News Overview

To unlock the potential of youth in agriculture, we need targeted, inclusive interventions that appeal to specific and diverse groups of youth, especially female and differently-abled youth. Towards this goal, customized training sessions for young women, and hearing-impaired youth from the Wa School for the Deaf were conducted in Ghana recently, focusing on behavior change communication that incentivizes choice of

Gender parity cannot be achieved by putting the onus of it on one gender; joint efforts by everyone are needed to create a safe, equitable and nurturing working climate for all. Our female colleagues across levels and regions came together to exchange personal experiences and give inputs for solutions to some of the issues, on the occasion of International Women’s

The key to transforming food production systems globally lies in knowledge management processes, according to a team of researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The challenge is to combine traditional knowledge with state-of-the-art scientific research: to meet regional needs for improvement in farming systems with knowledge networks fostering innovative practices and technologies that increase yields and

Through disruption to aquatic food value chains, the COVID-19 pandemic has jeopardized the livelihoods of small-scale fish farmers in Bangladesh. Many of the nation’s rural inland and coastal communities depend on the aquatic food systems for income-generation and good nutrition.However, travel restrictions and limited markets have slowed aquatic food production andthreatened actors along fish value chains, posing particular challenges for

BY SWATI MALHOTRA AND ROB VOS In recent decades, economic growth in Africa south of the Sahara has proven to be a double-edged sword. Higher incomes have helped increase food consumption and reduced rates of undernutrition, though the gains from growth have been unequal; about 20% of Africans, or more than 250 million people, still go to bed hungry every day. At

Dinavance Kyomuhendo, 43, from the Nalweyo sub-county in the Kakumiro district, Uganda, is a single parent to five children and a guardian to 10 orphans. Over the last seven years, Dinavance has managed to bring her family out of homelessness by establishing herself as the leading agri-entrepreneur of the Kakumiro district. In 2013, Dinavance and her children were chased away

A new study shows that eating maize biofortified with vitamin A increased the levels of this important nutrient in the breast milk of Zambian mothers with poor nutritional status—thus supporting the intake of this essential nutrient by their babies. The results seen for biofortified maize were almost the same as results observed in mothers eating maize industrially fortified with vitamin A. This study

Protected from the harsh midday sun with a hat, Pramila Mondal pushes behind the roaring engine of a two-wheel tractor. She cultivates a small plot of land with her husband in the small village of Bara Kanaibila, in the Rajbari district of Bangladesh, near the capital Dhaka. Using this machine, she also provides planting services to farmers who need to