Nepal Post Covid-19: Oats for Life

Overloaded health systems, starvation, economic collapse and accelerated environmental degradation. Triggered at short notice and greatly accentuated by Covid-19 induced return of daily-paid workers to villages heavily dependent on outside income. Accentuating local demands for limited food, fuel, forage and fodder resources dramatically, on-farm and from nearby forests and range. Affecting populations down-stream, substantially.

Direct food aid is not feasible.  Foundation fodder oat seed maintained and produced locally is an affordable and effective alternative. Enabled through labor-saving machinery. Managed by village-based womens’ groups using IRDET (Integrated Research, Development and Farmer Training).  A conduit for additional agricultural, education and health interventions. A public-private sector working model and case study with global application for mobilizing and integrating emergency relief, rehabilitation and development assistance as a continuum.  A National Action Plan providing an integrated donor-interface and co-ordination cell. Overarching, leading and mentoring a mult-disciplinary portfolio of semi-independent agricultural, health and education sub-projects.

Widespread farmer acceptance and utilization of fodder oats in Nepal after 40 years of farmer-based improvement projects now far exceeds seed supplies. Quantity, quality and seasonal availability of breeders and foundation seed at the top of this seed chain requiring science-based as well as production-oriented support, is the bottle neck.  So far unresolved using conventional approaches.

Lack of an internationally mandated Forage and Fodder Improvement Center for assisting developing economies, comparable to CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center) founded in 1943. Is a, if not the major reason. Nepal is not alone here. Millions of families throughout the rest of the developing world continues to suffer. Especially those who are resource poor, like Nepal. Unable to develop and sustain their own programs. Or systematically access, network and utilize globally, other countries' resources. On the basis of overlapping agro-ecologies. A standard procedure dating back to the beginning of modern plant breeding. Adapted to and adopted by this project for forage and fodder crops, creating a virtual International Collaborative Center for the first time. Operationally spanning public and private sectors locally, regionally and globally. Networked and coordinated by overlaying machinery as a neutral conduit and platform for plant-based and other activities. 

Launch a virtual International Forage and Fodder Crop Improvement Center through existing Flexiseeder infrastructure. The Flexiseeder Nordic - New Zealand Industry Interface Support Group has for the past 20 years collaboratively with end users, invented, developed, produced and provided novel seed machinery globally for developed and developing economies. As a conduit for collaborative plant breeding. Our single ear and small sample thresher originally designed and developed for Nepal, subsequently went global, paving the way for this project. Drawing in critical forage and fodder oat genetic and other resources previously lacking. Now ready to bring together as a virtual Center, through this project.

This comprises a collaborative machinery and genetic resource overlay to existing year-round public - private sector multi-crop plant breeding and early generation seed, crop improvement networks. Spanning developed economies in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres dating back 40 - 50 years. 

Reaching out laterally via agro-ecological overlap, professionally and philanthropically to developing economies in dire need of this specialized assistance, such as Nepal. Ultimately made possible through the internet.  Plus the endowment of Flexiseeder technologies (worth more than NZD 2.5m) into the public domain. So that these products can be manufactured and serviced locally, near to end users.

Rural women, children and the aged. Throughout the length and breadth of Nepal. Across all three agro-ecological zones. The Terrai (lowlands adjacent to India), the mid hills, and the high hills. Including remote areas where five days walking to the nearest road head is not exceptional.

Project integrates and builds on a unique 34-year farmer women's group interface and feed-back network and data base. Developed and maintained for fodder crops by NARC. Spanning a continuum of ADB, FAO and New Zealand assisted projects. All constrained by shortages of early generation seed!

Pre-Covid, approximately 6 million family members sent home remittances to meet shortfalls.  Many have returned, their remittances ended. Tourist-driven source of off-farm income has dried up. Rural outlook is extremely bleak. Compounded and confounded where the countryside is already food deficit. A common situation throughout SE Asia, parts of Africa and Central and South America where forage oats have the potential to alleviate suffering.

Nepal's rural economy is driven and managed by women. Providing livelihood for 70% of its 28 million population, generating 30% of GDP. Pre-Covid, tourism contributed 8% and remittances 5% of GDP.  Of far greater significance to rural family health, education and well-being, than percentages suggest.

Nepal's farmers depend on less than 2 ha for income and sustenance. Milk is central to family health and well-being. Grazing milk animals and harvesting forage and fodder from communal land and state forests is not environmentally sustainable. Stall-feeding oats grown on-farm is a proven environmentally sustainable alternative.  Driving and facilitating changes from cows and goats to buffalo which are more easily and efficiently stall fed. Providing essential organic manure plus meat and other by-products of substantial social and commercial value.   Animals can be killed and processed to reduce environmental pressure. Culturally unacceptable for cows, within the majority Hindu population.

