Do you know the Year 2013 is declared by the United Nations General Assembly as “International Year of Quinoa”? How will this help impact the women in the Andes region of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia who are the main growers of this grain crop? What will be the consequences on the food security and on the local culture and practice of the indigenous Quechua? Who will benefit and who will be excluded?

Interested in movie stars, geeks, misfits and international development? If so, check out a reflection on where we are with the DAPA research area. The Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) of the CGIAR are in town, and we had the opportunity to showcase our science for impact.

CIAT now has a clearer vision of how to develop its gender strategy thanks to a recent workshop to mark International Women’s Day.
The Women and sustainable agriculture, CIAT’s impact workshop – attended by men and women from all disciplines in CIAT – was held to reflect on the Center’s work regarding its own gender research, its impact on women farmers and how its work contributes to gender equity. Organizers hope that as a result CIAT’s work and its contribution to the CGIAR’s research programs (CRPs) will be more effective.

What do woods, gender, satellite maps and nuts have in common with forests? The answer might be simple. A common agenda to keep the world’s forests forever. However, the big question is can we attain our goal towards sustainable forest governance? Around the world March 21 is celebrated as the International Forests Day. The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and partners – the Bioversity International and CIPAV – decided to share rich and diverse knowledge on woods, gender, maps, and nuts through a 90 minutes seminar.

Last week, the CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (CGIAR-CSI) took part in the international GIS conference (ESRI user conference 2012) in San Diego California. Participants from IFPRI and CIAT served information about ongoing research of geospatial scientists within the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research  (CGIAR) to visitors of the booth located in the Environmental Showcase section.
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New satellite-based scheme makes first payments to pastoralists What hits you when you get out of the truck at Ginda Village, in Northern Kenya, is the smell. Farmer Haro Sora’s land is littered with the carcasses of cattle and donkeys that have keeled over following an intense, prolonged drought. A skull here; half a ribcage
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Only dentists will be happy about this news. It looks as though climate change is going to take a bite out of chocolate production, according to a new study by scientists at CIAT.   REPOSTED FROM CIAT BLOG – 28 September 2011                          
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Guest post by Neil Palmer, crossposted from CIAT-News …or rather, different kinds of deforestation. The first of these shots shows “classic” slash-and-burn agriculture in the Peruvian Amazon. It combines a series of satellite images taken between 1990 and 2000. The coloured clusters depict recently cleared areas of vegetation (purple) and those where vegetation is re-growing
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CGIAR-CSI has a new look and a new webpage…..New logo for the CSI

The importance of adaption of agriculture to changing conditions has been depicted as the most important issue for human sustainability. Not only the IPCC, but every single author in the scientific literature depicts agriculture as one of the key sectors under the context of climate change. Throughout the world, agriculture is not only part of
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