Happy New Year and thanks for your continued interest in PIM!
This issue covers the final quarter of 2019. One of the big changes that happened as we entered 2020 was the transition of the CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research, hosted by PIM from January 2017 to December 2019, to the new CGIAR GENDER Platform hosted by ILRI. It’s been an honor and a great experience to host the Platform in its previous stage, and I would like to recognize the excellent work of Rhiannon Pyburn, the Platform Coordinator in 2017-2019, and of her KIT-based team. I am also grateful to the Platform’s Advisory Committee, which included gender research coordinators from across CGIAR, as well as to the entire CGIAR gender research community for contributing time and resources toward making the 2017-2019 Platform a success. Among the highlights of the Platform are three scientific and capacity development conferences, including a very successful Seeds of Change conference in Canberra last year; coordination of two collaborative research studies (on gender dynamics in seed systems and feminization of agriculture); and stewardship of a forthcoming synthesis of the CGIAR work on gender and agriculture, aquaculture, and natural resource management. A seminar to present some of the findings of that synthesis took place on October 30 at IFPRI (see blog and video-recording). To learn more about the Platform's work in the past 3 years, read this reflections blog by Rhiannon Pyburn and check an overview brochure.
Continued efforts toward synthesizing research supported by PIM included the IFPRI/Oxford University Press book Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa: Beyond Stylized Facts, the chapter Toward Gender Equality: A Critical Assessment of Evidence on Social Safety Net Programs in Africa, and the event “Future Extension: Innovations and Evidence” co-organized by PIM and the Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project at IFPRI in November.
At the 46th Session of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome in October, PIM scientists participated in side events on reducing post-harvest losses in agriculture and closing the hunger gap through improved seed access. On October 30, PIM jointly with CIFOR, ICRAF, and the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry co-hosted an interactive session "Restoring forests, restoring communities" as part of the Global Landscape Forum in Accra, Ghana.
Also in October, PIM’s Flagship 3 on Inclusive and Efficient Value Chains, jointly with Wageningen University and Research , organized a workshop on Methods for Diagnosing and Evaluating Agricultural Value Chains. This workshop is the second annual meeting of the CGIAR Community of Practice in value chains research, first convened in 2018.
We were happy to connect face-to-face with members of the PIM’s extended team during our annual meeting from October 28-30 in Washington, focused on sharing scientific results and methods and continuing to build communities of practice around topics of interest to social scientists in CGIAR.
Finally, on December 18, jointly with the Food Security Portal and IFPRI we launched the Global Foresight for Food and Agriculture tool exploring impacts of alternative investment scenarios on agricultural production, productivity, and hunger for the period 2010-2050.
Speaking of the upcoming events, don't miss the launch of the book "Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa: Beyond Stylized Facts" on January 21 and the next PIM Webinar on climate change and agriculture in Central America and the Andean region on January 29 (you can join both events virtually)!
Read more here!
Frank Place PIM Director
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