Flexiseeder 20 year old working public-private sector early-generation year-round seed and machinery overlay model connecting Nth and Sth hemisphere, reaching out to nepal through agro-ecological overlap is a world first. Facilitated by a simple, versatile, efficient and affordable single ear and small sample threshing machine not equally matched anywhere in the world. Including by major entities such as Winersteiger (wintersteiger.com), Haldrup (Haldrup.com), Zerne (zuern.de) and the former Hege Company. None of whom put their designs into the public domain for local manufacture.

Our machine supports plant breeding and early generation seed maintenance and production at critical steps in the value chain (pyramid) for seed from breeder to farmer within and between developing and developed economies. Including the year-round seed chain between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. It is by design, readily suited to local artisan manufacture in developing and developed economies.

Design, manufacture and production details have been placed free of cost philanthropically into the public domain for all to use. As an underlying catalyst, facilitator and driving force for novel collaboration and networking in oats and other crops between otherwise competing entities. Needed to launch and sustain a long-overdue International Forage and Fodder Crop Centre for developing economies. To enable the developing world to take leadership in solving critical bottle necks in local seed chains. In Nepal for example, on the basis of agro-ecological overlap. Essential for marshalling and integrating farm-family level emergency relief, rehabilitation and development assistance post-Covid-19. As a working model and case study with global application.

Our multi-disciplinary team including end users is world class. Our manufactured technologies fill niches not otherwise adequately addressed for planting, and threshing single ears, and small bulks at the apex of the seed chain where the down-stream impact is greatest. This includes unique options for sowing in combination with fertilizer. It covers conventional as well as reduced and zero (conservation) tillage.

Our equipment is used for plant breeding, seed increase and multi-disciplinary research using single rows, small plots and controlled larger scale increase in developing and developed economies.  Many elements (modules) also have direct application to and are sold for broad-acre farming. All technologies apply and are sold globally.

Our unique disc coulter modules require only 15 to 45 Kg down pressure per unit (row) to penetrate and perform equivalent to other conventional brands and designs which require between 90 and 900 Kg per coulter row to do the same work. We lead the world with this. A first at this level, meaning seeders can be lighter, suited to smaller tractors and require less draught power. It provided a major step forward with breeding and testing cultivars under conditions directly comparable to farm situations. The end users of seed bred, selected and tested using our equipment at the top end of the seed value and volume chain (pyramid). 

We are world-leaders in taking commercial farm air seeding and digital drives and refining them to improve clean out and distribution to high standards required on plot seeders, targeting the developing world.

Need for international Forage and Fodder (Oat) Improvement Center:

6th International Oats Conference 2000 THE IMPORTANCE www.flexiseeder.com/index.php?... 

flexiseeder.com/index.php?controller=attachment&id_attachment=15

Key words: Oats, Asia, China, Nepal, Pakistan, Himalayas, greenfeed, impoverished regions, resource-poor environments, fodder oat network, forage crops.

http://www.fao.org/3/y5765e/y5765e00.htm

https://www.slu.se/fakulteter/nj/om-fakulteten/centrumbildningar-och-storre-forskningsplattformar/faltforsk/utbildning-och-teknik/teknik/hs-teknikgrupp/flexiseeder/

http://old.flexiseeder.com/flexi/Doc/DocList.htm

Core Equipment that link and drive the model:

Log into www.flexiseeder.com then go to section on technical notes. Especially the small thresher (featured on home page) which was identified and developed for Nepal.  Now through word of mouth, sold global, processing seed for and linking collaborators world wide, year round (NZ, Australia, Nepal, Brazil, UK, Norway, Sweden for example). Being drawn on now as a focal point to mobilize and marshal comprehensive multi-disciplinary help Nepal and other countries need under Post Covid pandemic realities of social and economic hardship. If Solve application successful, we will up-date our web site and push these and our other machines /  modules formally to increase the collaborative network. Since the demand is there only we have not had the kind of exposure Solve can provide to spread the good news. 

Particularly our strong philanthropic ethos of endowing our technologies into the public domain. So that they can be made and serviced near to the end user to facilitate use while stimulating and sustaining local business and production. We are most interested to see them leveraged for further funding to help local crisis through their use, than we are to push them for pure financial gain, which on a per unit basis is minimal.

