Expert opinion

First article in the IYS 2015 series. Should you dig your garden or plough your fields or not? An increasing number of allotment holders and farmers have stopped tilling. It saves on hard work and soil life stays intact. But it makes things easier for fungi and weeds. »

Resilience is probably one of the most fashionable terminologies in today’s humanitarian and developmental debates. According to the OECD Development Assistance Committee, resilience means that states can better withstand environmental, political, economic and social shocks and stresses. It is about the ability of households, communities and nations to absorb and recover from shocks, whilst positively »

Agricultural development programmes have too long focused on semi-subsistence smallholders in an effort to achieve food security. This has not contributed to the African green revolution that is sorely needed to feed the future. We have to aim instead for an agricultural sector based on medium-sized, mixed family farms, argues Melle Leenstra, First Secretary for »

Income inequality is among the world’s most pressing issues, as highlighted in the recent Report of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Post-2015 Agenda. In developing countries, income inequality is synonymous with spatial disparity, which in most cases coincides with rural-urban disparities. Most food insecure, poor and vulnerable people live in rural areas. The failure »

The Amsterdam Initiative against Malnutrition (AIM) was launched in 2009 as a joint initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ICCO Cooperation, Unilever, DSM, AkzoNobel, the Wageningen University and GAIN. AIM designs innovative social business ideas and sustainable solutions to tackle malnutrition and currently manages a portfolio of nine pilot projects. What these projects »

Introduction The Amsterdam Initiative against Malnutrition (AIM) brings different stakeholders together to improve food and nutrition security through a broad portfolio of projects. These projects are executed throughout the entire food value chain with a focus on the consumer. Since 2009, AIM has grown to include 30 stakeholder-partners who explore innovative and sustainable solutions to »