Working across South Asia, the Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) Initiative will deliver a coordinated program of research and engagement across the food production to consumption continuum to improve equitable access to sustainable healthy diets, improve farmer livelihoods and resilience, and conserve land, air, and groundwater resources.
TAFSSA aims to propel evidence into impact through engagement with public and private partners across the production-to-consumption continuum, to achieve productive, environmentally-sound South Asian agrifood systems that support equitable access to sustainable healthy diets.
This objective will be achieved through:
Facilitating agrifood systems transformation through inclusive learning platforms, public data systems and partnerships: building new and enhancing existing learning platforms; improving the evidence base; increasing quality data availability and accessibility; and demonstrating the value of integrated agrifood systems datasets.
Transforming agroecosystems and rural economies to boost income, generate jobs and support diversified food production within environmental boundaries: generating linkages between farmers, landscapes and markets to diversify agricultural production, increase farmersâ incomes and foster rural entrepreneurship within environmental boundaries.
Improving access to and affordability of sustainably produced healthy foods through evidence and actions across the food system: creating favorable environments for diversification; improving access to inputs for and marketability of sustainable nutritious food; and improving access to healthy food for the poor through changes in food retail environments.
Understanding behavioral and structural determinants of sustainable healthy diets: studying dietary practices of food consumers; identifying determinants of food choices; and testing innovations to support consumption of sustainable healthy diets.
Building resilience and mitigating environmental impact: examining how South Asia can produce healthy diets within an environmentally safe and socially equitable operating space, and in consideration of ongoing climate change and farmersâ resilience to shocks.
Saiful AKM Islam is a monitoring, evaluation and learning manager with the Innovation Science for Agroecosystems and Food Systems in Asia research theme in CIMMYT’s Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program. He has almost 18 years of experience with different organizations in the monitoring and evaluation field. He completed his masterâs in social science from Dhaka University, Bangladesh, and post-graduation diploma in development planning.
Islam has a good understanding of monitoring and evaluation and knowledge management systems especially the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) system and compliances. Prior to beginning this position, he worked with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a program specialist and Save the Children International as manager in research, monitoring and evaluation, and learning.
Masud Rana is a Monitoring Evaluation and Learning Officer working with CIMMYTâs Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program based in Bangladesh. He is currently working for the Cereal Systems Initiatives for South Asia (CSISA) project.
Khandakar Shafiqul Islam is a hub coordinator with CIMMYT in Bangladesh. He is responsible for implementing different projects at field level involving government, non-government and private sector organizations, along with managing resources.
A multitude of research on the benefits of conservation agriculture in South Asia has predominantly focused on favorable environments where farmers have reliable access to energy supporting irrigation and inputs.
Farmers calibrate their machines for strip tillage in communities participating in experiments. (Credit: Ranik Martin)
Responding to the identified research gap, this research tests the hypothesis that seasonally alternating tillage (SAT) practices that alternate between strip-tillage in the winter season for maize and conventional tillage (CT) prior to rice can reduce energy use, increase energy productivity, and reduce yield-scaled emissions while increasing or maintaining yield and profit, even under these challenging conditions.
Working with 35 farmers who managed experiments in partially irrigated and rainfed environments in southern coastal Bangladesh, researchers teamed up with farming communities to compare the full suite of conservation agriculture to SAT practices against CT and farmerâs own practices.
The research found that in these coastal environments, both conservation agriculture and SAT practices have the potential to increase cereal yields and energy productivity while reducing yield-scaled emissions, thereby enabling farmers even in challenging coastal environments to produce more while reducing energy use and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
However, in consideration of farmersâ aversion to the elimination of tillage in rice, the research suggests that adaptations in CA practices and seasonal tillage prior to rice may be a more practical fit for rice-maize systems managed by smallholders reluctant to eliminate tillage for rice in coastal Bangladesh.
This research gives implications for future research and development efforts to take into consideration farmersâ preferences or the trade-offs resulting from significant change to conservation agriculture management in otherwise fully tilled systems. It is also vital to integrate development efforts that focus not only on agronomic management, but also on building supportive value chains to improve availability and affordability of the inputs and farm machinery required to successfully establish crops with such practices.
