Nepal’s agrifood system remained economically stable during March of 2023. The year-on-year inflation in food and beverage prices has cooled down to 5.6% compared to 7.5% in Feb/March 2022. Field reports however suggest that this downward movement in prices have not yet translated to substantial changes in the cost of consumer and agricultural market goods. Inflation in food and beverage prices is marginally lower than the previous year: The cost of food and beverages increased by 5.6 percent from March 2022 to March 2023.

In Ethiopia, a group of stakeholders, including representatives from local governments, research institutions, the Ministry of Agriculture, farmers' unions, the private sector, and NGOs, developed the planning framework that formed the basis for Ethiopia's Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan (CSAIP). The CSAIP outlines seven priority investments identified by stakeholders to meet the goals of productivity, adaptation, and mitigation. This Info Note briefly summarizes these prioritized investments, key considerations for success, and the monitoring and evaluation plan.

Crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa need to increase to keep pace with food demands from the burgeoning population. Smallholder farmers play an important role in national food self-sufficiency, yet many live in poverty. Investing in inputs to increase yields is therefore often not viable for them. To investigate how to unlock this paradox, whole-farm experiments can reveal which incentives could increase farm production while also increasing household income.

With only four years before the end date for the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition, the need to identify nutrition-sensitive and sustainable agricultural interventions that can address hunger and malnutrition cannot be more urgent. This paper assesses associations between sustainable intensification practices and dietary diversity in maize-based farming systems of Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In sub-Saharan Africa, maize is one of the most important staple crops, but long-term maize cropping with low external inputs has been associated with the loss of soil fertility. While adding high-quality organic resources combined with mineral fertilizer has been proposed to counteract this fertility loss, the long-term effectiveness and interactions with site properties still require more understanding.

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is an important crop in Africa, especially to women who rely on it as a household staple food and source of income. In Tanzania, a recent move toward commercializing the cassava seed system resulted in significantly fewer women than men farmers, known as Cassava Seed Entrepreneurs (CSEs), producing improved seed for sale to fellow farmers.

This report summarizes findings from the project “Agroecological transitions for building
resilient and inclusive agricultural and food systems (TRANSITIONS)” which is funded by the
European Commission through its Development of Smart Innovation through Research in
Agriculture (DeSIRA) initiative and managed by the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD). The Digital Tools regional work in Vietnam focused on research and
engagement with digital tools for technical advice and performance assessment in sustainable

Climate and weather shocks pose risks to livelihoods in Southern Africa. We assess the extent to which smallholders are exposed to climate shocks in Zambia and how behavioural choices influence the negative effects of these shocks on vulnerability and resilience. We use household data from the nationally representative Rural Agricultural Livelihoods Survey and employ an instrumental variable probit regression model to control for the endogeneity of key choice variables. There are four main findings.

CONTEXT: Integration of farms into markets with adoption of maize as a cash crop can significantly increase income of farms of the developing world. However, in some cases, the income generated may still be very low and maize production may also have strong negative environmental and social impacts.

The uptake of conservation agriculture and farm mechanization in Southern Africa has been slow and low. As a result, most smallholder farmers continue to grow crops under degraded soils using conventional tools and human powered farm operations. This leads to low productivity. Therefore, spatially visualizing areas where conservation agriculture and farm mechanization can be targeted can be crucial to guide targeting and scaling.

In Ghana, AICCRA is implemented by various institutions and NGOs led by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Benin. As climate information is key in the process, in collaboration with IITA, the Center for International Forestry Research-World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF/Sahel) is engaged for capacitating stakeholders for the efficient use of climate information and services through the Participatory and Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach.

Inoculation of soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] with rhizobia strains is a low-cost investment which can increase yields of smallholder farmers in Mozambique. The performance of four Bradyrhizobium strains was evaluated to identify the best strain to inoculate soybean grown in different agro-ecologies. Field experiments were conducted in three ecological zones in 2018 and 2019 using soybean variety Zamboane inoculated with Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens strain USDA 110, B.