Indian agricultural policy has long worked with a neat fiction: a single, rational decision-maker called “the farmer” who receives information, weighs costs and benefits, and decides whether the household should adopt a new technology.
As the global community grapples with a “polycrisis” of climate change, geopolitical instability, and rising food insecurity, the traditional tools of agricultural development are hitting a wall. For decades, the primary strategy of agricultural research for development (AR4D) has been a “hard” mechanistic approach: developing a high-tech solution and attempting to scale it linearly across the globe. However, a groundbreaking new study published in Agricultural Systems suggests that this reductionist mindset is no longer enough to transform our food systems.
When floodwaters washed away Woudou Oumar’s home in northern Cameroon, he and his family lost not only shelter but hope. Then a government-supported cash transfer arrived.
The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota’s GEMS Informatics and the Gates Foundation, recently convened a series of events in Kenya and Ethiopia to introduce the Agrifood Innovation Intelligence (AFII) initiative.
The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT - through its Food Environment and Consumer Behavior (FECB) team in Asia - has long been a trusted partner of the Vietnamese government in accelerating sustainable food systems transformation at the national level. The team reaffirms this commitment during a Ministry-led international meeting in January 2026.
If drought was forecast, why did the crisis still unfold? Tracking 2025-2026 conditions across pastoral borderlands, digital early warning systems reveal how climate shocks outpaced response.
Today marks an exciting milestone for food systems across the globe: The Directors General of ICARDA, and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT met today in Rabat, Morocco to bring together research capacities, co-design a transformative research and delivery agenda, and sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly drive innovation, scaling, and impact for legumes for food and feed across the world.
As the lead author of methodologies for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions in food systems: a comprehensive review, Dr. Mary Ngaiwi is redefining how we understand and measure climate impact. But her work goes far beyond numbers. As a socio-environmental economist, Mary bridges science and society, linking climate accounting, sustainable agriculture and peacebuilding in innovative ways.