What's New

In December 2015, representatives from the Zambian Ministries of Agriculture and Fisheries and Livestock, the EU, IFPRI , the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) , Zambia’s CSO-SUN Alliance , and Zambia’s National Food and Nutrition Commission met at the “Enhancing the link between evidence and agriculture, food, and nutrition” policy dialogue. The event focused on painting a clearer picture of the global food and nutrition security environment and assessing Zambia’s risks and opportunities regarding its domestic food and nutrition security.

Contract farming arrangements are becoming increasingly popular in developing countries. These arrangements, in which farmers agree to produce a given amount of a product and buyers agree to buy that amount, can help improve smallholders’ access to markets and credit opportunities. However, in reality, contract farming arrangements can be plagued with problems – farmers may renege on the agreement if they believe they can get a higher price from a different buyer or market, and buyers may renege because they distrust the quality of the product or the reliability of the farmer.

Food and nutrition security (FNS) is a multi-dimensional concept, spanning the agriculture, trade, health, and social sectors. Often, however, policies only address FNS through one lens: that of food production. This could be due to the fact that many FNS stakeholders have a background in agriculture and thus tend to focus on sectoral agricultural issues, says a new report from the FoodSecure project .

In November 2015, the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) and the African Union Commission (AUC) held a technical consultation on data for food and nutrition security resilience in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting focused on increasing the availability and use of the right types of data in order to improve countries’ capacity to monitor and achieve food and nutrition security goals. Representatives from 28 African countries participated, as did representatives from various regional institutions, development partners, NGOs, academic institutions, and the private sector.

This post contains excerpts from the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) blog .

The first Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture (GFIA) , Africa Edition, was held on December 1-2 in Durban, South Africa.  The meeting brought together policymakers, private sector actors, farmers’ organizations, and international organizations to discuss innovations, investments, and policies for advancing Africa’s development through improvements in data collection to provide relevant and timely information for agricultural producers.