CGIAR Sustainable Farming Program

The Sustainable Farming Program will involve farmers and communities through co-creation principles and systems integration, prioritizing bundled agronomic, plant health and farming system solutions and socioeconomic innovations in a collaborative, integrated manner backstopped by CGIAR and partners’ expertise. By co-developing solutions, IWMI will promote agricultural transformation towards productive, resilient and sustainable farming systems. We will address key challenges in agri-food systems by fostering efficient production of nutritious foods and safeguarding the environment to create fair employment opportunities, as we simultaneously tackle climate change, soil degradation, pests, diseases and desertification.

The program will support reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by 15%, creating fair agricultural gain for two million hectares of land and providing for over five million farmers. Challenges addressed include;

• Need to increase nutritious food production by 60% to meet expanding population demands
• 20-40% reduced agricultural productivity growth because of climate change
• An agricultural environmental footprint equivalent to 1/3 of annual greenhouse emissions
• Persistent social inequities and an aging agricultural labor force
• Exclusion of youth, women, and marginalized communities in agricultural production