Sublime

The second is that after the forma -tion of the World Trade Organization in 1995, international trade in food became very prevalent. In many of the big population centers in Africa, it’s often cheaper to import food from other countries than it is to grow domestically. The terms of trade have made it very hard to create a competitive supply system... See more

CGIAR isn’t just focused on new seeds. Its scientists have also created a smartphone app that allows farmers to use the camera on their phones to identify specific pests and diseases attacking cassava, an important cash crop in Africa. It’s also created programs for using drones and ground sensors to help farmers determine how much water and

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So the U.S. might want to send seeds to Tanzania or Guatemala or somewhere. How would they ensure that they get crops back at the end of that? M: Yes. There are real challenges with this, particularly depending upon the nature of the disaster. The global financial system and even basic communi -cations may be severely damaged. Money and contracts... See more

can get some idea of the untapped potential of agriculture by reading F. H. King’s fascinating 1911 book, Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan, which explains how these regions sustained enormous populations for millennia on tiny amounts of land, without mechanization, pesticides, or chemical fertilizers.

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Women also have less secure tenure over land, less access to credit and training, and have to work with technology designed for men. Along with discrimination, these inequalities create a 24 per cent gender gap in productivity between women and men farmers on farms of equal size.

While 75 per cent of policy documents relating to agriculture and rural development from 68 countries recognize women’s roles and/or women’s challenges in agriculture and rural development, only 19 per cent included policy goals related to gender