“Farmers thought we were coming to steal their money!” Microfinance specialist Lamine Sountoura remembers the first time he tried convincing farmers in Mali to warehouse their produce a decade ago. Sountoura and his colleagues from Soroyiriwaso Microfinance Institute were trekking through villages and hamlets in Sikasso region on a mission to help farmers understand that well-stored, quality grain can be
In the second half of this year, the United States will host the Summit of the Americas, the triennial hemispheric meeting of presidents and heads of state. This is the second time the summit will be held in the U.S. since the inaugural event in 1994. The gathering comes at a precarious time, with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)
A recent study by ICARDA scientists analyzed Morocco’s wheat sector, a strategic crop that is still heavily imported, to identify areas where productivity can be increased to boost smallholder farmers’ yields and income. To this day, Morocco only produces about 58 percent of its needs in wheat and struggles to satisfy the ever growing local demand. To meet its
With great sorrow, we report the passing of Sanjaya Rajaram, former Wheat Program director and distinguished scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in Mexico on February 17, 2021, at the age of 78. Rajaram was one of the most successful and influential wheat breeders ever, and was distinguished with the World Food Prize in 2014. As
The pressure to achieve global food security demands that we rethink current production systems and shift rapidly toward more sustainable models. New IFPRI/PIM/Ceres2030 policy brief explains. Click to access the brief The pressure on agricultural production systems to achieve global food security — particularly in today’s context of growing populations, changing food demand, and threats of natural resource degradation and
The world of water management is replete with stories about traditional systems that break down, such as the one we reported in November from Karnataka, South India. Age-old, decentralized approaches to managing water and watersheds do fall apart, leaving farmers high and dry. However, a remarkable study published in the Journal of Hydrology documents just how rapidly farmers can reap
This month, CGIAR achieved a major milestone by publishing an initial set of grants data to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Standard. CGIAR now joins over 1,200 other IATI publishers — including governments, multilateral institutions, and private sector and civil society organizations — that have published more than a million development cooperation and humanitarian activities. This marks the first time
Tagging products with barcodes for easy price retrieval in supermarkets is now a regular practice that people often take for granted. But beyond supermarkets, barcodes can be employed across a whole spectrum of settings, including by scientists in their research. The Accelerated Breeding Better Bananas project has developed, adapted, finetuned, and deployed a fully operational Banana breeding Tracking Tool (BTracT), which uses