Saint Louis – Senegal, 23 March 2021 To support the government of Senegal’s efforts in mitigating the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on vulnerable farming households, AfricaRice and the Mastercard Foundation have joined forces to roll out a youth-focused intervention, called the Rice Agripreneurship Project (RAP). Over two years RAP will boost the resilience of the rice value chain
The [Uttarakhand flood] disaster last month in India demonstrated the risks from rising temperatures to the eight countries in the region. More than 1bn people “rely on the waters coming from the Himalayas”, says Izabella Koziell of the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka. “[Receding glaciers] can mean increased flooding. It can mean more variable water flows .
For millennia, storing water has been a cornerstone of survival for many societies, especially in dry areas or areas with large climatic variability. In periods of plenty such as monsoons, rainy seasons, and springtime snowmelt, water storage has ensured water availability for drinking, irrigation and, more recently, hydropower generation. It has helped communities to manage not only predictable variation in
A recent study from the International Potato Center (CIP) calls attention to downward trends in varietal diversity in major cropping systems in Asia and Africa. As climate change impacts continue to affect agriculture, these trends have significant (potentially worrying) implications for ensuring future yields and food system resilience around the world. Published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, and co-authored with scientists from the International… The post Trends in Varietal
BY CLAUDIA RINGLER AND RUTH MEINZEN-DICK The theme of World Water Day 2021 (March 22) is “Valuing Water”—recognizing that unless resources are valued, they won’t be used sustainably. But what do we really mean when we talk about water’s value? Water has not one, but many values. Life could not exist without it, and it has profound spiritual, religious, and cultural associations. Water also has
Twimanye Makoye is a commercial sweetpotato farmer in Bukombe District in Northwest Tanzania. He produces sweetpotato roots on about 14 hectares of land and sells his produce to customers in Dar es Salaam, the country’s commercial hub. The income from this business has enabled him to enroll his children in school, build a home, and acquire a plot to construct
The glaring inequality between men and women farmers in the African agricultural sector is alarming evidence that calls for fair, inclusive and sustainable development. Gender productivity gaps vary across and even within countries, but recent studies suggest that gender gaps are in the range of 10% to 30%[1]. Gender gap in agricultural productivity means that crop production is lower than
In the semi-arid tropics water is a precious resource that often does not trickle down to small farms. Farmers who can afford borewells, save their crops during dry spells in the cropping season whilst others watch crops and investment dry up. Now, a CSR project led by ICRISAT has shown how watershed interventions contributed to a 2-meter rise in groundwater