Food Systems and Poverty Reduction IGERT

The Food System and Poverty Reduction IGERT provides competitively selected Cornell PhD students with the conceptual and methodological tools necessary for understanding the structure and dynamics of complex food systems that perpetuate extreme rural poverty. The two year traineeship augments the students’ core disciplinary training during the first two years of their doctoral program. Program faculty will select a cohort of 5-7 students each year for the next four years (2010-2013). Students are funded by the program only for their two year traineeship. Funding includes a $30,000 stipend, fully paid fees and tuition, health insurance and $10,000 in research funding to spend the final half year of IGERT at one of the program’s research sites in East Africa (Ethiopia or Kenya). Funding is restricted to U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been admitted into a doctoral program at Cornell.

Afghanistan Initiative

CIIFAD's involvement in Afghanistan began with a request by Senator Clinton's office to join the New York Campaign for a Green Afghanistan. Since the initial meetings, a CIIFAD-led agenda, involving both faculty and graduate students (several of whom have already visited and carried out research in Afghanistan), has been developed with the following priority areas: Horticulture (apples, grapes and vegetables and other crops), market/business, water resources/irrigation, agriculture, livestock, institutional capacity (extension, university partnerships) women's issues, health and nutrition. In Afghanistan, CIIFAD's current initiatives include: 1) an applied research-development project in Sherabad, outside of Mazar-i-Sharif, 2) capacity-building efforts at Kabul and Balkh Universities, 3) a faculty exchange initiative through the Borlaug Fellows Program and 4) an agroforestry project funded by USAID in collaboration with Global Partnership for Afghanistan (GPFA).[more....]
Contacts: Alice Pell, CIIFAD Director and Professor of Animal Science

African Food Security and Natural Resource Management

The African Food Security and Natural Resources Management (AFSNRM) Program is a CIIFAD initiative launched in 2000 in collaboration with the Institute for African Development at Cornell. This thematic, interdisciplinary program which has an initial geographic focus on eastern and southern Africa, aims to advance interdisciplinary research, training and outreach integrating the biology of multispecies, agrosilvopastoral systems with the economics of farmer behavior as influenced by market and nonmarket institutions and the broader policy environment. One of the primary current projects of AFSNRM is development of the CLASSES (Crop, Livestock and Soils in Smallholder Economic Systems) model, a systems dynamics approach to integrated stochastic, dynamic modeling of these complex adaptive systems (-see Dar es Salaam workshop details). This site contains summaries of several projects that exist within the AFSNRM program. [more....]
Contacts: Christopher Barrett, Professor, Applied Economics and Management
Alice Pell, Professor of Animal Science

Biocomplexity Research Project

“Homeostasis and Degradation in Fragile Tropical Ecosystems” is an on-going research project involving faculty and students from several departments at Cornell University and scientists from the World Centre for Agroforestry (ICRAF) and Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI). It examines the interplay between Kenyan smallholder farmers and their natural environment in highland regions of Central and Western Kenya, focusing on the socioeconomic and biophysical factors contributing to soil fertility depletion, which is increasingly acknowledged to be tightly linked to declining food production and increasing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the complex interrelationships among these factors is a necessary first step towards developing effective strategies and policies to sustain sub-Saharan Africa’s natural resource base and to ensure sustainable livelihoods for its people. The project has been funded by the National Science Foundation’s Biocomplexity in the Environment program on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems with addtional support from the USAID BASIS CRSP project on Rural Markets, Natural Capital and Dynamic Poverty Traps in East Africa. The Rockefeller Foundation is providing key financial support for many of the Kenyan doctoral students involved in the project.
Contacts: Alice Pell, Professor of Animal Science and
Christopher Barrett, Professor, Applied Economics and Management

Conservation Farming in the Tropical Uplands

Much of CIIFAD's research and outreach in the Philippines is undertaken through membership in Conservation Farming in the Tropical Uplands (CFTU), a consortium of organizations that cooperate to increase understanding of the processes and consequences of land use changes so that upland ecosystems can be stabilized and regenerated. Through this network, which CIIFAD helped to develop in the 1990's, Cornell faculty, staff and students engage in a variety of efforts to improve the longterm viability of upland farming communities and their increasingly stressed environments. Recently, a Community-based Watershed Management Support Project was implemented by partner organizations of the CFTU Network. The overall goal of the project, funded by the ALO/USAID Higher Education Partnership for Development Program and USDA/FAS, is to support local government and community-led watershed mangement initiative in the Philippines Visayas region by mobilizing expertise from a diverse set of partner organizations for collaborative research human capacity development outreach.
Contact: Terry Tucker, CIIFAD Associate Director