Sustainable farm level, community impact of womens' groups empowered with early generation temperate forage and fodder crop seeds secured and used in environmentally friendly ways is well proven and widely documented. spanning at least 40 years exemplified by oats in Nepal as a case study. Where the availability of this seed remains the major bottleneck in the value chain. For which unlike with other crops, is still not supported by internationally mandated center such CIMMYT. Focused at the top end of the seed value chain involving and supporting the public sector, primarily. Slowly opening up to the private sector including bridging commercial production further down the seed chain. Likewise FAO is reaching out from its historic mandate and focus lower down the seed value chain, upward and outward to include private sector as well as bridging links with early generation seed sources. In recognition of and in response to production changes over the past 10 to 20 years.

We must get comparable infrastructure for temperate forage and fodder crops. To fill the long-standing void now greatly accentuated under post-Covid social and economic pandemic pressures.

Immediate action is warranted and not expensive or difficult, beyond the logistics of organizing, funding  and managing a virtual forage and fodder center / network including a portfolio of sub-projects collating, integrating and supporting existing infrastructure globally with fully-funded targeted interventions as contractual overlays.

All the elements are there and working. Have been since the development of modern crop improvement started in the 60's and 70's. Temperate forage and fodder crops as are temperate vegetable crops, are unique in their global spread of comparable genetic materials across developed and developing economies. Particularly where they are relatively day-length insensitive.

THIS MEANS THAT OPERATIONAL PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ENTITIES WITHIN THE DEVELOPED WORLD POTENTIALLY HAVE A FAR GREATER ROLE TO PLAY IN ADDRESSING THESE ISSUES AND OUTCOMES THAN WITH MOST OTHER CROPS. IT ALSO MEANS THAT THERE IS A FAR WIDER AND MORE DIVERSE RANGE OF RESOURCES ABLE TO BE IMMEDIATELY DRAWN UPON, THAN WITH MOST OTHER CROPS.

IT IS TIME TO STOP TALKING AND GET ON WITH IT!

The developed world part of our model encompassing around 30 entities (detail list available on request) is truly global through its real-life contribution to the global seed and food chain encompassing a wide range of temperate food, forage, fodder and industrial crops. It's an optimal foundation for launching  and jump-starting the proposed virtual improvement center run on the basis of contracting existing world-class entities for goods and services that can be monitored and superintended under contract by third parties. As an example of lateral outreach, the past knock-on effects of our contributions to 10 part-time people in Nepal under CSCIP-Nepal project have through NARC extension, impacted positively on 450,000 of the estimated 500,000 dairy producers in Nepal. This provides the necessary base for our Post Covid action plan including projects to reach out to the rest of Nepal through accelerated production of early generation seed  near to and by womens' groups.  The field objective and target for this Solve submission.

If taken over, funded and developed properly, our model is capable of impacting many millions both in developing and developed countries, including back-up plant breeding and machinery support. It is a conduit to overlay other interventions in womens'  health and education, sanitation, etc. Out of this solve submission, we hope a follow-up team can be put together with MIT and others, to turn our small start into something larger and sustainable. Ours is a well proven working model, including all the core necessary technologies, infrastructure and experience to build on.

The need for a international forage and fodder improvement center including farmer interface and support spanning and integrating emergency relief, rehabilitation and development as a continuum reaching out to and serving millions speaks for itself. We cannot achieve this as a core team. We have done a lifetime of hard yards. Now is the time for others to take over and run with it. All we have done has been endowed into the public domain to facilitate this. We need a younger team including appropriate leadership to take over. Getting an international forage and fodder oat screening trial together with the help of Louisiana State University on the back of their historic grain oat network, going out to around 30 countries. This is the critical step in actually launching and commissioning this initiative including moving forward operationally under the umbrella of a virtual forage and fodder improvement center, as proposed.

Improved public and private-sector interface and collaboration against common goals within an arena historically limited to public sector, even after private-sector models of commercialization were developed and adopted. Accentuating problems, substantially. Financial, organizational and logistical barriers are major constraints. Those of us at the core of the initiative are have aged and need to hand over. Additional entities need to take over and develop the potential of our pilot model. It worth has been demonstrated hands-on. What we have been providing philanthropically to keep things going, is no longer feasible under post-Covid social and economic conditions. Besides our combined input is just not enough to go forward at the required scale. Something has to change in order to attract funding which has increasingly tended to go to IT solutions. Completely neglecting pragmatic simple engineering base solutions which are still pivotal to feeding people in environmentally and sustainable ways.

