Stories tagged: smallholders

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

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. Continue reading →

Enabling Ecosystem Partnerships to Accelerate Sustainable Agriculture and Reach the SDGs

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? Continue reading →

Harnessing Business to Boost Agricultural Productivity

Katharina Münster, Junior Specialist for Communications and Digital Innovation at the Inclusive Business Action Network, discusses the power of inclusive business to empower smallholder farmers across the globe.

“How do we bring workable technologies to the farmers who really need them?”

That is the question that guides David Chen’s mission. As the co-founder of Golden Sunland, he helps to run an enterprise that sources rice from smallholder farmers in Myanmar while providing them with hybrid seeds, trainings, and credit opportunities. Continue reading →

Moving Small-scale Farmers Up the Ladder of Protection and Possibility

Professor Michael R. Carter, founding director of the Resilience+ Innovation Facility, outlines how the Resilience+ framework can help smallholder farmers flourish through better risk management.

Life is constantly changing, and this is especially true for small-scale farmers. Ideally, a farming family’s livelihood will improve over time: they might grow a little more food to be able to sell locally, and then set aside whatever they can to protect themselves in the inevitable next disaster. Continue reading →

The Importance of the Seed Industry to Feed the World and Eradicate Hunger

Alice Ingabire, Access to Seeds Index Lead at the World Benchmarking Alliance, discusses the latest Access to Seeds Index and its evaluation of the seed industry in South and South-East Asia.  

The goal of achieving ‘Zero Hunger’ must remain a priority if we want to achieve sustainable development. As the world’s population grows – now projected to increase by two billion people by 2050 – smallholder farmers, the primary food producers in developing countries must increase food production to end hunger and meet future food demands. Continue reading →

Empowering Smallholders to Meet Our Global Goals

Oliver Camp, an innovation specialist focused on nutrition, health, wellness, and sustainability, examines how empowering smallholders can help tackle our most pressing global challenges.

The multiple pressures on farmers, especially smallholders, are almost unfathomable. They are to provide nutritious foods for billions of people while increasing yields and quality; act as stewards of the land and waters; adopt sustainable production practices and optimise the use of inputs; and tackle food loss and waste, even in the absence of proper agro-processing infrastructure, by improving post-harvest handling, storage and transportation. Continue reading →