Despite womenâs essential role in agrifood systems, their contribution can be overlooked, with resources instead targeted towards their male counterparts.
However, advancements in technology now allow scientists to generate rich datasets that can aid analysis of the situational factors impacting women farmersâ participation in extension training services.
These developments have enabled scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Michigan State University, and Agricultural Advisory Society, a local NGO, to understand barriers to access and recommend improvements that will benefit women in Bangladesh.
Using a large dataset of 131,073 farmers in Bangladesh, researchers worked to identify ways to tackle gender exclusion in extension training. Scientists used machine learning to understand preferences according to gender and applied optimization theory and identified actionable ways to increase the number of farmers participating in video- and multi-media mediated trainings, while simultaneously improving gender inclusivity in public training events.
The study discovered strong gender specific considerations, such as the training sessionâs day of the week and time and the gender of the trainer, which prevented women from or encouraged them to take part in educational events.
It also demonstrates the potential for big data to transform our understanding of unstructured and semi-structured data into statistically verifiable insights that can genuinely impact farmerâs lives. Optimizing womenâs involvement in agrifood systems can additionally play an important part in efforts to enhance farm productivity, gender and social inclusion, and nutrition in Bangladesh and beyond.
A S M Alanuzzaman Kurishi is a Research Associate and coordinates the CIMMYT Dinajpur field office in Bangladesh. He has around 12 years of professional experience in CIMMYT on sustainable intensification and global conservation agriculture programs. He has experience on social and environmental impact assessment on existing and future adaptation and climate risk reduction options and strategy. He has experience to lead on-farm adaptive research trials and on-farm demonstrations across southern and northern Bangladesh, with hands-on experience in soil sample collection for physical, chemical and biological analysis, crop growth data (plant height, tiller, leaf area index, leaf biomass, stem biomass, root biomass measurement), pest and disease infestations assessments, yield components, and socioeconomic data. He has demonstrable experience using research equipment including salinity meters, soil moisture equipment, penetrometers and NDVI hand held senors.
Wheat at a CIMMYT field trial. (Photo: H. Hernandez Lira/CIMMYT)
As the Russia-Ukraine war continues to degrade global food security, a new analysis lays out concrete actions that governments and investors must do now to mitigate near-term food security risks and stabilize wheat supplies, while transitioning toward long-term resilience.
âThe Russia-Ukraine war will impact global food security over months â if not years,â said CIMMYT Global Wheat Program Director and lead author Alison Bentley. âWe now need to move beyond defining the problem to implementing practical actions to ensure stable supply, safeguard the livelihoods of millions of vulnerable people and bring resilience to our global agrifood system.â
The war in Ukraine and trade sanctions against Russia are triggering a level of volatility that could easily overwhelm existing mitigation mechanisms. More than 2.5 billion people worldwide consume wheat-based foods; those in lower- to middle-income countries dependent on imports from Russia and Ukraine are particularly affected. Some of the worldâs poorest countries, such as Bangladesh, Sudan and Yemen, rely heavily on Russian and Ukrainian wheat. Given the highly interconnected nature of contemporary agrifood systems, few will remain unaffected by this new global food shock.
Mitigate the immediate crisis
The first priority, according to the authors, is to mitigate the immediate crisis by boosting wheat production in existing high- and low-productivity areas, ensuring grain access and blending wheat flour with other low-cost cereals. Bundled agronomic and breeding improvements and sustainable farming practices can reduce dependence on imported grain and fertilizer, while coordinated, multilateral policies can help conserve grain stocks for human consumption and avert trade restrictions.
Increase the resilience of wheat supply
In the medium term, the authors emphasized the need to increase the local, regional, and global resilience of the wheat supply. This can be done by expanding production within agro-ecological boundaries, supporting national wheat self-sufficiency and providing technical assistance, to increase the production of high-yielding disease-resistant wheat and to mainstream capacity for pest and disease monitoring.
Transition to system-level resilience
Finally, to reach crucially needed resilience in the worldâs agrifood system, long-term measures must be taken that encompass agroecosystem diversity, address gender disparities in agriculture and rural communities and sustain increased investment in a holistic, agrifood transition.
