Category: Transformative investments

Capacities for Change, GFAR blog, Transformative investments

India Wants to Double Farmers’ Incomes – and Tackle Climate Change. Is Technology the Answer to This Double Bind?

GFAR

Forty years since India gained independence, what has really changed for the farmers of today? Farmers incomes are still too low, India needs to at least double farmers’ income. During this crucial post-independence period, agriculture contributed 45% of the country’s GDP, employing the majority of Indian workers. After an impressive increase in agricultural production in… Continue reading India Wants to Double Farmers’ Incomes – and Tackle Climate Change. Is Technology the Answer to This Double Bind?

Accountability for actions, GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Don’t repeat history with the same development mistakes

GFAR

Santayana’s famous line “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it”, makes more sense each year as we see programs and investments repeat common errors of past decades. With the support of a thoughtful client that operates food processing plants around the globe (McCain Foods) we began a brief distillation of the… Continue reading Don’t repeat history with the same development mistakes

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Too difficult, too disruptive and too slow? Innovative approaches to common challenges in conducting humanitarian impact evaluations

GFAR

Over 200 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance across the world today.  In 2017, the UN-coordinated appeals reported a shortfall of 41 per cent, despite receiving a record amount of funding. As the demands on these limited funds increase, there is a concurrent increase in the need for high-quality evidence on the… Continue reading Too difficult, too disruptive and too slow? Innovative approaches to common challenges in conducting humanitarian impact evaluations

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Five new insights on how agriculture can help reduce poverty

GFAR

The view that a productive agriculture is critical for employment creation and poverty reduction is now widely shared within the development community. Yet, this has not always been the case. In the runup to the 2008 world food price crisis, many development practitioners, government officials, and economists doubted whether agriculture could still play this role,… Continue reading Five new insights on how agriculture can help reduce poverty

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Learning power lessons: verifying the viability of impact evaluations

GFAR

Learning from one’s past mistakes is a sign of maturity. Given that metric, 3ie is growing up. We now require pilot research before funding most full impact evaluation studies. Our pilot studies requirement was developed to address a number of issues, including assessing whether there is sufficient intervention uptake, identifying or verifying whether the expected… Continue reading Learning power lessons: verifying the viability of impact evaluations

GFAR blog, Research in society, Transformative investments

G7 can tackle five priorities with one investment: agricultural research

GFAR

This week the representatives of the world’s most advanced economies grapple with complex challenges at the G7 summit in Canada. Smart investments need to be made to solve the five key issues addressed at the summit and the smartest investment is in agricultural research, writes Marco Ferroni. The G7 summit tops European leaders’ agendas this week.… Continue reading G7 can tackle five priorities with one investment: agricultural research

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Achieving the SDGs and Climate Resiliency in the Barind Tract: First Steps Towards a Multi-Sector Strategy

GFAR

Workshop participants in Bogra, Bangladesh come together to formulate a multi-stakeholder platform with the potential to establish the Barind Tract as a global leader in practical, integrated strategies for achieving the SDGs. From December 3rd to 5th, 2017, EcoAgriculture Partners led a Landscape Leadership Workshop, Transforming Barind Agriculture: Achieving SDGs and Climate Resilience through Water-Centric… Continue reading Achieving the SDGs and Climate Resiliency in the Barind Tract: First Steps Towards a Multi-Sector Strategy

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

New tool will give communities a LIFT accessing finance for integrated landscape management

GFAR

Lack of creativity is not among the barriers to investment in integrated landscape management, test of new Landscape Investment and Finance Tool in the Philippines shows. Investment ideas were sprouting quickly from the stakeholders of the Cagayan do Oro landscape (CDO) in the Philippines. Participants proposed, “What if we went for wind power? What if… Continue reading New tool will give communities a LIFT accessing finance for integrated landscape management

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Modeling SDG impacts in Ghana’s Atewa landscape under different management scenarios

GFAR

A stakeholder workshop reviewed future scenarios for the Atewa Range landscape, and formulated next steps for achieving the outcomes in the “Living Landscape” scenario. A Contested Landscape Everyone agrees that the Atewa Landscape is enormously valuable, but that’s where the consensus ends. There are a wide range of ideas about how the landscape’s ecological and… Continue reading Modeling SDG impacts in Ghana’s Atewa landscape under different management scenarios

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

IUCN Netherlands and EcoAgriculture Partners debut the Landscape Investment and Finance Toolkit (LIFT)

GFAR

Toolkit uses participatory process designed to help landscapes connect their plans to achieve the SDGs with the finance and investment they need. Finance plays a critical role in implementing the diverse investments required for a sustainable landscape. There has been a considerable uptick in analysis, programs and investors designed to support sustainable land management. However, most… Continue reading IUCN Netherlands and EcoAgriculture Partners debut the Landscape Investment and Finance Toolkit (LIFT)

