In January, 2018, USAID launched a guide for using digital tools like mobile phones to increase access to agricultural insurance as part of a broader effort to promote resilience in rural communities.
Economist Stephen C. Smith discusses how a number of water constraints have the greatest impacts on women and children living in poverty, and how irrigation can make a difference.
When sediment builds up in a hydropower reservoir it can damage turbines and clog spillways. It reduces how much electricity a plant can generate, and it’s expensive to dredge. In Malawi, this is especially a problem, as hydropower provides nearly all of the country’s electricity.
Sitting in the main room of a farmer’s home in western Kenya, Sam Bird, a Ph.D. candidate in Agricultural and Resource Economics, had a rare chance to put a face to the data he had spent the prior year analyzing.
AMA Innovation Lab research on drought-tolerant maize may seem out of context in South Asia, but given the severity of flooding in Bangladesh and much of the rest of the region this past year it is clear that more than stress resistant seeds are needed.
Women farmers are typically cautious of losing their already limited collateral or social status in case of default in the event of a bad weather shock. An innovative type of insured loan made women more confident to apply for the credit needed to invest in their farms.
How long should a development intervention run? For a BRAC program for women farmers in eastern Uganda, that decision was made by the amount of funding it would have.
As climate-related disasters are expected to grow in size and frequency with climate change, insurance may prove critical to relief and recovery, especially for small-scale farmers in developing countries.
Feed the Future released an update of the U.S. Government’s Global Food Security Research Strategy on September 12, 2017, with three broad research themes that include advancing productive technologies, mitigating risk and improving economic opportunity and resilience.
