Jeffrey Dickinson (American University) and Jawoo Koo (IFPRI). Photo credit: CIFOR It is widely recognized that agricultural interventions should be responsive to the needs of women farmers, but what if they face other barriers to benefit equally from increases in production? Our paper analyzes survey data to evaluate differences in the prices of crops sold by men and those sold
Image credit: IWMI As internet access improves around the world, it is becoming clear that digital innovations can enable more productive, efficient, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems. Farmers in low- and middle-income countries can connect to markets and financial institutions, access timely weather and market information to manage risks, and start businesses through e-commerce platforms. But this potential cannot be
Featured image: “A group of researchers with diverse background amazed at chatgpt response on computer screen in a digital art style” (Generated by DALL-E, March 10, 2023) By Jawoo Koo (IFPRI), Medha Devare (IITA), Brian King (Alliance Bioversity-CIAT). 2023 will be remembered as the year when the communication barrier between human and machine intelligence was breached, as online chatbots such
The success of every harvest depends on three things: the crop grown, the environment and the actions of the farmer. Yet the factors behind this simple formula are far more numerous and interconnected: an early rain, fertilizer applied, the genetics of the plant itself. For this reason, machine learning algorithms – specialized at finding patterns and interactions in large, unstructured
Food systems around the world face a ‘triple burden’ of malnutrition: undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies and over-nutrition, with different forms of malnutrition seen in the same country or even in the same person. Many datasets are too small, fragmented or infrequent to capture the dynamic, complex, and fragmented changes in diets, which is necessary to build more responsive food systems focused
The next ICTforAg conference will take place from 7-9 November 2023. A recent online launch event shared the 2023 theme, Cultivating Inclusion, details of how to participate in the 2023 and 2024 conferences, and a successor to the Inspire Challenge. ICTforAg is an annual event where agricultural stakeholders and technology experts gather to share knowledge, find solutions and form partnerships
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) calls on policymakers and research-for-development organizations to take action to mitigate the possible impacts of the current developing El Niño event on small-scale farmers and rural communities and to keep tracking seasonal climate fluctuations. Multiple climate prediction centers have concurred that this El Niño event will reach a “strong” category in the
Digital technologies can provide huge benefits to farmer organizations in countries such as India, for example by making tasks more efficient, access to market information or to new buyers and sellers. For this reason, there has been strong governmental support to create for conditions for digitalization to occur. One such example is the SMART Agtech Integration Facility, created by the