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Webinar Wrap-Up: Effective Tools for Understanding, Managing and Accelerating Impact

GFAR

In a recent GFAR webinar, the Committee on Sustainability Assessment's (COSA) teamed up with GFAR and the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) to “Brace for Impact”: together they examined the question of how to design effective measurement tools for the understanding, management and acceleration of development impacts. The webinar was a Collective Action supported by GFAR… Continue reading Webinar Wrap-Up: Effective Tools for Understanding, Managing and Accelerating Impact

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

SMART Indicators for Smarter Decision Making

GFAR

When setting up a sustainability assessment system, no step is more critical for success than defining good indicators to measure. The COSA library of indicators for smallholder agricultural sustainability is crafted with the following best practices in mind to ensure our sustainability measurement framework is practical, globally consistent, accurate, and useful throughout the supply chain.… Continue reading SMART Indicators for Smarter Decision Making

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

The Power of Performance Monitoring

GFAR

For several years, the paradigm in development has been moving towards ensuring a future that is as sustainable as possible against a whole range of qualitative measures. GDP should count, but so should people’s wellbeing, for example. But when we look at the life of individual projects and the people involved in them, what does… Continue reading The Power of Performance Monitoring

Foresight for better futures, GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Spurring Sustainability through Data-Driven Needs Assessment

GFAR

In development, implementing targeted and responsive programs is crucial to achieving impact. The importance of creating effective programs cannot be understated for agricultural extension programs that work with some of the estimated 1.5 billion smallholders—many of whom are vulnerable to climate change, volatile markets, and conflict—who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. At the Committee… Continue reading Spurring Sustainability through Data-Driven Needs Assessment

GFAR blog, Partnerships for impact, Transformative investments

The Shifting State of Sustainability: Can the private sector really deliver a public good?

GFAR

The development community, with some notable exceptions, is waking up to the absurdity of measuring only their inputs and outputs like the number of farmers trained or the number of hectares certified as “farmed sustainably”.  In many cases, missing is the measurement that matters most: what positive (or negative) difference did their efforts make for the… Continue reading The Shifting State of Sustainability: Can the private sector really deliver a public good?

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Food Insecurity Metrics Now in Sync

GFAR

"If you can’t measure, you can’t manage" -Peter Drucker That is why metrics are important for the government or any institution, and development partners in addressing food insecurity, malnutrition, hunger, poverty. According to FAO, after a prolonged decline since 1990, the number of undernourished people has increased to 815 million in 2016, from 777 million… Continue reading Food Insecurity Metrics Now in Sync

Transformative investments

Join our next GFAR Collective Action Webinar on Farmers’ Rights

Peter Casier

GFAR partners CGIAR, GODAN (Global Open Data Initiative for Agriculture and Nutrition) and Asociación Andes, through a GFAR Collective Action, are pleased to invite you to: Our webinar: “Farmers’ Rights: How Complementarity between Researchers and Farmers Impact the Conservation of Genetic Diversity, Food Security and Livelihoods of the Poor” Date: 19 September 2017 Time: 15h00… Continue reading Join our next GFAR Collective Action Webinar on Farmers’ Rights

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

A Great End for a New Beginning

GFAR

In March 2016, six young entrepreneurs received exciting news. They had been selected from over 428 proposals posted on the GFAR blog as outstanding young people with innovative ideas, and would join the first group of the GFAR Youth Agripreneurs Pilot Project (YAP). The YAP project was developed by GFAR in response to a renewed… Continue reading A Great End for a New Beginning

GFAR blog, Transformative investments

Native fruits fuel rural development in Brazil

GFAR

Wild and local fruits, such as umbu (Spondias tuberosa), passionfruit and guava, are fuelling the growth of a prosperous cooperative led by women in a remote area of north-eastern Brazil. More than a decade ago, family farmers in the heart of the semi-arid Sertão region came together to set up the Family Agribusiness Cooperative in… Continue reading Native fruits fuel rural development in Brazil

Accountability for actions, Capacities for Change, Foresight for better futures, GFAR blog, Partnerships for impact, Research in society, Transformative investments

Designing the Future of GFAR: Common Values and Commitment Required

GFAR

What better way to show the commitment of a group of individuals to a cause than to tell their story with their own pictures and words? Let’s start at the beginning… “On a sunny Tuesday morning in June, we (members of the GFAR Steering Committee) gathered on an agricultural cooperative on the outskirts of Rome.… Continue reading Designing the Future of GFAR: Common Values and Commitment Required