We are looking to Solve and the international community for help. Make an assessment of what we have done and are proposing. Form a new and expanded team, and move forward from there. Age and Post Covid economic and social constraints are taking their tole on us, right at the time that our inputs are most needed. Don't laugh off our submission. Genuinely for forage and fodder crops, it parallels what Dr Borlaug achieved, as I have known and experienced first hand. It has taken a life time for our core members to get to this stage. Now we are too old to see it through, at a time when IT has finally reached a level of affordability and efficiency, as proven during various Covid lock-downs; that, a virtual international forage and fodder improvement center has become easily achievable. Up till now, this has been lacking even though for the past 15 years the rest of our model has been working well 24/7 through the internet.

Flexiseeder is a highly skilled, experienced and dedicated global industry research and training member help group and network formed during the late 1990s as a Nordic-New Zealand initiative.  Specializes in innovative and functional seeding and threshing equipment research, development, prototyping, proof of concept, start-up and small-run commercial production and servicing using a modular approach.

 Flexiseeder supports:

• Year-round seed and machinery chains between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres;
• Lateral outreach to developing economies on the basis of overlapping agro-ecologies spanning 40 years;
• Project identification, formulation, start-up, implementation and evaluation;
• Applied research, plant breeding / seed industry, farm development and production.

Flexiseeder Ltd is the major financing, risk-taking and co-ordination entity, for group. One full time person (John Stevens) plus core full-time workshops  with Geoff Gray Ltd, NZ  and Jens Jensen (Strøby Maskinvaerksted, de).

Core members hiring up to 30 staff each: 

Engineering Contractors in NZ (15) and Denmark (1): Foundry, Pattern Makers, CNC machining, tool making, cutting and bending shops; Spring Makers, Specialist Engineering, Pipe and Sheet Metal Shops, Drafting, Electrical Engineering, Fabrication, Digital Programming and Supply. 

Seed and Educational entities in NZ, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Australia, UK, Brazil, Nepal  (16): University, Plant Breeding, Seed Production 

Others (1): Logistics

The uniqueness of our model is that it's core is already fully operational commercially, and has for the past 20 years been running on a daily basis, year round at a global standard between the North and Southern Hemisphere. Including as an overlay, supporting a series of successful projects in Nepal dating back to 1979 that are now ending and need follow-on. Collectively we cover all the necessary fields of experience in seed and machinery across all required field at a genuinely global level of excellence. Through our collaborative team / group which largely comprises family owned and operated enterprises, individual members of larger companies and university professors and staff. For many of us, it is a life commitment, now needing to be formalized, handed over and expanded.  This is quite hard for people on the outside to comprehend and accept until they look into what our group is doing already routinely, over which we have developed and implemented our model in a completely transparent way. For example, set up for machining castings for our discs slot in on the 5th axis CNC machine during down time between machining knee and hip replacement components!

We have gone as far as we can under the reality of Post-Covid Pandemic social and economic impact. This is why it is critical that Solve take us seriously and takes it over.  We are all getting old, and now lack the resources to hand over operationally to the younger generation, as we had originally envisaged.

Flexiseeder is an ad hoc group of client-based researchers, engineers, producers etc purchasing and using our equipment world-wide or selling us goods and services on a contractual basis with a common goal of plant breeding, seed improvement, food production. A detailed list can be provided on request.

This cooperation originated in 1998 between the Unit of Applied Field Research (FFE) of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU, www.slu.se); the Seed & Mechanization Development Trust (SEMEC); and Lincoln University Seed Technology Laboratory (later up-graded to Seed Research Center), New Zealand.  In 2000 this was extended to include the International Association on mechanization of field experiments (IAMFE, www.iamfe.org) including its members.

We design, build and provide simple, essential open source labour-saving equipment to be made locally, lasting at least 20 to 30 years plus technical support.  We target the top end of the seed chain and pyramid. Where  impact of our interventions has greatest social and economic impact down stream for farm families and humanity overall.

Modern arable food production throughout the developed and developing world depends on seed bred for specific traits, usually focusing on single plant selection. From which grams of seed are increased through numerous cycles of planting and harvesting into thousands and millions of tonnes in commercial seed without loosing these traits. Requiring closely controlled multiple cycles of planting and harvesting year-round between Northern and Southern Hemisphere using our equipment. Forming the seed chain or seed pyramid reaching out to Nepal in forage oats.

The global modular nature and open-source listing of our technologies makes them well suited to integrating across brands including combined builds. Under-pinned with a multi-million NZD portfolio of endowments, available free of cost to members, for leverage to assist them to raise essential and additional comprehensive philanthropic as well as commercial programme and project funding to enable intended outcomes. Their substantial down-stream multiplier effects for feeding the world.

Flexiseeder is a lean virtual company with all the operational components of a very large commercial global seed and machinery entity. Built up through its members, incorporating world-class essential skills provided individually on contract and philanthropically as a small part of their daily on-going activities.

