How Europe-Africa Research Collaboration Can Uncover Climate Solutions for Farmers

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One Planet Fellowship Science Week in Montpellier. Photo credit: AWARD/Lambert Coleman

Dorine Odongo, Communications Manager, African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), explores how collaboration can lead to a more resilient and equitable future. Scientific innovation plays a key role in equipping Africa’s smallholder farmers to adapt to the impacts of climate change. But before African researchers can develop the solutions and innovations that farmers need, they must first be scientists of uncompromising quality. Supporting African agricultural scientists, particularly women, to develop their research skills is essential, not only for African food security but also for global food security. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to a quarter of the world’s arable land but to date, produces just 10 per cent of its agricultural output, leaving an enormous source of potential untapped. Read More

Closing the Adaptation Gap: Harnessing the power of possibilities

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A rice farmer in Kantuta, near Caranavi, Bolivia.

Leanne Zeppenfeldt, Knowledge & Partnerships Officer and Bruce Campbell, Chief Innovation Strategist at Clim-Eat discuss how Earth Overshoot Day highlights the need to not only mitigate climate change but adapt to its effects. By July 28th – Earth Overshoot Day – humans will have used more ecological resources and services this year than what our planet can regenerate. The rate at which we are emitting greenhouse gases and using our clean water, healthy soil, oil reserves, and carbon-storing forests exceeds the Earth’s capacity. Despite the important role it plays to our lives and livelihoods, agriculture is also one of the largest drivers of planetary overshoot, and mitigation action to reduce our natural resource use and emissions is essential to #MoveTheDate of Earth Overshoot Day in the coming years.  Read More

A Double Win: Revolutionising African agriculture to empower youth and sustain the continent’s development

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Dr Dennis Rangi, Director General, Development at CABI, discusses the potential for Africa’s youth in agriculture. An African agricultural revolution can not only help advance the continent’s development progress, but it can also solve the growing challenge of youth unemployment, especially in rural areas.  Africa’s youth hold the key to the continent’s very survival and the burden to sustain wider global development. But we simply cannot rely upon young people to be only producers of food. Through upskilling and a digital ‘knowledge exchange’, they must also be involved across all stages of the value chain – starting from production.  Read More

How Nutrition-Smart Agriculture Can Help Build Resilience Against the “Three C” Crises of Climate, Conflict and COVID-19

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Arun Baral, CEO of HarvestPlus – CGIAR’s flagship programme on staple crop biofortification – discusses how biofortification can help bolster food systems resilience in the face of global crises. We hear a growing chorus of warnings from members of the food and nutrition security community about the dire consequences of the war in Ukraine on global rates of hunger and malnutrition. Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Programme, noted recently that threats in numerous countries to food production and availability from the “Three C’s” — climate, conflict, and COVID-19 — are rapidly being compounded by the “Three F’s” — spiking food, fuel, and fertiliser prices. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the number of undernourished people worldwide could increase by 8 to 13 million this year alone. Read More

Enabling Ecosystem Partnerships to Accelerate Sustainable Agriculture and Reach the SDGs

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Natasha Santos, Vice President, Head of Global Stakeholders Affairs and Strategic Partnerships at Bayer Crop Science, outlines how smallholders can be better equipped to help the world achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. When they were released in 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were rightly celebrated as an ambitious blueprint for sustainable development. But could the creators of the SDGs have anticipated the seismic shocks to our planet – and food systems – in the years that followed? Read More