Doubling food production by 2050 under conditions of climate change and depleted natural resources requires increased investment and creative approaches. The Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project, a five-year public–private partnership begun in 2008 and led by the African...

This talk reflects on the proceedings of the Crawford conference and provides a way forward in policy thinking. Effective food and agriculture policy decision-making requires clearer differentiation of countries by their stage of development. Operationally, it implies different approaches at the...

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has a mandate to improve the livelihoods of the poor in the semiarid tropical (SAT) regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, which is home to 550 million poor people. Sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeonpea and...

The United Nations World Food Program feeds on average about 90 million people per year, twothirds of them children. It has offices in 80 countries. Despite the scale of this effort and the large quantities of food involved, forward planning is very challenging because of the small financial...

Africa is short of food, due particularly to increasing population and under-investment in agriculture and agricultural research. For several reasons farm yields are about one-quarter of the global average. New broad cooperative approaches to the problem have had very encouraging results; Malawi...

Millions of small farmers are reached commercially every day as they buy seeds and crop protection products, fertiliser, cell phones, machinery and tools, taking advantage of the science and research embodied in these products. The market for agricultural inputs is large, and the role of the...