BY SWATI MALHOTRA AND ROB VOS Food loss and waste is a substantial global problem, yet we still lack good estimates of how much is occurring. A 2011 FAO estimate indicates that as much as one third of all food is either lost at the farm, trade, or processing stages or wasted at the retail or consumer end; a 2019 FAO estimate put the
BY TODD BENSON Most of Malawi’s 4 million households still rely primarily on rainfed crop production with limited use of agricultural inputs for their food needs. But subsistence farming is failing to meet the dietary requirements of all Malawians: In recent years, several hundred thousand households annually have faced acute food insecurity. Insufficient harvests have resulted from either too little
The onset of COVID-19 disrupted food value chains and reversed years of progress on key development indicators. The pandemic induced shocks to food systems globally, but particularly impacted value chains in food insecure regions: the number of people experiencing extreme food insecurity increased by an estimated 45 million from February to June 2020 alone. Fish and aquatic food value chains
BY SOKHNA SALL SECK The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on public health, economic growth, and livelihoods in Africa—though these have thus far been less severe compared to other regions. A May 10 virtual Africa discussion of IFPRI’s Global Food Policy report explored these effects. IFPRI researchers, along with and experts from government and regional partners, presented the report’s key findings and proposed
With heavy hearts, the International Potato Center (CIP) acknowledges the passing of Ron Gall, the former Director of the World Potato Congress (WPC). Gall was a friend to many at CIP and closely involved with our work as a partner. His work on the WPC helped to promote CIP research and programs around the world…. The post CIP mourns the
Chickpea farmers have adopted new varieties to achieve commercialisation, say scientists The use of improved crop varieties has created a credible pathway to commercialization for subsistence farmers in Ethiopia. Researchers from World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and the Institute for Food and Resource Economics at the University of Bonn, Germany, who studied chickpea ( Cicer arietinum) farmers, contend that this transition can be replicated in
HarvestPlus is working with the Indonesian government to scale up equitable and cost-effective access to nutritious zinc-biofortified rice in the southeast Asian nation. The government’s target for 2021 is to have zinc rice planted on 100,000 hectares (ha) of farmland, primarily in provinces that show the highest rates of childhood stunting, and then increase the planting area in subsequent years.
For the primary beneficiaries of HarvestPlus—smallholder farming families and low-resource consumers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—the rapid expansion of the COVID-19 pandemic caused immediate health threats and increased economic, food, and nutrition insecurity. To address these challenges, HarvestPlus and its partners pivoted to crisis-response mode. Our 2020 Annual Report, “Responding to Crisis, Building Resilience,” describes steps we and our many