âThe current global food crisis underscores and compounds existing inequalities in our global food system,â Bentley said. âA transition to agrifood system resilience requires us to urgently balance global food supply needs with the multi-layered challenges of climate change, achieving gender equity, nutritional sufficiency and livelihood security.â
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) is an international organization focused on non-profit agricultural research and training that empowers farmers through science and innovation to nourish the world in the midst of a climate crisis.
Applying high-quality science and strong partnerships, CIMMYT works to achieve a world with healthier and more prosperous people, free from global food crises and with more resilient agrifood systems. CIMMYTâs research brings enhanced productivity and better profits to farmers, mitigates the effects of the climate crisis, and reduces the environmental impact of agriculture.
CIMMYT is a member of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food secure future dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resources.
CIMMYT enumerators hold booklets with vignettes before their interaction with family farmers Kiran Devi (second from left) and Rishikesh Ram (third from left). (Photo: Nima Chodon /CIMMYT)
Researchers from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) are conducting a study in the state of Bihar, India, to improve our understanding of women’s and men’s contributions to decision-making around wheat crop management. The results will help reach women with new varieties that meet their needs and priorities.
The study seeks to overcome a big challenge for research organizations and national policymakers: to design a better framework for faster turnover of improved varieties and increased access to women and marginalized farmers.
Wheat is the second-largest crop grown in Bihar after rice, with a production of 5-6 million tonnes of it every year. Despite women’s contributions to farming activities, from sowing to harvesting, traditional gender norms can undermine their access to productive resources and influence household decisions. Additionally, women’s workload in wheat agriculture is increasing, due to men’s departure to non-agricultural jobs, but women are still not necessarily recognized as capable farmers.
Gender exclusion in agriculture
Given social norms and household-and-farm labor division based on gender, women are often confined to specific roles in the agricultural production system. In smallholder farming communities of South Asia like Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, men’s increasing involvement in non-agricultural activities has increased women’s workloads in every sphere of agricultural production. However, these long-held assumptions of their role can lead to exclusion from decision-making, limiting their control over what, how, and how much a crop is produced, their economic wellbeing, including household food security.
The CIMMYT study on “Intra-household gender dynamics in decision-making for wheat crop management in India (Bihar)” investigates women’s and men’s roles in production decisions. Led by Hom Gartaula, Gender, and Social Inclusion Specialist at CIMMYT, it covers eight villages â four in Darbhanga and four in Madhepura district â with 25 houses considered in each village.
As part of the Accelerating Genetic Gains in Maize and Wheat for improved livelihoods in Asia and Africa (AGG) Â project, the research study will help gain deeper insights into the intra-household gender dynamics. It will also help in untangling who does what, how wheat cultivation and management decisions are organized within the households and the perceptions of the male and female farmers around why decisions are made in such a way.
Farmer Devi points at the vignette that aligns with her household decision-making process. (Photo: Nima Chodon /CIMMYT)
Storytelling through household decision-making scenarios
In traditional rural societies, survey-based data collection might not be the best way to evaluate women’s agency, as the deeply rooted cultural restrictions might not allow them to talk openly about sensitive issues, like their relationship with a spouse. This study uses an innovative storytelling approach to data collection: using vignettes, farmers are given short stories to relate to their household circumstances. Stories are also easier to remember and help build a connection with the characters quickly.
The vignettes approach was first applied in the context of smallholder maize production in Kenya under the AGG project. According to Rachel Voss, the leader of the Kenyan study, âUsing vignettes to explore decision-making in both East Africa and South Asia allows us to learn and compare across these regions and across crops. Gender relations in Indian wheat and Kenyan maize production might look similar in some ways, but very different in other ways, and our research and programming will need to respond to those differences.â
In this study, five vignettes with fictitious husband and wife characters are presented to participants to represent the different ways production and consumption decisions are made in the household. These vignettes describe how they engage in key decisions like seed procurement, labor hired, and harvest used for consumption or sale. With guidance from evaluators, respondents identify which scenario best aligns with the decision-making process in their household.
