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Effective agricultural interventions could aid efforts to find sustainable solutions for ending hunger. In this collection, we present evidence-based recommendations from the Ceres2030 team on where to prioritize spending on interventions to achieve zero hunger by 2030.
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Policymakers urgently need ideas on ways to end hunger. But a global review of the literature finds that most researchers have had the wrong priorities.
Ending hunger is a major objective of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. A cross-journal collection of articles takes a systematic look at what we might already know about achieving it.
The volume of work contributing substantial understanding and new evidence about sustainability challenges is growing. Making the most of it is imperative for interventions to be really effective.
COVID-19 is straining African food security, but also presents an opportunity for change.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 2 encompasses targets ranging from the eradication of hunger and malnutrition to ensuring a sustainable food production system. Conflicts between these goals gives rise to gaps in our understanding that hamper attempts at evidence-based policy-making.
Evidence syntheses produced from the scientific literature are important tools for policymakers. Producing such evidence syntheses can be highly time- and labour-consuming but machine learning models can help as already demonstrated in the health and medical sciences. This Perspective describes a machine learning-based framework specifically designed to support evidence syntheses in the area of agricultural research, for tackling the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2: zero hunger by 2030.
Climate-resilient crops are essential for farmers to adapt to climate change. This scoping review identifies extension services and outreach as the most important factors for their adoption by small-scale producers in low- and middle-income countries.
Livestock support the livelihoods of a billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and improved feeding could increase productivity. However, this scoping review highlights serious gaps in evidence around the adoption of new feeding practices.
To promote sustainable agriculture, small-scale producers must be included in the transformation of food systems. This scoping review finds that non-contract interactions provide producers with services such as credit, information and logistics.
Reducing postharvest crop losses is vital to sustainably increase agricultural productivity. This analysis reveals a need for systematic assessment of postharvest loss reduction interventions across the value chain, targeting stakeholders beyond farmers, and for a more diverse range of food crops, to shape future policy decisions.
A geospatial estimate of water scarcity in middle- to low-income countries finds that less than 37% of small-scale farms have irrigation. However, there exist considerable gaps in evidence for most commonly proposed, on-farm interventions.
A more sustainable agriculture is needed to address global food security and environmental degradation. This scoping review surveys the incentives for farmers to adopt sustainable practices benefiting their farms, the environment or both.
Associations, cooperatives, women’s groups and other farmers’ organizations are generally considered beneficial to smallholders, but more evidence on their broader impact is needed. This scoping review, focused on sub-Saharan Africa and India, draws on the findings of 239 studies to elicit the contributions of farmers’ organizations to production, income, empowerment, food security and the environment.
Youth engagement in agriculture in low- and middle-income countries offers social and economic opportunities, and supports food security. Agriculture skills training is key for youth engagement, yet programmes are not well evaluated for effectiveness in employment outcomes.
