Knowledge Portal

In order to inform gender targeting of rural finance policy, this paper by IFPRI investigates which financial products best improve farmers’ productivity, resilience, and welfare, and whether benefits affect men and women equally. Using a randomized field experiment in Senegal and Burkina Faso, the authors compare male and female farmers who are offered index-based agricultural insurance with those who are offered a variety of savings instruments. »

This research (PDF) initiated by the Rural Finance working group of NpM, coordinated by ICCO Terrafina Microfinance and carried out in cooperation with AgriProFocus and the Wageningen UR, aimed to investigated the bottlenecks that exist to finance smallholder farmers. The research provides insight into how food production systems work and how they can be strengthened with »

This article by The East African provides a civil-society perspective on climate smart agriculture (CSA) and questions its current practices in East Africa. The article argues that widespread use of fertilisers and other chemicals does not necessarily guarantee increased productivity neither does it ensure that smallholder farmers benefit. »

In this publication (PDF) by the Center for International Forestry Research (Cifor), scientists argue that people in Mali use trade as a medium to adapt their way of life in the face of climate change and other forms of stress. This study highlights the importance of considering the social construction of livestock market systems and marketing behaviours as adaptive strategies of livestock producers to multiple changes »

The RUAF Urban Agriculture Magazine No 29 (PDF) on City Region Food Systems addresses the growing attention for policy and practice approaches that focus on food issues from a city-regional perspective, taking into account possible contributions from urban and periurban agriculture and strengthening of urban-rural relations. »

In this blog, Lawrence Haddad highlights the draw out messages about women and gender from the Global Nutrition Report. He highlights that improvements in nutrition are important to achieve gender equality and to empower all women and girls. Improvements in women’s nutritional status indicators, especially anemia rates in women of reproductive age, seem slow. Recommendations »