Researchers feel this qualitative data, gathered through a storytelling approach, could guide the reach of gender interventions in a more effective way. Gartaula and the team explained that the participants can build connections to a character in the story without biases, expressing their experiences in household decision-making through vignettes. They also observed that sometimes what the participant shared is the opposite of their assumption of women being excluded from decisions.
Rethinking gender roles
Traditional gender roles are deeply entrenched in the region. In the farming communities of rural Bihar, one might assume that who does what in wheat-rice cultivation is obvious, and it has been well studied in the past. However, investigating the stereotypes around gender to understand practices within households is an innovative aspect of this study.
For example, landless couple Pappu Paswan and Kamini Devi of village Kamtaul in Darbhanga district have been cultivating wheat on leased farm plots for many years. Devi is engaged in every aspect of decision-making. “We cultivate in leased plots of different sizes, spread across, requiring more effort and time in attending to them. We discuss additional labor during harvest and if there is money enough to pay them,” said Devi pointing her finger at the vignette illustrating ‘cooperation’ in household decision-making. They produce enough for their consumption, but when possible, “I advise my husband to sell some for income,” she added.
Despite contributing to decisions jointly with Pappu when it comes to farm labor and household finances, Devi has little or no knowledge of seed varieties and access. Her husband informs that it was UP262 (wheat seed variety) they have been cultivating for the last two years.
In Rishikesh Ram’s household, land ownership and livelihood specialization were factors in decision-making. He owns the land and makes all farming decisions, including how much will be saved for consumption at home. His wife, Kiran Devi, a nurse at the village primary health center, is hardly involved in any farming work. “As the income from her job contributes to expenses at home, decisions about loans or payment for labors on the farm are joint decisions,” Ram said.
“In these two households of the diverse decision-making process, different approaches to messaging and relevant extension services must be explored to address the issues of exclusion, access, and knowledge gaps in these households,” Gartaula observed.
Bridging the gender gap in agri-food systems
With the feminization of agriculture in the region, women’s contribution to agricultural production is likely to increase. Policy and research interventions must recognize this growing population and support their full economic and social contributions as cultivators, entrepreneurs, and laborers. However, whether women’s growing role in wheat production leads to increased decision-making authority and empowerment is still unknown. But hope is that AGG-supported gender research in South Asia and East Africa will help guide actions on gender and social inclusion in agri-food systems and support cross-learning between the regions.
A climate change hotspot region that features both small-scale and intensive farming, South Asia epitomizes the crushing pressure on land and water resources from global agriculture to feed a populous, warming world. Continuous irrigated rice and wheat cropping across northern India, for example, is depleting and degrading soils, draining a major aquifer, and producing a steady draft of greenhouse gases.
Through decades-long Asian and global partnerships, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) has helped to study and promote resource-conserving, climate-smart solutions for South Asian agriculture. Innovations include more precise and efficient use of water and fertilizer, as well as conservation agriculture, which blends reduced or zero-tillage, use of crop residues or mulches as soil covers, and more diverse intercrops and rotations. Partners are recently exploring regenerative agriculture approaches â a suite of integrated farming and grazing practices to rebuild the organic matter and biodiversity of soils.
Along with their environmental benefits, these practices can significantly reduce farm expenses and maintain or boost crop yields. Their widespread adoption depends in part on enlightened policies and dedicated promotion and testing that directly involves farmers. We highlight below promising findings and policy directions from a collection of recent scientific studies by CIMMYT and partners.
Getting down in the dirt
A recent scientific review examines the potential of a suite of improved practices â reduced or zero-tillage with residue management, use of organic manure, the balanced and integrated application of plant nutrients, land levelling, and precise water and pest control â to capture and hold carbon in soils on smallholder farms in South Asia. Results show a potential 36% increase in organic carbon in upper soil layers, amounting to some 18 tons of carbon per hectare of land and, across crops and environments, potentially cutting methane emissions by 12%. Policies and programs are needed to encourage farmers to adopt such practices.
