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IFAD is helping young people in agriculture evaluate the COVID-19 crisis and build their resilience for the future. In this episode, we hear from nine different voices on this important topic.

“I joined this project because I believe food can really change the world.”

Small-scale farmers face multiple challenges in Cambodia - with limited access to credit and vulnerability to climate change.

What comes to mind when you hear the words “sustainable gastronomy”? Some of us focus just on the cuisine and think about delicious – and perhaps costly – dishes.

It’s not often that we have the opportunity to see how rural people see themselves. International organizations like ours tell their stories armed with cameras, notebooks and laptops – and, of course, our own point of view, which is important to compare with theirs.

With the significant decline in money sent home by migrants due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,IFAD today called for governments across the world to declare remittance service providers essential businesses in times of crisis.

Four years ago, the residents of Chiquicha were just gathering the first fruits of an irrigation project.

Migrants are essential workers; they contribute to the economy of the places they go and, through remittances, to their communities back home.

"Tejaswini" means “a woman who is radiant”. And the one million Indian women who are part of the Tejaswini Rural Women’s Empowerment Programme, are indeed radiant.

In April, the World Bank projected a sharp decline of about 20 per cent in global remittances as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown.

Rethinking food systems for healthy diets and improved nutrition.

Canada announced today that it will be the first country to pledge funds to a new facility set up by the IFAD to help prevent a food crisis in some of the world’s poorest and most marginalized rural communities in the wake of COVID-19.

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the loss of millions of jobs in the developed and developing world.

In a world living with Covid-19, it is clear that supply chains and logistics should be simple and easy to manage. And that’s what several Indian states are doing.

When exports of dried pineapple resumed at the beginning of May, after the lockdown, Jean Damascène Hakuzimana, President of the Tuzamurane farmers’ cooperative, was relieved.

Agricultural extension services play a fundamental role in building producers’ capacities to maintain good agricultural practices.

World Environment Day is a day set aside to raise awareness about environmental issues and encourage protective action. This year’s theme is “Time for Nature.”

Since the COVID-19 virus outbreak, much information and misinformation has been circulated about wet markets and an international rallying cry has been made for wet markets to be better regulated or even closed down.

The IFAD-supported Artisanal Fisheries Promotion Project (ProPESCA) was implemented to improve the livelihoods of artisanal fishers and their communities living along Mozambique’s coastline.

Despite the lush greenery that surrounds Ngarpongtang village in Thangrong, Bhutan, until recently, it was impossible to grow vegetables there. “I used to have to go to other villages to exchange pinewood for vegetables,” says Wangdi, a 54-year-old farmer. “We couldn’t get vegetables to grow here.”

Rural development projects financed and supported by IFAD have helped to reduce rural poverty and increase rural entrepreneurship in Madagascar, according to a new report presented today.

Resilience has become the talk of the town in the development community.

Extreme weather events, such as droughts, storms and floods, are putting pressure on the ecosystems that farmers depend on, as are gradual processes such as rising sea levels and melting glaciers.

To take advantage of the potential of AI, IFAD employed machine learning techniques to extract insights from across IFAD’s entire investment portfolio.

In 2014, the people of Sierra Leone faced a seemingly unstoppable virus and a catastrophic outbreak, leading to strict precautionary measures, quarantine and fear.

One emerging lesson from the pandemic is that those who are already vulnerable are likely to be the most severely impacted.

El Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA), el organismo especializado de las Naciones Unidas para el desarrollo rural, ha validado su estrategia de actuación hasta 2025 en México. En ella se fija como principal objetivo promover la inclusión económica activa de la población rural para luchar contra la pobreza.

In most of Africa, people are more likely to die from starvation caused by the economic fallout from the pandemic than from COVID-19 itself.

Zainab Semgalawe, lead regional technical specialist, talks about rural institutions

Sauli Hurri, senior regional technical specialist, talks about rural finance, markets and value chains

Michael Hamp, lead technical specialist talks about rural finance, markets and value chains

Oliver Page, regional specialist, talks about climate change and environment

Marie-Aude Even, senior regional technical specialist in agronomy at IFAD, talks about crops development.

Mattia Prayer Galletti, lead technical specialist at IFAD , talks about indigenous peoples.

Sara Mbago-Bhunu, IFAD’s director for the Eastern and Southern Africa Division, is among twenty-two renowned experts from across the Global South who are joining a major new Commission on Sustainable Agriculture Intensification (CoSAI).

Putso Nyathi, senior regional technical specialist in agronomy at IFAD for the east and southern Africa region, talks about agronomy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how vulnerable agricultural value chains are to external shocks – and how much more we need to do to build the sector’s resilience.

Tom Mwangi Anyonge, lead technical specialist at IFAD , talks about youth, rural development and institutions.

Jonathan Agwe, lead regional technical specialist talks about rural finance, markets and enterprises

Development encompasses a wide range of actions that enables people, communities and nations to thrive even after projects have ended.

Online briefing with experts from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and UN Goodwill Ambassadors for IFAD Idris and Sabrina Dhowre Elba on food security in times of COVID-19.

