News

• NRI social scientists have played a major role in the recent evaluations of the CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs), the international multi-centre, multi-partner initiatives for research on key agri-food systems, commodities and global challenges. Valerie Nelson and John Morton evaluated the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Program, Ben Bennett was a team member for the Livestock Program, and Ravi Kumar for the Rice Program.  Final reports can be found here.
• An international team led by Andy Frost has published the final report of their FCDO-funded project “Understanding knowledge systems and what works to promote science technology and innovation in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda”.  The full report, a project brief and a policy brief for each country are available here.
• Ravi Kumar and colleagues have published a blog piece on “Reducing the flow of plastic to oceans in India” on the Ideas for India portal.
• Within the framework of the international partnership Ceres2030,  Tanya Stathers led an international team of researchers which systematically reviewed and mapped all the existing evidence on the types and efficacy of interventions found to reduce postharvest losses for 22 key food crops in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia for the Ceres2030 project. This has been published in Nature Sustainability (see Publications), and forms part of Nature’s Special Collection on ‘Sustainable Solutions to Ending Hunger’. An interactive database was developed to enable policy-makers to easily access the information on food loss reduction interventions and how they perform, and will be updated biannually to inform postharvest food loss reduction for achieving SDG2 and SDG12.3 in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Publications

• Picchioni, F., et al. (2020). Valorisation of natural resources and the need for economic and sustainability assessment: The case of cocoa pod husk in Indonesia. Sustainability, 12(21), 8962.
• Po, J.Y.T., Langill, J.C., Turner, S., & Michaud, J. (2020). Distilling culture into commodity? The emergent homemade alcohol trade and gendered livelihoods in upland northern Vietnam. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 21(5): 397-415.
• Stathers, T., Holcroft, D., Kitinoja, L., Mvumi, B.M., English, A., Omotilewa, O., Kocher, M., Ault, J., Torero, M. 2020. A scoping review of interventions for crop postharvest loss reduction in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Nature Sustainability, 3(10), 821-835.
• Nyabako, T., Mvumi, B.M., Stathers, T., Machekano, H., 2020. Smallholder grain postharvest management in a variable climate: Practices and perceptions of smallholder farmers and their service providers in semi-arid areas. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 1-27.
• Soubly, K., & Khatun, K. (2020). The role of middle actors on land use policy: a case study in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 1-18.