Another study on soil quality in Indiaâs extensive breadbasket region found that conservation agriculture practices raised per-hectare wheat yields by nearly half a ton and soil quality indexes nearly a third, over those for conventional practices, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60%.
Ten years of research in the Indo-Gangetic Plains involving rice-wheat-mungbean or maize-wheat-mungbean rotations with flooded versus subsoil drip irrigation showed an absence of earthworms â major contributors to soil health â in soils under farmersâ typical practices. However, large earthworm populations were present and active under climate-smart practices, leading to improved soil carbon sequestration, soil quality, and the availability of nutrients for plants.
The field of farmer Ram Shubagh Chaudhary, Pokhar Binda village, Maharajganj district, Uttar Pradesh, India, who has been testing zero tillage to sow wheat directly into the unplowed paddies and leaving crop residues, after rice harvest. Chaudhary is one of many farmer-partners in the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), led by CIMMYT. (Photo: P. Kosina/CIMMYT)
Rebooting marginal farms by design
Using the FarmDESIGN model to assess the realities of small-scale, marginal farmers in northwestern India (about 67% of the population) and redesign their current practices to boost farm profits, soil organic matter, and nutritional yields while reducing pesticide use, an international team of agricultural scientists demonstrated that integrating innovative cropping systems could help to improve farm performance and household livelihoods.
More than 19 gigatons of groundwater is extracted each year in northern India, much of this to flood the regionâs puddled, transplanted rice crops. A recent experiment calibrated and validated the HYDRUS-2D model to simulate water dynamics for puddled rice and for rice sown in non-flooded soil using zero-tillage and watered with sub-surface drip irrigation. It was found that the yield of rice grown using the conservation agriculture practices and sub-surface drip irrigation was comparable to that of puddled, transplanted rice but required only half the irrigation water. Sub-surface drip irrigation also curtailed water losses from evapotranspiration and deep drainage, meaning this innovation coupled with conservation agriculture offers an ecologically viable alternative for sustainable rice production.
Given that yield gains through use of conservation agriculture in northern India are widespread but generally low, a nine-year study of rice-wheat cropping in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains applying the Environmental Policy Climate (EPIC) model, in this case combining data from long-term experiments with regionally gridded crop modeling, documented the need to tailor conservation agriculture flexibly to local circumstances, while building farmersâ capacity to test and adapt suitable conservation agriculture practices. The study found that rice-wheat productivity could increase as much as 38% under conservation agriculture, with optimal management.
Key partner organizations in this research include the following: Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR); Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI), Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research (IIFSR), Agriculture University, Kota; CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar; Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana; Sri Karan Narendra Agriculture University, Jobner, Rajasthan; the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA); the Trust for Advancement of Agricultural Sciences, Cornell University; Damanhour University, Damanhour, Egypt; UM6P, Ben Guerir, Morocco; the University of Aberdeen; the University of California, Davis; Wageningen University & Research; and IFDC.
Generous funding for the work cited comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The CGIAR Research Programs on Wheat Agri-Food Systems (WHEAT) and Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), supported by CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements), The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and USAID.
Cover photo: A shortage of farm workers is driving the serious consideration by farmers and policymakers to replace traditional, labor-intensive puddled rice cropping (shown here), which leads to sizable methane emissions and profligate use of irrigation water, with the practice of growing rice in non-flooded soils, using conservation agriculture and drip irrigation practices. (Photo: P. Wall/CIMMYT)
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The Nitrogen-Efficient Wheat Production Systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plains through Biological Nitrification Inhibition (BNI) Technology project aims to raise awareness of the benefits of new nitrogen-efficient wheat production systems among stakeholders in India.
By introducing technologies that maintain crop yield and quality, even with a reduced amount of nitrogen fertilizer, this project will also lessen the footprint of food production systems and combat environmental degradation.
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MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase) diagnostics is a new innovative approach for fungal crop pathogen diagnostics developed by Diane Saundersâs team at the John Innes Centre.
MARPLE is the first operational system in the world using nanopore sequencing for rapid diagnostics and surveillance of complex fungal pathogens in situ. Generating results in 48 hours of field sampling, this new digital diagnostic strategy is leading revolutionary changes in plant disease diagnostics. Rapid strain level diagnostics are essential to quickly find new emergent strains and guide appropriate control measures.
