Protein and micronutrient-packed legumes like cowpea, groundnut, beans or chickpea are important crops for small farmers in developing countries to improve family diets and soils. Yet for years, legume cultivation has been hampered by poor yields and returns. Engaging farmers in legume research may hold the clue to boost pulse productivity.
COVID-19 has exposed the vulnerability of our economies to shocks, with governments desperately looking for recovery options that deliver new jobs and growth. The pandemic has also laid bare glaring inequalities in our societies, threatening to derail achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The agricultural development sector has stalled as field work has been restricted. In discussions held online from their homes around the world, researchers have observed a new vista emerging of a changed world, one to which they, too, must adapt, finding new ways of working and new systems that are more resilient to the current and future pandemics.
The ongoing health crisis around COVID-19 has raised global concerns on food and nutrition security. India has not seen immediate serious disruptions in the food system during the pandemic primarily because of good harvests in the previous crop seasons; sufficient buffer stock of grains, and a slew of welfare measures declared by the Government to protect vulnerable populations e.g. smallholder farmers, agricultural laborers, migrant workers, etc.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the World Food Programme (WFP) are warning that severe underfunding, conflict and disasters – as well as supply chain challenges, rising food prices and loss of income due to COVID19 - threaten to leave millions of refugees across Africa without food.
Two thirds of the 3 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru who have seen their jobs disappear and their incomes plummet during the pandemic will see their food insecurity worsen in 2020, according to World Food Programme’s COVID-19 projections.
Plant breeding is a key challenge for resilience to climate change among agricultural producers. A new far-reaching project is aimed at strengthening networks and institutional capacities in this field in three West African countries. With almost 9 million euros of funding, it is coordinated by CORAF and implemented by a consortium of national and international institutes, including CIRAD, within the framework of DeSIRA, the major EU funding programme.
More people are going hungry, an annual study by the United Nations has found. Tens of millions have joined the ranks of the chronically undernourished over the past five years, and countries around the world continue to struggle with multiple forms of malnutrition.
The latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, published today, estimates that almost 690 million people went hungry in 2019 - up by 10 million from 2018, and by nearly 60 million in five years.
Achieving local and global food security: at what costs?
The outbreak of the coronavirus is having an unparalleled effect on our society and economy. Farmers and every actor of the EU food supply chain are working hard to keep feeding Europe, despite the difficulties they face. The European Commission will continue to support farmers and food producers, collaborate with EU member states, and take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the health and well-being of the people of Europe.
FAO’s Chief Economist maps the ways the world can mitigate shocks to agriculture and food systems.
Dr Kanayo F. Nwanze will represent a unified CGIAR at next year’s United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), bringing the voice of independent agricultural research and broad-ranging partnerships to the global forum.
In countries whose medical systems are under-resourced, the health crisis could be compounded by a hunger crisis and lost livelihoods unless we act now to help.
A reflection on the report “Empowering youth to engage in responsible investment in agriculture and food systems”
The Ceres2030 project—a joint initiative by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and Cornell University—invites you to an online reflection on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for global food security.
BRUSSELS/COPENHAGEN/BAMAKO/DAKAR, 4 April 2020 - A UNICEF shipment of 7.5 tons of vital health supplies is arriving in Bamako, Mali today on a Danish flight, co-financed between the European Union (EU) and the Government of Denmark.
By Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies
Socialprotection.org Webinar - 7 April 2020, 06:00 EDT/GMT -4
