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The term “food systems” encompasses a huge variety of activities and issues. To make sure we’re all starting from the same place, let’s focus on the fundamentals: the land, and how to treat it well.

It’s clear by now that no real progress on climate change mitigation will be achieved without the active participation of today’s top greenhouse gas emitters. In addition to transitioning their energy sectors away from carbon, actions such as making their agrifood systems more sustainable and promoting the use of natural carbon sinks could produce dramatic results in record time.

This month’s episode is all about the blue economy – the economic, social and environmental activity that revolves around marine and coastal resources – of the East and Southern Africa region. This sector offers many potential opportunities for governments, the private sector and small-scale producers, along with some challenges.

Wazo Jema is one of many youth-led small businesses that got a boost through the IFAD-funded Vijabiz programme. Although they’re on more solid ground than they were before, they’ve continued to face some challenges – and these difficulties highlight ways that future initiatives can be improved.

Germany has signalled its strong commitment to ensuring millions of rural people in some of the world’s poorest countries can adapt to the impacts of climate change, earn decent incomes and access sufficient, nutritious food by committing up to €400 million through its state-owned KfW Development Bank, in a loan agreement signed with IFAD.

IFAD's President Gilbert F. Houngbo will be in Côte d’Ivoire 21–23 November to meet with President Alassane Ouattara and other government officials for strategic discussions, as well as meeting small-scale farmers in the field. Climate change, resilience building, agricultural transformation and rural prosperity, strategic partnership and the small-scale farmers will be at the top of the agenda.

Peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests and are home to everything from orchids to orangutans – but today, these lands are in peril. A partnership between IFAD and Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry is working to set a national policy agenda that will protect peatland ecosystems.

"Before, these women were just waiting at home. Now, we are more educated. We are empowered to be more independent," says Ruperta Gagarin, a businesswoman from the Philippines.

The FIDA-MERESE project has helped farmers in the Jequetepeque and Cañete river basins become stewards of the ecosystems on which they depend.