Through this project, CIMMYT will:
Deploy and scale MARPLE to priority geographies and diseases as part of the Current and Emerging Threats to Crops Innovation Lab led by Penn State University / PlantVillage and funded by USAID’s Feed the Future.
Build national partner capacity for advanced disease diagnostics. We will focus geographically on Ethiopia, Kenya and Nepal for deployment of wheat stripe and stem rust diagnostics, with possible expansion to Bangladesh and Zambia (wheat blast).
Integrate this new in-country diagnostic capacity with recently developed disease forecasting models and early warning systems. Already functional for wheat stripe rust, the project plans to expand MARPLE to incorporate wheat stem rust and wheat blast.
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The Bangladesh Integrated Pest Management Activity (IPMA) project aims to strengthen the capacity of agricultural stakeholders in Bangladesh by controlling and preventing the spread of current and emerging threats to ensure more efficient, profitable, and environmentally safe agricultural production and productivity.
Objectives
Increase the availability and affordability of integrated pest management measures for the prevention and spread of current and emerging threats
Strengthen the capacity of Bangladesh agricultural stakeholders, such as academia, financial institutions, government, judiciary, media, civil society, the private sector, and value chain actors, to implement integrated pest management measures
Enhance the adoption of integrated pest management by smallholder farmers to increase agricultural production and productivity, while reducing environmental hazards caused by indiscriminate use of pesticides
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The Managing Wheat Blast in Bangladesh: Identification and Introgression of Wheat Blast Resistance for Rapid Varietal Development and Dissemination project aims to characterize novel sources of wheat blast resistance, identification, and molecular mapping of resistance loci/gene(s) and their introgression into varietal development pipelines for rapid dissemination of resistant varieties in Bangladesh.
Objectives
Validate the effects of genes Rmg1, Rmg8 and RmgGR119 in field experiments
Identify novel wheat blast resistant sources and generating the corresponding genetic materials for investigating the resistance Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL)/genes
Monitor the adoption of resistant varieties BARI Gom 33 and WMRI Gom 3 by women and men farmers to learn the drivers and obstacles that are involved in the process, to inform the design of a farmer-preferred product profile, and factors in impact pathway
Build the capacity of the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute (BWMRI) to operate major infrastructure in Jashore and Dinajpur at the individual and institutional levels
Enhance collaboration between Bangladesh and other countries showing interest on wheat blast
Train young wheat researchers and breeders in Jashore Precision Phenotyping Platform (PPP)
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The Transforming Smallholder Food Systems in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (Rupantar) project aims to define the processes and practices (technical options, scaling interventions, policy settings and implementation) that can be applied to achieve sustainable, efficient, diversified food systems at scale in the Eastern Gangetic Plains of Bangladesh, India and Nepal.
Home to 450 million people, this region has the world’s highest concentration of rural poverty and strong dependence on agriculture for food and livelihoods. Productivity remains low and diversification is limited due to poorly developed markets, sparse agricultural knowledge and service networks, inadequate development of available water resources, and low adoption of improved, sustainable production practices.
Rupantar builds on existing work and partnership networks to link research outputs and development goals through the demonstration of inclusive diversification pathways, definition of processes for scaling to the millions of smallholder farmers in the region, and generating a better understanding of the policies that support diversification.
Research objectives
Defining the processes and practices (technical options, scaling interventions, policy settings and implementation) that can be applied to achieve sustainable, efficient, diversified food systems at scale in the Eastern Gangetic Plains.
Understanding the context for diversification in the Eastern Gangetic Plains.
Defining and implementing diversification pathways using collaborative and inclusive approaches.
Deepening understanding of the trade-offs and synergies associated with diversification pathways.
Engaging and communicating with change-makers to ensure outputs are used and integrated into independent programs.
Project outcomes
Demonstrated pathways for equitable and sustainable diversified food systems in the EGP.
Improved evidence-based policies for planning and development programs that promote diversification.
Self-sustaining diversification pathways that are owned by local partners and promoted without ongoing project support.
