Food Systems
Featured blog
Strategic Integration of Armed Groups on the Road to Agrifood Transformation
Military and paramilitary groups exert substantial influence globally, serving as the primary power base for regimes in forty-two different nations.
Scaling up crop insurance in Africa for climate resilience and agricultural transformation
Key takeawaysCrop insurance can help smallholder farmers in Africa and elsewhere manage climate risk and stabilize livelihoods in the face of droughts and extreme weather.Although insurance has evolved to become more affordable, further innovation is needed to ensure high-quality products that cover farmers’ needs.Scaling coverage requires better product design, farmer education, and links to credit and inputs and in some cases smart subsidies. As climate change impacts intensify, African economies face increasing exposure to extreme weather events.
How warring factions gained influence in Sudan’s food system – and what it means for the current conflict
Militaries play a major role in the politics of many countries. They determine whether elections can occur and who can compete. From Egypt to Pakistan and Myanmar to Uganda, the military is often the most important powerholder.In parallel, violent non-state actors—including criminal networks, terrorist groups and paramilitaries—have proliferated over the last two decades.To maintain their influence and finance their operations, militaries and violent non-state actors often become heavily involved in both legal and illicit business activities.
Including women in commercial agriculture benefits the whole household: Evidence from Uganda
Formally including Ugandan women in commercial agriculture—through contract ownership or behavior-change interventions—can increase women’s empowerment without reducing productivity, and with positive spillovers for household welfare and gender relations.Estimates suggest that there are 475 million smallholder farms in low- and middle-income countries, including 43 million in sub-Saharan Africa (Lowder et al. 2016, FAO 2017).
The hidden costs of gendered inequities: Findings from true cost accounting of cropping systems in Kenya
The cost of a tomato in Kenya cannot just be measured by the shillings reflected in the direct cost-based market price—it also reflects the costs associated with the land that gets eroded, the carbon emitted, the water and air that get polluted, the children that miss school, underpaid women’s labor, the harassment they endure in the fields, and the credit they are denied.