Sustainable agrifood systems
Increased investment needed to adapt Africa’s agriculture to climate change
Nutrition, health and food security
Delegates at a conference in June called for a new focus and increase in investment to ensure eastern and southern Africa’s farming systems can withstand the impacts of climate change.
Farmer in Malawi defines true project success
Innovations
Development initiatives are only truly successful when participants graduate, adopt and leave.
Sustainable agriculture for healthy forests
Climate adaptation and mitigation
Agriculture is the second largest emitter of global greenhouse gas emissions and largest driver of deforestation, making the sector one of the top contributors to climate change and biodiversity loss.
Scaling up research for impact
Capacity development
As part of a German Development Cooperation effort to aid the scaling up of agricultural innovations, Lennart Woltering recently joined CIMMYT’s Sustainable Intensification Program.
Q+A: Agricultural mechanization fuels opportunity for youth in rural Africa
Capacity development
Small-scale agricultural mechanization is showing signs it has the potential to fuel rural employment for youth in sub-Saharan Africa, according to researchers.
Breaking Ground: Hands on experience gives Carolina Camacho insight into farming best practices
Innovations
Tending her own crops gives Carolina Camacho insights into the challenges farmers face that she could never have learned in a classroom.
CIMMYT doctoral student wins award for outstanding thesis
Climate adaptation and mitigation
CIMMYT doctoral student and ETH Zürich graduate Stephanie Cheesman has won the 2017 Hans Vontobel-Preis.
Obstacles to gender-smart fertilizer use hurt livelihoods, scientists say
Gender equality, youth and social inclusion
Compiling gender-inclusive data could help scientists understand how to help improve nitrogen fertilizer application practices among smallholder farmers.
Bangladesh urges $500 million in funds to intensify surface water irrigation
Innovations
Most current food security projections show that staple crop production must double by 2050 to keep up with global need, which will continue to expand.
New Publications: Wheat stem rust resistance identified in Kazakhstan and Russia
Nutrition, health and food security
Stem rusts have proven to be a challenge to wheat farmers in Kazakhstan and Russia, particularly with higher rainfall in recent years.
Gender and development specialist Rahma Adam: Aiding African women to build household food security
Gender equality, youth and social inclusion
In a special interview to mark International Women’s Day, CIMMYT gender specialist Rahma Adam detailed how her research aims to improve the agricultural productivity of women in south and eastern Africa.
Stronger African seed sector to benefit smallholder farmers and economy
Nutrition, health and food security
Despite its large-scale impact across Africa, smallholder farming largely remains a low technology, subsistence activity.
New Publications: Study shows benefits and trade-offs of conservation agriculture in southern Africa
Climate adaptation and mitigation
CIMMYT with other partners combined empirical data and results from a cropping system model to quantify benefits and trade-offs of CA in southern Africa.
CIMMYT scientist takes lead role in American Agronomy Society’s sustainable intensification community
Climate adaptation and mitigation
Timothy Krupnik, systems agronomist at CIMMYT, leads the Sustainable Intensification community of the American Society for Agronomy’s Environmental Quality section.
Surface water irrigation has the potential to boost cereal productivity in Bangladesh
Innovations
For the first time, researchers have mapped rivers and freshwater canals in southern Bangladesh using geospatial tools.