Cornell / Bahir Dar MPS Degree Program

CIIFAD and Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia have collaborated on developing a joint program for a Master’s of Professional Studies degree in International Agriculture and Rural Development with a specialization in Integrated Watershed Management. The degree is conferred by Cornell University (CU), with all coursework and examinations undertaken at Bahir Dar University (BDU), Ethiopia. [more...]
Contact: Tammo Steenhuis, Professor of Biological and Environmental Engineering

Emerging Markets

Established in 2001 in collaboration with CIIFAD, the Emerging Markets Program has created a stage for academics scholars and leading practitioners that encourages discussions and bridges the exchange of information and knowledge of emerging market economies. CIIFAD worked with EMP for several years to develop its programs in Southern Africa. The Emerging Markets Program (EMP) is on its way to becoming a leading international program in emerging markets research and education by bringing together leading practitioners and academics. [more...]
Contact: Ralph D. Christy, Professor of Emerging Markets (AEM)

Rice-Wheat Systems

Nearly one-fifth of the world’s population depends on the rice-wheat cropping system for its staple food. Cornell faculty and students are cooperating with the Rice-Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, established by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), together with the national agricultural research systems of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan to identify and overcome constraints to crop production and increase the nutrient output of the cropping system to better meet human nutritional needs. Since 1997, the Rice-Wheat Systems initiative has had major support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under its Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) on Soil Management.
Contacts: John Duxbury/Julie Lauren

SANREM in Zambia

CIIFAD is collaborating with the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the WCS project, Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), on a project called "Developing a Participatory Socio-economic Model for Food Security, Improved Rural Livelihods, Watershed Management and Biodiversity Conservation in Southern Africa." This effort is supported by the SANREM-CRSP (through Virginia Tech) and USAID.

Unsustainable agricultural and natural resource management practices and unsound economic strategies contribute significantly to food insecurity, limitations in livelihood opportunities, and diminished biodiversity throughout southern Africa. In Zambia, a market-driven approach called “Community Markets for Conservation” (COMACO) is being developed to improve biodiversity conservation via explicit linkages to improving food security and livelihoods. This community-owned enterprise implements sustainable agricultural practices at the level of individual farms using extension support, marketing, and pricing strategies organized around COMACO's regional trading centers to increase small stakeholder profits. Preliminary data show that these market incentives are sufficient both to foster sustainable agricultural practices and to increase wildlife populations, making future game-based economic opportunities possible. Due to its preliminary successes, COMACO has been invited to expand into Malawi and possibly Mozambique. Through broad stakeholder consultations, a multi-disciplinary team has identified key research issues regarding soil, crop, food, veterinary, and social sciences that are needed to optimize this model. Targeted research and the training of host country nationals will inject the new technologies and generate the critical knowledge needed to scale-up the COMACO approach within Zambia and across southern Africa to improve food security, rural livelihoods, and biodiversity conservation.

Contacts:
Alex Travis, Asst. Professor. of Reproductive Biology, CU College of Veterinary Medicine
Alice Pell, CIIFAD Director and Professor of Animal Sciences

System of Rice Intensification

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) gained the attention of CIIFAD in the mid-1990's when Tefy Saina, an NGO in Madagascar, demonstrated high yields with management techniques that required less water and seeds as well as fewer purchased inputs than conventional rice production practices. Spearheaded by Norman Uphoff, the former CIIFAD director, the SRI Group at Cornell facilitates research, global market development and information sharing through conference/workshop support and presentations, maintenance of a global SRI website, and facilitation of two listservs anchoring a robust community of practice that includes researchers and practitioners in over 25 countries.
Contact: Norman Uphoff, International Professor
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

West Africa Water Initiative

The West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI) is supported by an alliance including CIIFAD, several NGOs, donor orgnaizations, foundations, universities, and a private sector industry association. WAWI works with communities and governments in Ghana, Mali, and Niger
1) to increase the access to sustainable, safe water and environmental sanitation for poor and vulnerable communities in rural and peri-urban settings,
2) to reduce the prevalence of water-borne and sanitation-related diseases, particularly trachoma, guinea worm and diarrheal diseases through the promotion of personal hygiene and environmental sanitation practices,
3) to ensure ecologically, financially, and socially sustainable management of water quantity and quality, and,
4) to foster a new model of partnership and institutional synergy to ensure technical excellence, programmatic innovation, and long-term financial, social and environmental sustainability in water resources management that may be replicable in other parts of the world. [more on CIIFAD's WAWI pariticipation ...]
Contact: Alice Pell or Norman Uphoff