6 Things Beans Bring to the Table
Beans might be small, but they have big potential to help poor families grow a better future.
Read MoreAcross Eastern and Southern Africa, poor farmers struggle to grow enough food to feed their families, generate income, and escape poverty. But declining soil fertility and a changing climate are eroding crop yields, while increasing threats from weeds, pests, and plant and animal diseases leave smallholder farmers vulnerable to catastrophic losses.
To find innovative, sustainable farming strategies that address these challenges, a recently initiated Feed the Future program led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture is linking poor farmers across Tanzania and Malawi with local, regional and international research partners. Through their participation in research, these farmers are helping USAID-sponsored scientists identify and integrate the multiple technologies needed to transform agricultural production in key agro-ecosystems and are dramatically reducing the time between the development of research innovations and their widespread adoption by farmers.
In the program’s first year, an initial round of pilot projects set important benchmarks in:
In addition to laying a strong foundation for ongoing participatory research efforts with local farmers, these first-year activities also built crucial partnerships between international and African research institutions, government offices, national universities, and NGOs. As the most promising technologies are taken to scale, these partnerships set the stage for local food security stakeholders to extend successful approaches across broad agro-ecological zones, where many farmers face similar constraints and opportunities.
This story from Tanzania and Malawi comes from the Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program, part of Feed the Future’s efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the Southern African systems described here, the program is active in the Ethiopian Highlands and the Sudano-Sahelian zone (within Ghana and Mali). The three regional efforts are coordinated under an overarching research design, monitoring and evaluation framework, communications strategy, and collaborative management structure.
Beans might be small, but they have big potential to help poor families grow a better future.
Read MoreJoin us this fall in celebrating the potential beans have to provide farmers with ways to improve their nutrition and increase their income – by sharing a recipe!
Read MoreOver the past five years, USDA's Agricultural Research Service has appointed a special team of agency researchers to leverage its expertise and resources in support of the Feed the Future Grain Legume Project.
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