Farmers in India largely depend on monsoon rains to sow their crops—as much as 60 percent of the cropped area in India depends on these rains, which usually occur between June and September.

However, rainfall this year has been 22 percent below normal for the country as a whole—and as much as 36 percent below normal in northwest India. In other regions, including India’s northern “breadbasket” states of Punjab and Haryana (where over 18% percent of India’s foodgrains is produced), the monsoon has yet to arrive.

Researchers, practitioners, donors, and government officials gathered in Kampala Wednesday, June 27, for a workshop to showcase IFPRI’s ongoing research in Uganda and to facilitate discussions about current topics in agriculture and nutrition. Todd Benson, head of IFPRI’s Uganda Strategy Support Program opened the morning session.

Recent research has revealed that the most crucial development in a child’s brain takes place in the first three years of its life. As a result, developing country governments have increasingly paid attention to the need for stronger early childhood education.

The world’s population is growing, but its resources, including land and water, are finite. This means that if farmers are to feed 9 billion people by 2050—which would require them to roughly double current production—they will have to make their fields work harder without transforming forests and other precious ecosystems into additional cropland.