Blog

The agriculture sector across the globe not only feeds the world’s population but it also provides nearly 27 percent of worldwide employment. Yet the sector faces significant sustainability challenges: it is estimated to contribute more than one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions through a combination of agricultural activities and land use changes, and it consumes, on average, 70 percent of the world’s freshwater resources.

• 11/18/2021
• Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security

While technological and institutional innovations in agri-food systems over the past century have brought dramatic advances in human well-being worldwide, these gains increasingly appear unsustainable due to massive, adverse spillover effects on climate, natural environment, social justice and public health and nutrition.

• 11/10/2021
• CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)

USAID’s work across numerous sectors helps countries achieve ambitious climate targets and aids in building the foundation for sustainable growth through natural climate solutions.

• 09/02/2021
• Climatelinks

There is an urgent need for crop varieties and technologies that help smallholder farmers adapt to climate change.

• 08/17/2021
• Agrilinks Team

CGIAR has developed biofortified crop varieties and supportive seed, production and post-harvest technologies that can contribute significantly to meeting humanitarian nutrition interventions in fragile environments.

• 08/12/2021
• Frederick Grant

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Markets, Risk and Resilience (MRR Innovation Lab) invites researchers at U.S. universities to submit proposals for research projects that support our mission to generate and transfer into action innovations that will bolster resilience, keeping rural individuals, households, communities and markets in positions of economic viability from which they can sustain and accelerate a path of inclusive agricultural growth.

• 03/01/2021
• Agrilinks Team

When you think about a farmer getting ready for their season, what is the first image that comes to mind? Is it something about getting the fields ready, images of a healthy crop emerging from the soil, a good rain, or something altogether different? For us, it is something that looks like this:

• 01/25/2021
• Agrilinks

Our food systems are failing us. However, they are also complex and each is unique, which requires many different behavioral changes and interventions along the supply chain. Our food systems are failing us, and a new report from the Transforming Food Systems Under a Changing Climate initiative (launching June 25th) argues that nothing short of a systemic transformation of food systems is required if we are to feed the world’s current and future population sustainably under climate change.

• 07/01/2020
• CCAFS

Climate impacts social and economic development across sectors, in numerous ways. Each sector also has unique opportunities to contribute to climate solutions. USAID integrates climate change in development programming across a variety of technical fields.

• 06/18/2020
• Isabela Barriga

The global dairy sector is committed to doing its part to reduce our impact on the environment. And while globally dairy is responsible for 3 percent of man-made green house gas emissions (GHG), the sector is already making strides to improve the health of our planet and create a sustainable world for everyone. A new report, entitled “Climate Change and the Global Dairy Cattle Sector,” was released earlier this year that shows over a 10-year period (2005-2015), GHG emissions from the production of milk has decreased in intensity by 11 percent (GHG emissions per unit of product).

• 05/06/2020
• Brian Lindsay

Recent reports are taking an economic view of climate impacts, making a clear case for acting early rather than reacting late. The Global Commission on Adaptation’s 2019 report, Adapt Now: A Global Call for Leadership on Climate Resilience, warns leaders around the world that we simply cannot afford the costs of inaction on climate change.

• 03/25/2020
• Jennifer Frankel-Reed

In this post, the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security (EEFS) project describes how its Water Governance Scorecard can inform policy discussions on water use within the agriculture sector. Water is at the nexus of food security and climate risk management. Smallholder farmers depend on reliable access to water to support production through rainfall and/or irrigation systems. As climate risks mount, variability in water availability and allocation will affect the competitiveness and resilience of the agriculture sector.

• 03/17/2020
• Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land, changing precipitation patterns, increasing temperatures, and more frequent extreme weather events are already affecting food security. As extreme events occur more regularly, food systems are likely to be disrupted, creating challenges in food access and potentially causing price fluctuations.

• 02/28/2020
• Stephan Hardeman

The impacts of climate change on crop yields, as projected by a slew of impact assessments carried out since the 1980s, have brought the issue of future food insecurity to the fore. A meta-analysis of ~27,000 data points from studies published over the last four decades reveals that at country level, average impacts of climate change on crop yields up to the 2050s are generally small (but negative) for rice and wheat, and modest for maize, provided farmers adopt practices and technologies such as improved varieties, planting at optimal times, and improved water and fertilizer management.

• 02/26/2020
• Climatelinks

Many of the effects of changing climate patterns on food security are obvious. For example, more frequent and extreme droughts and floods are making farming more challenging, leading to abbreviated growing seasons, lost crops, and depleted family food stores. But climate variability and change are causing many other less obvious effects on food security, many of which are just beginning to be understood.

• 02/25/2020
• Christine Chumbler