Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) have been established to help the hundreds of smallholder farmers in India who are unable to gain cost-prohibitive certifications for organic farming. These systems allow access to a fair and transparent market system and grant farmers a direct stake holding in the supply chain of clean...

Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is highly susceptible to climate change and natural hazards, particularly to flood and drought conditions which seriously affect the country’s agricultural production. Although gradually declining in terms of its contribution to GDP in recent years, agriculture continues to play a major role in Lao...

After men migrate for work, women of Mousuni Island in the Sundarbans in West Bengal have to struggle for survival, losing land and livelihood to floods and erosion. In Mousuni Island, salinity ingress has rendered agricultural land uncultivable for years. Tidal flooding that occurs twice a month makes it difficult for...

In September 2014 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) convened the International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition. This was followed in 2015 by three regional meetings in Brazil, Senegal and Thailand. These meetings brought together stakeholders from academia, policy and civil society to...

About 10 years ago, people in the small village of Gajoldoba on India’s stretch of the trans-boundary Teesta river started noticing significant changes in their environment. Their fields weren’t yielding the same number of crops. The water level in the wells was dropping. And the fish – once so abundant that...

Held for the first time in India, the 2017 ICT4D Conference: From Innovation to Impact will bring together public, private and civil society organizations from across the humanitarian and international development community to not only discuss the latest trends in digital inclusion but the wider use of data to support achievement of...

Growing crops is a challenge in the hilly terrain of Assam-India. To counter this, Sloping Agriculture and Land Technology (SALT) has been introduced as an alternative farming method to the farmers in place of jhum.  Farmers are trained on - A-frame or making the contour line by using the A-frame;...

Swift Actions to Safeguarding Livelihoods from Potential Intrusion of H7n9 Virus

While India was home to more than 100,000 rice varieties only 50 years ago, today more than 80% of the area dedicated to grow rice is planted with hybrid varities. Thanks to the efforts of about 1,400 farmers in the Koraput region (Odisha state), traditional varieties of "desi dhaan", as they...

ECTAD’s work in the Asia-Pacific region mainly focuses on emerging pandemic threats like H7N9 

Research shows that in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) climate variability already influences water availability, ecosystem services, and agricultural production. According to downscaled climate projections, the risks of climate-induced hazards such as floods, landslides, and droughts are projected to increase significantly by 2050. To an increasing degree, rural women in...

The present study reviews recent trends in rural finance and investment in general, and in the agricultural sector in particular, within the Asian region. The analysis of these trends aims to offer a critical perspective on some of the main constraints to achieving more inclusive rural financial systems in developing...

While there has been an unprecedented achievement in poverty reduction in the last three decades, eradicating extreme poverty and halving poverty by 2030 are still two of our greatest challenges. Today, about 767 million people continue to live in extreme poverty. Roughly, two thirds of the extreme poor live in...

Hle Gu, Myanmar – Saw Htoo Baw is a young farmer from Tha Bite Kone village, Hle Gu Township in Myanmar. In 2015, the Agricultural Farmer Federation of Myanmar (AFFM) visited his area and met with him. Saw Htoo Baw expressed his concern about the increasing use of synthetic and chemical...

With grafting, a young shoot from a preferred mango variety is attached to a seedling. The seedling will develop the root and base of the tree. This is called the rootstock. The young shoot that is grafted onto the rootstock is called the scion. This will develop into the canopy....

BBC 100 Women names 100 influential and inspirational women around the world every year. In 2017, we're challenging them to tackle four of the biggest problems facing women today - the glass ceiling, female illiteracy, harassment in public spaces and sexism in sport. With your help, they'll be coming up with real-life...

Those pineapples that still seem exotic on a super market shelf anywhere beyond the equator, are not just gorgeous to look at and luscious to eat or drink but this seemingly omnipresent tropical produce requires a careful and lengthy process of cultivation. In the Pacific island of Vanuatu, where pineapple production...

Climate change poses an alarming threat to food systems and food security in the Pacific islands, warned leaders of nine small island developing states (SIDS), representatives of regional development bodies, New Zealand and Australia at a meeting chaired by FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva today. The meeting took place ahead...

Climate change is one of the most important challenges to sustainable development in the Northern mountainous region of Vietnam. IK is also used in cultivation techniques in extreme climatic conditions. With cultivation conditions are mainly sloping land, many traditional techniques have been applied to limit soil erosion due to heavy rainfalls...

Those responsible for producing, processing and overseeing the food we eat must take more collaborative and decisive action if the Asia-Pacific region is to achieve the zero hunger target of the Sustainable Development Goals by the 2030 deadline, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and partners warned on the...