The COVID-19 pandemic brings home a point that Jane Goodall recently echoed in a stern warning to the world. In an interview, the celebrated primatologist said humanity will end if we do not change our ways, specifically how and what we eat, which has caused undue damage to forests.

Digitization throughout the entire system, consumer education, associativity in marketing, protocols for biosecurity, reduction of losses and waste from production to consumption, and the strengthening of urban and peri-urban agriculture will  make Colombia’s food system more efficient. This was one of the major conclusions that came out of the national dialog on the country’s food system in times of COVID-19, organized by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT on Friday, May 29.

COVID-19 has only further complicated the challenge of feeding growing cities across Africa and the rest of the world. Researchers are listening to vulnerable urban populations to help develop better, sustainable food system solutions.

Dr. Myles Fisher, an Emeritus of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and a groundbreaking agricultural scientist passed away on the 27th of May. He suffered a stroke, which mercifully was sudden and painless. Myles was my colleague, my mentor, and my friend and it is deeply saddening to hear of his death.

Deforestation has many drivers but one is often overlooked: food consumption in cities that increases demand for products produced on deforested land. To be successful, tropical countries’ zero-deforestation policies need to address changing urban food demands

The 2020 Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (IAAA) was awarded to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Their tools, which help farmers to increase productivity, use more sustainable practices and access markets, topped bids from international technology companies and universities with projects applied to various fields.

In an act of solidarity, seeds awarded as an incentive to smallholders are shared with other women farmers unable to purchase seed during the pandemic.

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health Research Program (A4NH) researchers from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT have been part of the Technical Working Group on Nutrition led by UNICEF and the National Institute of Nutrition in Vietnam since 2017.

Global heat stress is a growing problem that stands to impact health, livelihoods and the very food we eat. While high temperatures and heat waves can occur under normal weather conditions, with climate change they are becoming more severe, last longer and happen more frequently. In 2019, we saw wildfires blaze across different parts of the world, culminating in the devastating bushfires in Australia that raged for nearly two and half months, fueled by record-breaking temperatures and prolonged drought.

Making sure that the collections of beans, cassava, bananas, and forages remain alive, even during the quarantine, is an essential job of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT in order to preserve the world’s biodiversity and food safety. From its work sites in laboratories, greenhouses, and experimental fields in Palmira, Colombia, and at the University of Louvain, in Belgium, Mónica, Melissa, Madelyn, Ramiro, Javier, Jair, Wilmer, Vincent, and Bart tell us about their experience in which they take on with equal responsibility the preventive measures established by the health authorities of their countries and those of our own organization. Their mission during the confinement is to safeguard the patrimony of more than 150 nations of the world that have entrusted the Alliance with one of their most precious treasures, their seeds.

On a day like today, on April 9, 1920, Dr. Armando Samper Gnecco was born in Bogotá, Colombia. Years later, he would be renowned for dedicating his life to the development of agriculture in Latin America.

The Alliance of Bioversity International and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has been supporting Heifer International in their drive to adopt the Market System Development (MSD) approach as an intervention model within the organization, so far conducting four introductory training sessions.

Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, around 290 quilombolas (Afro-Brazilian communities) and small groups of people living along the river side (hereafter riverine communities) in the Oriximiná municipality, located in the state of Pará, joined a series of meetings with the purpose of validating the results of the previously applied "Social Progress Index" (SPI).

We live in an ever increasingly faster changing world. Technology, services, products, enterprises, economy, markets, social habits, competition… everything changes. That is why organizations are faced with the challenge to change in an effort to adapt to new times in order to improve their competitiveness, productivity and efficiency.

New study: Making adaptation effort actionable at scale towards a climate smart cocoa sector.Public, private and non-governmental actors can use our recommendation domains to roll-out climate adaptation interventions at scale.

Water hyacinth is an invasive weed posing a grave threat to Lake Tana. A growing problem since 2011, the dangerous aquatic weed currently covers over 197 km in seven districts of the Amhara region and continues to expand rapidly.

In April 2018, heavy rains pounded the Virunga Mountains in Rwanda with torrents of water washing down to Burera Village causing flooding and destroying property as they went along.

Farmer input is essential to tackling global challenges of climate change, rural poverty and nutrition. A new data collection tool aims to build the biggest open-access dataset of its kind for development and research

With climate change, the issues of land are becoming more important. Land conditions are vulnerable to ongoing climate change, including increased rainfall intensity, flooding, drought frequency and severity, heat stress, dry spells, wind and sea-level rise. The 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and Land notes that sustainable land management can contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation. There is rising appreciation of context-specific options, which include local and indigenous knowledge of communities on sustainable land management. As such, land users’ priorities, perceptions, experiences and knowledge in sustainable land management need more attention. Further, economic, political and social factors can create opportunities or constrain land use and management, and its contribution to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The Latin American and Caribbean region (LAC) is the main producer of fine flavor cacao in the world. The contribution of LAC to the worldwide production of cacao, currently 17%, has nearly doubled in the last decade, taking advantage of the growth of global and regional demand for cacao by consumers. Cacao buyers obtain part of their supply from LAC to diversify and ensure their supply, forecasting the growing demand for fine flavor cacao in the world market and anticipating the negative impacts of climate change, among other factors, in West Africa, where most of the conventional cacao is currently produced.

Mushimiyimana and her family are one of the more than 420,000 farming households in Rwanda who cultivate iron-biofortified bean that were developed by HarvestPlus, the Rwanda Agriculture Board, and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and first released in the country in 2012. In just a few years since then, iron bean cultivation has expanded rapidly and currently accounts for 20 percent of all beans grown in Rwanda; more than 1.8 million Rwandans, or about 15 percent of the total population, were estimated to be eating these nutritious beans—and the market continues to grow.

When Simon and Sylvia Kiruja started their farm three years ago, they never imagined it would get so big they would need a bigger plot. Their three cows used to bring them 7 litres of milk a day. Today, their 45 cows deliver more than 250 litres daily, contributing around US$1,700 monthly depending on the season, to the Kiruja’s income.

As Ethiopia approaches 105 million people, the growing demand for food is expanding agriculture into marginal, forest, and natural conservation areas. Human-induced activities include population pressure, agricultural expansion, logging, and development, which have been challenging development and conservation efforts. As cultivation and grazing expand into peripheral and conservation areas, land degradation in the form of deforestation, soil erosion, and nutrient mining as well as conflict between land uses and users accelerate the vulnerability of local farmers to climate change. Despite the environmental, social, and economic benefits of biodiversity and natural ecosystem conservation, the reality is that views that strictly exclude the human element are no longer an option.

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The wild relatives of chile peppers, pumpkins, carrots, and lettuce join a growing list of poorly conserved plant species. These ancient plants have genes that may help our food withstand the harsh climate of our future. If they don’t go extinct first Growing up in the wild makes plants tough. Wild plants evolve to survive the whims of nature and thrive in difficult conditions, including extreme climate conditions, poor soils, and pests and diseases. Their better-known descendants – the domesticated plants that are critical to a healthy diet – are often not nearly as hardy. The genes that make crop wild relatives robust have the potential to make their cultivated cousins - our food plants - better prepared for a harsh climate future. But a series of new research papers show these critical plants are imperiled.