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Farming is the key to solving youth unemployment in Africa
Africa south of the Sahara has the world’s youngest and fastest growing population. With enough support from African leaders, agricultural initiatives will boost employment and the economy. The following post by IFPRI’s Karen Brooks, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets, is a modified version of a story that originally was published by the […]
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VC4D: Value Chain for Development
We live in a fast changing world with fast changing trends: urbanization, globalization, industrialization, and more, all of which have a profound impact on the way food moves from field to fork along the agricultural value chain. Understanding the chain, and how to make it work for smallholder farmers, is a central theme in research […]
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Agricultural Productivity: Good and Bad News
The world’s population is growing, and we only have limited land for farming. Will we run out of food? That question, famously posed by Thomas Malthus in the early 19th century, has been discussed for decades. The short answer is: no, we will not run out of food. Why? Because agriculture is beating the odds. […]
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Playing games to save water
World Water Day 2013 begins the International Year of Water Cooperation. Today, we highlight an innovative research project that helps strengthen cooperation to protect and conserve this precious natural resource. Recently, villagers in India and Colombia have been regularly gathering for a “game night.” But instead of Monopoly or charades, they play a game that simulates […]
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Global Food Policy Report Launch inspires new perspectives, fresh ideas, and calls to action
“Don’t just ‘walk the talk’ — run, or even fly, the talk!” IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan made this call to action at a policy seminar yesterday to mark the release IFPRI’s second annual Global Food Policy Report. The event brought a full house to IFPRI’s DC office to hear perspectives on food policy developments, trends, and […]
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Biofuel Policies Re-examined
As temperatures rose and crops withered throughout the US in July and August, the country’s corn ethanol subsidies came under fire. And the US is not alone. The use of food crops, such as maize, soybeans, and sugar beets, as fuel continues to generate heated debate throughout both the developed and the developing world. Proponents […]
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Water Management Solutions for Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
The drought that parched the US corn belt this summer highlighted the devastating impact of scant rain on food production. For smallholder farmers in semi-arid areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where rain is rare or unpredictable—especially due to climate change—the challenge of watering crops is constant. If farmers in Africa, for example, were to tap into […]
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Collective Action and Property Rights Sourcebook Now in Spanish
A Spanish-language version of the popular CGIAR Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) sourcebook is now available. The sourcebook, Recursos, derechos y cooperación Manual de herramientas de referencia sobre derechos de propiedad y acción colectiva para el desarrollo sustentable, illustrates—through text and original hand-drawings—the lessons the CAPRi program has learned from its nearly 16 […]
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Global Food Policy Report Launched Today
2011 saw significantly increased support of agriculture and food policy as tools for global poverty reduction. It also brought serious challenges, most notably in the form of food price volatility, extreme weather shocks, famine, unrest, and conflicts. IFPRI’s new flagship publication, the Global Food Policy Report, presents a broad picture of 2011’s major food policy […]
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Climate Change and Farmers
Farmers around the world are grappling with the impacts of climate change and their struggle is only going to get worse as extreme weather events, shifting weather patterns, and increased temperatures make it more difficult to grow enough food to feed an increasing world population. Climate change “has already affected agricultural productivity and will put […]