The Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) district agrifood systems assessment aims to provide a reliable, accessible, and integrated evidence base that links farm production, market access, dietary patterns, climate risk responses, and natural resource management in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. It is designed to be a multi-year assessment. Using data collected in December 2022– April 2023, this brief describes which food items are available and their prices, characteristics of retail shops, markets, and customers, as well asmarketing and promotional activities.

The Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) district agrifood systems assessment aims to provide a reliable, accessible, and integrated evidence base that links farm production, market access, dietary patterns, climate risk responses, and natural resource management with gender as a cross-cutting issue in rural areas of Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. It is designed to be a multi-year assessment.

The Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) district agrifood systems assessment aims to provide a reliable, accessible, and integrated evidence base that links farm production, market access, dietary patterns, climate risk responses, and natural resource management with gender as a cross-cutting issue in rural areas of Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. It is designed to be a multi-year assessment.

With a focus on oceans, we collaborated across ecological, social and legal disciplines to respond to the United Nations call for transformation in the ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’. We developed a set of 13 principles that strategically and critically connect transformative ocean research to transformative ocean governance (complementing the UN Decade for Ocean Science). We used a rigorous, iterative and transparent consensus-building approach to define the principles, which can interact in supporting, neutral or sometimes conflicting ways.

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is the most cultivated grain legume representing 70% of the total food legume planted area in Tunisia (Khamassi et al., 2021), followed by chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). These crops offer an important and inexpensive source of high-quality protein in the diets and a valuable source of nutritious fodder for livestock. However, production levels of these crops remain quite low which is often attributed to abiotic and biotic stresses that are prevailing in the major growing areas.

Nature positive agriculture initiative offers sustainable food production system that meet the demands of growing population as well as facilitating the necessity of environmental restoration, biodiversity conservation thereby improving soil, land and water by scientifically supported solutions. Nature positive implement and equitably support food and livelihoods on the ground through a transformative change, initiating at farm and community-level, mainstreaming the research pathways and solutions in the smallholder agricultural systems.

South Asia’s rice-wheat system is a regionally unique and crucially important cropping system contributing to staple food production. Over a 16-year period, a comprehensive experimental study on the rice-wheat cropping system indicated that, while wheat yields demonstrated a gradual increase over time, rice yields largely reached a stable level across various management approaches.

The research note discusses the Small Farmers Large Field (SFLF) collective action piloted in the states of Odisha and Assamaimed at addressing the challenges faced by small and marginal potato farmers. The model focuses on aggregating farmers to achieve bargaining power, synchronize operations, and improve quality by adopting a single variety of potato. The study uses a mixed method research design to assess the benefits of the SFLF model, including improved quality of inputs, increased mechanization, emerging social networks, and market linkages.

The Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) initiative implemented the Small Farmers Large Field ((SFLF) collective farming model in two villages of Nalanda, Bihar with 97 potato farmers in Rabi 2022-23. The farmers were providedinput linkages, training in good agricultural practices and output linkages, among other things, to enhance their returns.

The Rethinking Food Markets and Value Chains for Inclusion and Sustainability Initiative aims to provide evidence on what types of bundled innovations, incentive structures, and policies are most effective at creating more equitable sharing of income and employment opportunities in growing food markets, while reducing the food sector’s environmental footprint. Its work is organized in four working groups (Work Packages-WP). One of these groups focuses on food value chains serving domestic markets.

The Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) district agrifood systems assessments aim to provide a reliable, accessible, and integrated evidence base that links farm production, market access, dietary patterns, climate risk responses, and natural resource management with gender as a cross-cutting issue in rural areas of Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. They are designed to be a district-level multi-year assessments.