food security

July 25, 2018

Agriculture and nutrition: Exploring the links and disconnects

Bangladesh is largely an agricultural-based economy. According to the World Bank, almost half of all workers are directly employed by agriculture. The sector is credited with greatly reducing the country’s poverty rate due to rapid growth.
April 16, 2018

A complete solution for smallholder farmers in Tanzania

The LEAD project has had significant positive results by using a modified M4P approach. Findings show more than a 400% increase in both maize yield per hectare and weekly egg production, and a 107% increase in number of birds per farmer’s flock by the end of the project. Maize farmers’ median income increased 400% from USD 54 to USD 269.
October 18, 2017

Ploughing the path in a male-dominated turf

Husnaara ran to her house smiling from ear to ear as if she could not get any happier. At that point nothing seemed impossible; she could become a doctor, an engineer or a lawyer, go to a good university. She could not wait to give her father the news about her Secondary School Certificate results and assure him that his daughter would one day be able to provide for them.
July 6, 2017

Meet the millennial who’s changing our farmlands

Peeking from behind the tin door is Ibrahim’s two-year-old daughter, Amena, in a blue polka dot dress, and a kitten in her arms. Another kitten appears and darts across the courtyard. Ducklings scatter about in panic.
April 5, 2016

Helping smallholders grow a pharmacy on their farms

Albrecht Dürer’s masterful woodcut, ’Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ is drawn from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible’s New Testament. In it, the horsemen ride on red, black, white and pale horses, symbolising war, famine, conquest and death.
January 27, 2016

Remembering Dr Mahabub Hossain

It has been a few days since Dr Mahabub Hossain has left us. As more and more people are remembering him, it is clear what a profound impact he had on those he crossed paths with. As a leader, Dr Mahabub’s contribution was immense in BRAC as well.
December 21, 2015

Does your organisation actually empower women?

“Data not only measures progress, it inspires it. What gets measured gets done. Once you start measuring problems, people are more inclined to take action to fix them because nobody wants to end up at the bottom of a list of rankings.”
December 9, 2015

With Ebola gone, Sierra Leone must now rebuild rural livelihoods

Sierra Leoneans celebrated in the streets last month when 42 days passed without a single new case of Ebola. The mix of mourning and jubilation called to mind the signing of a peace treaty after a war, and the end of Ebola should indeed be greeted as a victory.
October 16, 2015

Planting the future: The way forward in agriculture

While many developing countries have made breakthroughs in the agricultural sector, chronic hunger remains our biggest challenge. Today about 805 million people suffer from chronic hunger globally, and around 65 per cent of them exist in Asia and the pacific. We know that the global population is expected to increase to nearly 9 billion by 2050. To meet the growing food demand we need to increase agricultural production by 60 per cent globally. In the newly formed SDGs, agriculture is a crosscutting theme.
October 15, 2015

Closing the gender gap: The face of women in farming

It is said that the total number of hungry people in the world could be reduced by 12-17 per cent if women’s access to resources were equivalent to that of men. Still perceived to be a male-dominated field, the agriculture sector in Bangladesh has seen a dramatic rise in female participation, now exceeding 50 per cent. October 15th is International Day for Rural Women and here are some of their stories.
July 20, 2014

Farmer-led research in increasing fodder availability in the South

In smallholder agriculture, innovation is the driving force for the improvement of farming systems. It is especially important for the development of adoption strategies to cope with constantly changing production and market conditions. Farmers have always been experimenting with new ideas and practices for locally adapted innovations. A number of approaches have been established to understand and support the important potential of smallholder farmers as innovators. These approaches provide participatory methods to identify and promote locally derived innovations.
June 4, 2014

Super foods: from the lab to the table

Over the past 50 years, agricultural research has improved crop yields, particularly of staples like cereals and tubers. But this breeding has placed too little emphasis on nutrition, leaving the poorest, who often can only afford these staples, consuming too few essential nutrients like iron, zinc and vitamin A.