It has been really inspiring to receive updates from the field over the past two months illustrating how IFAD-supported projects are continuing to deliver.

Last week, the China Grain Reserve Group announced its intention to purchase 22 million tonnes of imported grain during 2020. Should China worry about food security?

In rural Pakistan, women are important partners in agricultural development. They perform a variety of crucial tasks, including weeding and tilling land, planting seeds, collecting farmyard manure and harvesting. They are also responsible for cleaning, drying and storing grains.

In this month’s programme, we explore how to maintain a balance between battling COVID-19 and promoting farming and biodiversity.

This year’s theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity is “Our Solutions are in Nature.”

In north-eastern Brazil, as in so many other places, rural women's work is often invisible. But a revolution is taking place – and IFAD is a part of it.

Bees support countless ecosystems, bolster biodiversity, anchor food chains and help ensure humans’ agricultural security. Not bad for insects no bigger than a paperclip.

The COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted agricultural and food systems around the world, along with the livelihoods and food security of the poorest rural communities – precisely the groups of people whom IFAD concentrates its efforts on.

Without initially knowing it, last year more than 13,000 young women in Colombia began to prepare for the current economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How can we enhance local capacity to respond to this emergency in an agile and inclusive manner?

Africa has so far escaped the worst health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the continent looks like it could be the worst hit.

Colombia is a country rich in natural resources and diverse communities. But in small towns and across the countryside, many families remain poor.

El FIDA destinará USD 554 millones de dólares para sostener la agricultura familiar en América Latina y el Caribe durante la crisis de la COVID-19 y para contribuir a su recuperación y modernización una vez el impacto de la pandemia haya pasado.

The story of the Afro-Colombian community has always been one of resilience. Historically, this group has faced the country’s highest rates of poverty and food insecurity, and has lacked access to many basic services.

In 2016, the IFAD-funded YARIP project had partnered with the Qujing Zhanyi District Women’s Federation to transform traditional embroidery art into a new source of income and employment. Qujing, located in the ethnically diverse Yunnan province, is home to the Yi, an ethnic group with a population of about 300,000.

Victoria Muteti, a 44-year old farmer living in Kenya’s Makueni County, has many reasons to be satisfied. In January 2020, she was able to harvest more than 2,500 kilograms of sorghum from her 2.5-acre farm – far more than the 1,000 kg she harvested in 2019.

We are in the middle of a shift in how development is financed. Impact investing is on the rise.

With most of the world sheltering in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ILO estimates that about 2.7 billion people are currently affected by workplace closures.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 820 million people were living in hunger. Tens of millions more will join them if we do not take the right actions, and quickly.

We’ve been asking our Recipes for Change chefs to tell us how they are adapting to life during the coronavirus pandemic – and to share a delicious recipe that can be made with basic cupboard ingredients.

The April morning sun beats down on Kontagora, a lively market town in central Nigeria. Generators hum as milling machines husk the brown bran from rice grains, revealing glistening white kernels. COVID-19 is on everybody’s mind. But the thriving Tudun Wada South Rice Processors women’s cooperative is open for business.

Past experience tells us that quick, tailored support is required to ensure that the impacts of our projects are protected from the effects of the COVID-19 crisis.

We begin this month’s programme with an update on IFAD's operations and on investing in food during the time of coronavirus.

After many years of sustained annual reductions in poverty and hunger across the Asia-Pacific region, the COVID-19 global pandemic is threatening a massive reversal of these gains and driving Asian countries into recession.

IFAD’s Recipes for Change chefs are adjusting to life in a world contending with COVID-19 – and as a part of that, they’re sharing some excellent recipes that you can make with ingredients you’ve already got in your home cupboard.

In a continuation of its efforts to help small-scale farmers and micro-, small and medium size rural enterprises in developing countries create jobs and increase incomes, IFAD announced today it will make an investment of US$9 million (€8.4 million) into the Agri-Business Capital (ABC) Fund, a blended capital impact fund.

On this day 50 years ago – the first Earth Day had just taken place – and a global movement was born.

With half of the planet’s population locked down, the global economy brought to a halt and the number of cases reaching into the millions, it is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest crisis of our time.

The COVID-19 pandemic is far more than a health crisis: it is affecting societies and economies. IFPRI estimates, for example, that 140 million additional people could fall into extreme poverty this year as a result of the virus.

The tremendous progress in reducing poverty made by India over the past 25 years could now be reversed because of the unprecedented emergency facing all of us – the COVID-19 pandemic.

Along the coastline of Mozambique, fishing boats dot the clear blue waters. For the people on these boats, their daily excursions are their livelihood – in more ways than one.

This interactive map shows how our colleagues, beneficiaries, and partners have continued working, while taking steps to stay safe.

Actor, filmmaker and humanitarian Idris Elba and actress, model and activist Sabrina Dhowre Elba today launched a new global coronavirus relief fund on behalf of IFAD to prevent economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic from triggering a global hunger and food crisis.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and economic slowdown threatening the lives and livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable people, IFAD today committed US$40 million, and launched an urgent appeal for additional funds, to support farmers and rural communities to continue growing and selling food.