The Secured Climate-linked Agri Lending Ecosystem (SCALE) expands access to finance for smallholder farmers often excluded from formal lending—many of them women—and integrates incentives for using climate-friendly approaches.
What makes South–South cooperation last? This piece explores how adaptation, institutional capacity, reciprocity and enabling conditions can turn knowledge exchange into enduring partnerships that continue generating value long after individual projects end.
Razia Khatun used to help feed the fish in her family’s pond.
A stakeholder co-design workshop in the Indian Sundarbans brought farmers and researchers together to refine integrated mangrove aquaculture guidelines and business models, exploring site-specific farm management, investment risks, market pathways, and the potential role of carbon finance for local livelihoods.
Growing fish, shrimp, shellfish and aquatic plants together could help coastal farmers produce more food from the same farming system.
By aligning targeted public investment, streamlined seed policies, and digital advisory platforms, Pakistan successfully scaled biofortified zinc wheat from 64,000 to over 3.1 million hectares, boosting smallholder yields and delivering crucial micronutrients to more than 20 million consumers.
IFPRI and Dvara have been working since 2018 on KhetScore, an innovation that digitizes smallholder farmer agricultural profiles; scores their credit risk based on satellite imagery; and protects them from production risk by providing picture-based insurance.
Many international research programs, often from the Global North, collaborate with local institutions mainly to collect data without the kind of capacity sharing or shared decision-making opportunities that would help them build improved methodological and analytical skills.