The COVID-19 pandemic is a major economic shock, throwing into question the resilience of the agrifood sector at this stage, particularly in developing countries where self-employed, wage and informal workers are threatened by food supply chain disruptions, limitations on movement and trade restrictions. Even before the crisis, small and medium agribusinesses were often considered to be credit-constrained and extremely vulnerable to shocks.

The new Constitution of Nepal (2015) has initiated federal, provincial, and local governments in Nepal, each bestowed with respective rights, responsibilities, power and authority. While developing the new mechanism of governance, the Constitution has given immense authority as well as responsibility to local governments, which is unprecedented and has never been experienced before in the history of Nepal. Along with the restructuring of the state, the institutional mechanism of the agriculture sector has also been restructured.

A worthy agricultural innovation system (AIS) is one that that helps an agricultural sector be productive, sustainable and resilient and facilitates reduction in poverty and malnutrition. How can an AIS be made resilient in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is a question pondered in this note. The key issue will be continued strong investment in knowledge and technology creation that underpins growth in productivity and the active pursuit of mechanisms that make agriculture more resilient to the emerging environments challenges around the world.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the Assets and Market Access Innovation Lab (AMA IL) to advance knowledge and understanding of development approaches and technologies in order to increase rural households’ ability to acquire, protect, and effectively utilize productive assets. This evaluation assessed AMA IL’s overall program performance across five themes: research quality; outreach and dissemination; policy; capacity building; program management; and future directions.

This evaluation seeks to understand the impact which certain measures of the CAP have had on reducing GHG emissions, agriculture’s vulnerability to climate change and its ability to provide adaptation and mitigation services to society. Most of the CAP measures analysed do not have climate action as their intended purpose but may have it as a secondary purpose. Some, such as those which sustain certain forms of agricultural production responsible for emissions, exist for economic, social and sometimes other environmental reasons.

The first section provides a brief overview of the key opportunities for rural women, and the key challenges that they face. The purpose of the section is to explain why it is important to address dimensions of gender equality in investments around food and nutrition security and agriculture. The second section guides the reader through the steps required to integrate gender dimensions into the design of an investment.

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, explores the working conditions of migrant women in agriculture in the EU, focusing on some case studies in Italy and Spain. In particular, it aims to examine the factors that render women vulnerable to exploitation, paying attention to gendered dynamics and power relations.

Extension and advisory services (EAS) play a key role in facilitating innovation processes, empowering marginalized groups through capacity development, and linking farmers with markets. EAS are increasingly provided by a range of actors and funded from diverse sources. With the broadened scope of EAS and the growing complexity of the system, the quantitative performance indicators used in the past (for example related to investment, staffing or productivity) are no longer adequate to assess the performance of EAS systems.

This publication is one of four CABI briefings on climate change. The key messages in this briefing are:

The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture Intensification (CoSAI) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) jointly commissioned a gap study to determine how far away innovation investment is from helping agri-food systems achieve zero hunger goals and the Paris Agreement while reducing impacts on water resources in the Global South. The results show that the world can come much closer with some well-placed investments.