A higher-yield rice variety moves Madagascar further on the path to self-sufficiency

Fuel not Fire: from burning crop waste to bioenergy - Finding sustainable uses for crop waste in India and worldwide

Conquerors, climate change and coronavirus

Sumaka Japhet is a young rice seed cultivator and agricultural entrepreneur. In 2017, after finishing university, he heard about and joined the IFAD-supported project that gave him a start-up kit containing fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides, as well as quality, certified seed – and those few items forever changed the way he cultivated rice. He also received technical support and training on rice seed production. Each growing season, he sold the seed and invested his earnings into the next.

While the world has enough water, it’s often not in the right places, at the right time. Ethiopia has long been associated with droughts and famines, but climate change has made them more devastating for small scale rural farmers.

Umer, a farmer from northern Pakistan, has never let his disability hold him back from starting his own farming business and providing for his family. Born with a physical impairment, Umer has consistently challenged the negative attitudes and stereotypes linked to disability, and he has never let any physical or societal constraint become a barrier to achieving his goals. Taking every opportunity to learn, he worked hard as a farmer and an orchardist and now his income provides a good quality of life for his whole family. “I do not see my disability as an obstacle. But it took me some time to realise my strengths and to start pursuing my dreams” says Umer.

As many as 600,000 people in the Liupanshan area of China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, nearly 40 per cent of whom are farmers, live under the national poverty line. This is especially true for the Hui, a local ethnic minority, who make up about 60 per cent of the area’s total population. Farmers in Naihe village have been raising sheep and cattle for decades. Nevertheless, they’ve had to contend with a lack of proper livestock facilities, which made raising the animals challenging and limited the number they could sell – and this in turn left them with insufficient funds to upgrade the facilities, trapping them in a vicious cycle.  Under an IFAD programme, livestock raising has just gotten easier – and more profitable.

For some small-scale farmers, the impact of COVID-19 has opened the door to new technologies. An IFAD-supported project helps young Kenyan farmers invest in hydroponics systems.

Sweet dreams are made of bees

The rural uplands of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic are home to generations of proud family farmers, with many still using traditional farming techniques handed down over the years. Yet, these practices have increasingly struggled to keep up. A joint IFAD-WFP initiative has been helping to improve household diets by strengthening women’s knowledge of nutrition and agriculture.

Find out how to shop for and prepare food safely and which foods and supplements can help.

One of the most striking images of the coronavirus pandemic is the contrast between farmers dumping milk, smashing eggs, and ploughing vegetables back into the soil and consumers facing empty store shelves and long lines at food distribution centres. How is it possible to have over-abundance on one hand and scarcity on the other? The World Bank argues that the digital revolution can accelerate the shift towards a more sustainable food future by collecting, using, and analysing machine-readable data.

Since COVID-19 struck, life has changed for entrepreneurs and businesses. Due to lockdowns and movement restrictions, smallholder farmers and rural businesses have been unable to access markets and sell produce or other products. FAO launched a youth engagement initiative, Coping with COVID-19: voices of young agripreneurs, to understand the impact of the outbreak on the businesses of young rural people and to know how to best support them during and after the pandemic.

Pandemic or not, Celia Osegueda and her two sons continue to work on their vegetable farm. FAO is working with the Government of El Salvador and local authorities to minimize the impacts of COVID-19 on producer families and strengthen agricultural production in El Salvador. By strengthening the resilience of family farmers and equipping them with the tools needed to provide for their families, FAO is supporting the economic recovery of rural families in El Salvador. Celia is one of the food heroes that has worked to maintain the country’s food security during these trying times.

The IFAD-funded Rural Development Programme in the Mountain Zones in Morocco has empowered the women of Azilal by helping scale-up their saffron business and by providing training.