News Overview

At a series of dialogues convened as part of the UNFSS preparatory process, experts argued that well-managed water systems and cross-sectoral collaboration are critically important measures to transform food systems and protect fragile ecosystems. The dialogues were organized by the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE), with significant input from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the

The COVID 19 pandemic has made more clear than ever the need for and role of digital technologies to strengthen and scale innovations to assist smallholders farmers and other value chain actors. At the onset of the pandemic in 2020, movement restrictions and the cycles of lockdowns in different countries threatened to slow down progress among farmers and other partners.

BY CATHERINE RAGASA, ISABEL LAMBRECHT AND MICHAEL WANG While COVID-19 transmission dynamics and impacts have been different in rural and urban areas, big impacts on rural incomes and livelihoods have been observed. In this post, Catherine Ragasa, Isabel Lambrecht and Michael Wang assess income impacts on landed and landless rural people in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone, comparing bi-monthly surveys during the pandemic to pre-pandemic

BY FRANCISCO CEBALLOS, MANUEL HERNANDEZ AND CYNTHIA PAZ Global patterns and local variations of COVID-19 impacts on income, food security, and dietary diversity are gradually emerging. In this post, Francisco Ceballos, Manuel Hernandez, and Cynthia Paz document these effects on the vulnerable population of the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Their findings track those in many places, including greater income losses

In Pullman, Washington, the director and reproductive biologist at the Center for Reproductive Biology, Jon Oatley, and his team have generated a gene-edited goat, known as surrogate sire—a goat that is capable of ‘hosting’ sperm from a different buck. Oatley believes that this technology is the key to unlocking the growing demand for food and nutritional security and has paired

BY JAWOO KOO, CLAUDIA RINGLER, ANIRUDDHA GHOSH AND CARLO AZZARRI India’s devastating second wave of COVID-19 is adding unprecedented numbers of new cases every day, and it seems to be spreading more to rural areas. This trend poses serious challenges for efforts to contain the disease, as rural areas may have heightened pandemic vulnerabilities. It is hard to assess the urban-rural

Public and private sector scientists visited 20,000 pearl millet breeding plots at ICRISAT this week to select material for their breeding programs. The plots displayed promising hybrid parental lines (both seed and restorer parents) bred for different traits and adaptations. Materials with tolerance to drought, heat, downy mildew and blast, iron and zinc biofortified, exclusive forage type and promising lines

The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) launched 13 Farmers’ Hubs to service 13,000 sorghum and cowpea farmers in Kano and Jigawa States. The initiative was in response to survey findings on low farm yields attributed to difficult access to quality seeds, inputs and adulterated agro-chemicals (including adulterated fertilizers) in Northern Nigeria. The hubs are an integral component of the