The TAFSSA CGIAR Initiative is hosting a series of webinars to highlight research from South Asia on food security, sustainable healthy diets, farmer livelihoods and resilience, and land, air, and groundwater conservation. For the ninth webinar on November 21, Dr. Anindita Sarkar (Professor at the Department of Geography at Miranda House, University of Delhi) will present.
The current structure of the global food system is increasingly recognized as unsustainable. In addition to the environmental impacts of agricultural production, unequal patterns of food access and availability are contributing to non-communicable diseases in middle- and high-income countries and inadequate caloric intake and dietary diversity among the world’s poorest. While the need to transform food systems is widely accepted, the policy pathways for achieving such a vision often are highly contested, and the enabling conditions for implementation are frequently absent.
The 2023 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor, a flagship publication of AKADEMIYA2063 and the International Food Policy Research Institute, provides an overview of trade in agriculture in Africa, including analysis of short- and long-term trends and drivers behind Africa’s global trade, intra-African trade, and trade within Africa’s regional economic communities.
Kenya grapples with climate change challenges, experiencing erratic weather patterns, prolonged droughts, and floods that significantly limit agricultural productivity and natural resources availability. This not only exacerbates food insecurity but also heightens the potential for conflicts. The Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs), especially in northern counties like Turkana, are particularly vulnerable, experiencing a surge in climate-induced food shortages compounded by escalating conflict risks.
Agriculture is one of the important sectors of the Southeast Asian (SEA) region, contributing 11.4% to the regional GDP. Diverse conditions in climate, vegetation, physiography, geology, and lithology have resulted in 19 complex soil geographical areas, creating 11 farming systems, of which four are considered significant. Soil health has been recognized as key to a successful and productive cropping system, giving rise to sustainable agriculture.
The titles in this series aim to disseminate intermediate research on the extension of climate services and climate-smart agriculture in Africa to stimulate reactions from the scientific community.
The focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment are crucial in nurturing health and human development. Using unit-level data from NFHS5 (Demographic and Health Survey data), we developed a women’s empowerment index for India and assessed its impact on children’s (0–59 months) and women’s (15–49 years) health and nutritional outcomes.
Significant progress in agricultural technology development have remained persistently blind to social and gender inequalities. Creating agricultural research ecosystems and institutions that address gender inequality require structural and systemic analysis. One of the major areas of investment in agricultural innovation is plant breeding.
An efficient small-scale flash drying technology was scaled out from 2019 to 2022 by the CGIAR team CIAT-CIRAD-IITA. The innovation was adopted by 5 cassava flour processors and 1 equipment manufacturers from D.R. Congo. This flash drying innovation package has positively impacted the environment and considerably increased the profitability of cassava processing, as the processors doubled to tripled their production capacity, and cut their fuel consumption per ton of cassava flour produced by 30 to 50%.
Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) is a USD 60 million three-year project, funded by the World Bank and led by CIAT, with participating partners from seven countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Zambia. This report provides an overview of two Satisfaction Surveys that were disseminated to partners to gather their feedback on three of the intermediate Project Indicators (IPI), as laid out in the Project Implementation Arrangements.
Zinc is an important nutrient for plant growth and development. Its availability is influenced by zinc solubilizing microbes (ZSMs). The effects of commonly promoted agronomic practices on the abundance of ZSMs are so far not well understood. In this study, conducted in 2019, we assessed the effects of farmyard manure (FYM) application, either sole or in combination with residue and/or inorganic fertilizer inputs, on ZSM community structure using 11 treatments in a long-term (17 years) integrated soil fertility management experiment located in Western Kenya.
This questionnaire was prepared by IFPRI. It is part of the CGIAR Research Initiatives on Gender Equality (HER+) and Fragility, Conflict, and Migration (FCM). We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: https://www.cgiar.org/funders.