hopes the initiative will increase agricultural productivity and drive down malnutrition — especially for the country’s poorest. “Through this program, we can reach farmers in areas that have been missed,” Agriculture Minister Maynor Estrada told Devex through a translator. VACS’ entrance into Guatemala is an expansion for the initiative, whose founder — U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security Cary Fowler — won the World Food Prize earlier this year. In the coming months, the U.S. State Department, the Guatemalan government, and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, or IICA, will work with their partners in Guatemala to research beans and biofortified maize, two crops that were identified as starting points for the project’s first phase, explained Margaret Zeigler, IICA representative in the United States. “I haven’t seen such quick participation, and such deep engagement, from a government in such a short period of time,” Zeigler said, noting that discussions with Guatemala began in February — just a month before the partnership was first announced, and four before its official launch. “I have a really good feeling that in five years, we’re going to see a lot of results.” Rooted in Africa VACS was initially created as an attempt to drive down Africa’s reliance on the non-indigenous cereals — such as rice, maize, and wheat — that have long dominated agriculture. Across the world, dependency on those staple crops has led to increased vulnerabilities, especially as severe weather has elevated the number of crop failures. And to counter those shocks, VACS tried to turn back to what it calls “opportunity crops,” the traditionally grown, nutritionally rich products native to the African continent. Throughout the past year, VACS explored 60 of those opportunity crops, from amaranth to cocoyams to bushmangoes. The crops were analyzed on their potential to improve the nutrition of people and soils alike — and were assessed with large-language artificial intelligence models to predict how they would adapt to different climate scenarios. The initiative found fonio, a nutrient-rich grain, to be particularly resilient in West Africa. The grass pea, a hardy legume, did the same in the continent’s north. And the pearl millet, a cereal shaped like its namesake, was also found to do well in West Africa — but even better in the central and southern parts of the continent. Now, those behind VACS are working to encourage more investment in producing these resilient crops and getting them to market and drumming up interest across other countries — and continents. The State Department has programmed $109 million of the initial funding pot and raised an additional $50 million from five governments, Nelson told Devex. That money has been used to expand farmer access to opportunity crop seeds, increase investments to improve those crops, and encourage farmers to take up improved soil practices, according to Nelson. That includes launching a community of practice with 1,000 participants aligned with the VACS objectives, Nelson added, and partnering with research institutions like CGIAR, the AGRA, and others. “VACS has become a movement that is expanding with an ever-growing ripple-effect,” Nelson told Devex in a statement. A new chapter The Guatemala launch event Monday night in Washington, D.C was peppered with nods toward the country’s first democratically elected president, Bernardo Arévalo who took the helm of Guatemala earlier this year and has largely been seen as an anti-corruption crusader. “With this government, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Jose Fernandez, the State Department’s under secretary for economic growth, energy, and the environment, on Monday. Estrada, the Guatemalan agriculture minister, reiterated the country’s commitment to democracy while also highlighting the administration’s agricultural priorities, stating VACS aligned with the “strategic objectives” set by Arévalo. But for Estrada, new efforts to tackle agricultural challenges in Guatemala can’t come soon enough. The region’s Dry Corridor — a strip of land that flows from El Salvador through Guatemala to Honduras and Nicaragua — has long been vulnerable to both drought and erratic rainfall, a combination that often devastates crops throughout the region. Across all four countries, more than 10 million people live in the area, many of whom rely on the small-scale production of basic grains, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Eighty percent of those farmers live below the poverty line, and the combined stressors of food insecurity, natural disasters, and crop losses often push people to leave their farms and migrate, whether elsewhere in the region or to the United States. As a result, nearly half of the country’s children under 5 years old are stunted, according to USAID — the highest rate in the Western Hemisphere. “Guatemala is facing a number of food security challenges,” said Fowler, speaking in a pre-recorded video at the event. “It’s a humanitarian crisis, but it’s also an economic and developmental crisis, because a country can’t really develop with that kind of problem facing upcoming generations.” To solve that problem, Fowler said the State Department, Guatemala’s Ministry of Agriculture, and IICA will work to make soils “more fertile, productive, and sustainable,” along with the private sector, nonprofit groups, and farmers themselves. That aim will be complemented by increased research into beans and biofortified maize — two crops that were identified as starting points for the first phase of the VACS Guatemala project, explained IICA’s Zeigler. IICA is currently fundraising for the project, for which there are no earmarked State Department funds to support. Regardless, Zeigler said the research will begin in January 2025, and is being supported through a public-private partnership with Cargill, a food corporation, and CGIAR, a global network of agriculture research centers. CGIAR includes regional research organizations like the International Potato Center in Peru and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, which will collaborate with Guatemala and IICA to create new, better performing seed varieties. Like the VACS program in Africa, the ultimate aim is to train farmers to use those adapted seeds in their own regions, and reap more nutritional harvests for their families, communities, and markets. “The initiative brings a new commitment to a soil-centered health approach,” said Manuel Otero, IICA’s director general, at the launch event. “We believe that this blueprint will also be a model for other countries in the Americas, and can be a powerful platform for knowledge exchange between the Americas and Africa.” Update, June 5, 2024: This article has been updated to properly attribute a piece of information from the State Department.