There is still no international Forage and Fodder Improvement Center, for example like CIMMYT. Despite the need being known since the mid 70s and reinforced  and highlighted in 2004 by the FAO.

In response to this, we have a unique, novel and proven year-round working global seed and machinery support chain model and case study for launching and jump-starting such a center. Which has taken 40 years to develop and endow into the public domain. Including core mechanical technologies with substantial and wider application for others to take up and run with in order to meet the post Covid-19 pandemic social and economic crisis spanning developing and developed economies. 

Our core team including the authors are past retirement age and need to hand over the banner to younger generations. Now is the time, and Solve is the appropriate platform to do it. This is a much needed and invaluable endowment to humanity world wide. At time when traditional third party public and private funding for machinery has diminished at the top end of the seed chain, and instead tended to almost exclusively drift toward IT, overlooking the on-going need for improving and re-enforcing those  mechanical aspects essential to feed the world.

Forage and Fodder support for the developing world is still at the stage Wheat and Maize were during the 1970's when Dr Norman Borlaug (Nobel Laureate) formed a small team and with the aid of US assistance, started what subsequently grew into CIMMYT. 

Likewise, we need international exposure plus a team of younger people to take our initiative forward. The hard yards have been done, including Action Plan for Nepal, as working start-up model for the world to launch a virtual International Forage and Fodder Center.

A solve grant of US 10,000 dollars plus the exposure would mark the definitive starting point in history from which the initiative driven by younger generations can move forward in seeking and obtaining a major donor, and/or portfolio of donors. We (the core team) would be more than happy to continue while we are able, as mentors and facilitators to help bridge this transition. 

MIT Faculty to take over umbrella leadership including donor forum and develop initiative globally through a member network starting out with what is to hand as the working model / case study / proven global start-up infrastructure. In so doing, build up and manage a portfolio of projects implemented by third party entities for strengthening and supporting targeted operational linkages. Including seeking funding from Gates Foundation, UN (UNDP, FAO, UNHCR, WHO, UNICEF), World Bank, ADB, Louisiana State University including input and leadership of Professor Stephen Harrison, Aga Khan Foundation, Save the Children, US Aid / USDA, Danida, SIDA, NORAD, UK AID, and others.

The void for forage and fodder crop has been partly addressed within the public sector, targeting grain oats through an on-going series of international oat nurseries started in 1974 with a grant from USAID.  Called Breeding Oat Cultivars Suitable for Production in Developing Countries. Organized initially by H.L. Shands, Professor of Agronomy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  From 1977 to 2019, the Quaker Oats Company sponsored this as the Quaker International Oat Nursery (QION). Continued by Louisiana State University as ION with US Govt Funding. Nurseries sown at 30+ locations in North and South America, Africa, Near East, Europe, Australia, New Zealand. Useful materials emerged for Nepal. Further breeding needed to meet farmer forage and fodder requirements that are not the same as grain.  Substantially improved public - private sector collaboration and support pivotal, including machinery to get resulting seed to womens' farmer groups.

During times of crisis, farmers as a last resort, eat seed stocks. Displacement removes them from their traditional lands also breaking this production cycle. Seed aid and medical aid should always parallel and complement food aid, starting with vegetables and building up according to needs to include other crops.

Our group including the leader have many years of front-line direct involvement in the above arena within and supporting UN Agencies as well as NGOs implementing partners and on their own account. For temperate crops, we are particularly skilled and experienced. The seed and machinery interventions we support; and, where asked lead have a substantial multi-disciplinary multiplier and knock on effect for securing and improving family health, well being, education and recovery.

We have a substantial amount to offer and share, from past experience in needs assessment, project conceptualization, identification, formulation, donor pledging interface, start-up, superintendence and monitoring. Which provide the guiding principles (pillars) of our initiative for supporting and integrating disaster preparedness and mitigation. Encompassing emergency relief, rehabilitation and development as a continuum, through womens' groups systematically, empowered with early generation seed.  Not appropriate to document in detail here, but available on request including real-life working examples, if application is considered seriously.

Womens' groups lie at the heart of all we have done philanthropically over the past 40 years reaching out to developing economies from more developed economies on the basis of agro-ecological overlap. The impact has been substantial and has potential for much wider application, if our model and concepts are taken up and moved beyond successful pilot models. Then taken over, spread, funded and administered appropriately. Among our group, We have some amazing stories worth documenting and sharing in the global domain. It is impossible to provide detail here. Additional information can be provided by our member group, if this application is taken seriously.