Help achieve sustainable improvements in the productivity of maize and wheat systems. Interdisciplinary collaboration is extensive. Given projected population increases and demand for food, it is a serious matter if these production systems are threatened by resource degradation and other problems that might limit productivity over the long term. Participatory experimentation ensures that technical options are tailored to farmers' circumstances. This work will help us synthesize research results across sites.
Fertilizer is both costly and risky for farmers to use.
Farmers need technologies that can raise yields and conserve the natural resource base, but these technologies cannot add to the burden of risk that farmers already carry. Network members conduct basic, applied, and adaptive research on fertility issues to develop technologies compatible with the socioeconomic circumstances of smallholder farmers. Particular emphasis is devoted to making those options available to the farmers who need them. One approach, which is expected to become increasingly important for SoilFertNet, involves researchers working with panels of farmers, who identify categories of production risk, explain which climatic patterns are difficult to deal with, and describe their strategies to manage risk. As always, farmers are integral to the research process, providing information on the problems they confront, the solutions they have adopted, and ways of improving the solution suggested by researchers.