Agriculture
Agriculture generally plays a central role in the economies of developing countries. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of rural inhabitants in developing countries depend on agriculture in some way, with most belonging to smallholder farming households that persistently struggle with extreme weather, lack of marketing resources, lack of access to appropriate equipment and technology, and other factors.
A granular understanding of the agricultural risks faced by the developing world is needed to address food insecurity concerns. In addition, the realm of food security must be expanded to address the issues of undernourishment and malnutrition. Attention must also be given to the environmental impacts of agriculture (incl., impacts on ground water resources, and greenhouse gas emissions).
At EHAAR, we believe that a business-as-usual approach has, at best, only limited potential in addressing food security concerns. We, therefore, employ the following strategies to improve the state of agriculture and address food insecurity concerns in developing countries:
Improving access to high-quality agricultural inputs (e.g., high yielding seeds and fertilizers) and machinery;
Providing improved access to funding and support for extension and other programs;
Promoting conservation of land and ground water resources;
Developing solutions to strengthen and develop existing support networks;
Applying digital awareness tools to effectively relay information to farmers;
Providing tailored crop management prescriptions that account for key challenges (e.g., weather conditions);
Leveraging publicly available weather and disease risk models, as well as high-resolution satellite imagery;
Promoting farm mechanization;
Improving access to markets;
Enhancing supply chain infrastructure (incl., cold storage, distribution and processing) in order to minimize food waste; and,
Providing frameworks where research partners, policy makers, and key stakeholders can come together to identify limitations and opportunities.
