Agriculture remains critical for livelihoods and food security in South Asia. Over the last 50 years, agriculture in the region has become more energy-intensive due to the rapid proliferation of groundwater irrigation. The region is home to nearly 25-30 million agricultural pumps, the largest worldwide. These pumps, powered by either dirty diesel or electricity, have been critical for enhancing agricultural
How does the concept of resilience contribute to the food security agenda, especially to our understanding and ability to design and implement interventions to address food insecurity and humanitarian crises? Resilience and Food Security in a Food Systems Context, a new open-access book edited by Christophe Béné and Stephen Devereux, tackles these questions in a series of chapters written by
In 2022, the CGIAR Initiative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT) started working on a case study to characterize the landscape for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) selling fruits and vegetables in Viet Nam. The study describes the modes and motivations for doing business, institutional structures that shape day-to-day activities, and barriers to providing sustainable nutritious
Registration is now open for ANH Academy Week, a series of annual events that aim to foster knowledge, innovation, and uptake of interdisciplinary research. ANH2023 brings together the community of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working at the intersection of agriculture, food systems, nutrition, and health. The CGIAR Initiative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT), along with Fruits
The new year brings with it exciting changes for the CGIAR Research Initiative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT). On January 17, 2023, Dr. Inge Brouwer began her new role as the Lead of SHiFT. Dr. Brouwer is a familiar face to SHiFT and our partners. Since the launch of SHiFT in 2022, she has been leading
Can food systems transformation occur without public institutions playing a leading role? This controversial question was posed in an online debate hosted in October by NL-CGIAR, a research program funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Inge Brouwer, a Work Package Lead from CGIAR’s Initiative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT) and an Associate Professor
How innovations, which have been recognized to contribute to the current resource-intensive, wasteful and fossil fuel-based paradigm of mass production and mass consumption which we live in and feed from, could, suddenly become the solution that leads us to food system sustainability? While major recent global events (including COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the current skyrocketing inflation) have
Among children and adolescents, 5 to 19 years old, overweight and obesity increased from 8.5 percent to 19 percent from 2010 to 2020 in Viet Nam, according to the General Nutrition Survey. Helping children to make healthy food choices – and reduce their consumption of sugar in particular – may reverse trends in childhood obesity and prevent obesity in adulthood.