Blog entries filtered by: Southern Africa, West Africa, Agroecology

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and HarvestChoice are now working together to apply innovative, “bio-economic” approaches to improve the food security of poor people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Together, our organizations will merge biological, environmental and economic tools to track global food pests and better target strategic investments to improve global food security. 

Mapping the global extent of soil constraints to crop growth plays an important role in developing strategies for agricultural production, environmental protection, and sustainable development at regional and global scales. The most widely used dataset is the Soil Fertility Capability Classification System (FCC) developed by Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the Tropical Agriculture Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The spatial team broke new ground first in negotiating access to many previously unavailable national poverty maps (based on national poverty lines) and then, while acknowledging significant conceptual and methodological issues remain, constructing the first sub-national poverty map of the developing world...