Mind the Gap - Exploring the Disparities Between Smallholder Farmer Practice and Potential
Event Information
What is the yield gap, and how does it link to smallholder farmers and poverty? Although new tools, fertilizers, and hybrid seeds are available to increase crop yields, a gap still remains between farmer practice and potential. Smallholder farmers face many challenges adopting to new technologies, so the yield gap grows wider and the path out of poverty more distant.
Please join USAID's Innovation Lab for Assets and Market Access for an engaging one-day workshop, Mind the Gap - Exploring the Disparities Between Smallholder Farmer Practice and Potential. The day will include presentations and working group sessions that delve into why average small farm yields consistently fall well below what is possible, and what research and policies will help ensure that farmers can benefit from new innovations in the best way possible.
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View additional workshop details and objectives here!
Speakers
Christopher Barrett
Cornell University
Christopher Barrett is the Deputy Dean and Dean of Academic Affairs of the College of Business, Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and an International Professor of Agriculture, all at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, as well as a Professor in the Department of Economics and a Fellow of the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, all at Cornell University. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1998 after four years on faculty at Utah State University and earning degrees from Princeton (A.B., History, 1984), Oxford (M.S., Development Economics, 1985) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (dual Ph.D., Economics and Agricultural Economics, 1994). Professor Barrett has published or in press 15 books and more than 280 journal articles or book chapters, that have collectively been cited more than 22,000 times. He has been principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on more than $30 million in extramural research grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the National Science Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and various other corporate, foundation, government agency and nongovernmental organization sponsors. He has won several university, national and international awards for teaching, research and public outreach, and is an elected Fellow of both of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and of the African Association of Agricultural Economists. He and his wife, Clara, have five children and live in Lansing, NY.
Christopher Udry
Yale University
Christopher Udry is the Henry J. Heinz, II Professor of Economics at Yale University. He is a development economist whose research focuses on rural economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. He has conducted extensive field research in West Africa on technological change in agriculture, the use of financial markets, asset accumulation and gift exchange to cope with risk, gender relations and the structure of household economies, property rights and a variety of other aspects of rural economic organization. Current research includes directing the first long-term, nationwide socioeconomic panel survey of individuals across Ghana (in collaboration with the University of Ghana); randomized evaluations of a variety of governmental and NGO-led development programs in West Africa; work on risk, information flows and agriculture in Mali, Ghana and India; and the role of psychological well-being on economic decision-making. Professor Udry spent two years as a secondary school teacher in northern Ghana, and has been a visiting scholar at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and at the University of Ghana at Legon. At Yale, Udry has directed the Economic Growth Center, chaired the Council on African Studies and served as the Chair of the Department of Economics. Udry is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has a recently received an honorary degree from the University of Ghana, providing him with cover for his customary attire.
Andrew Dillon
Michigan State University
Andrew Dillon is an assistant professor in the tenure system at Michigan State University in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. His current research focuses on technology adoption, household labor supply and education decisions, and the interrelationship of agriculture, health and nutrition. His ongoing projects are currently being implemented with government agencies, private sector firms, and NGOs in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali and Nigeria. Andrew holds a PhD in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali from 1999-2001. Much of his research program is supported by the collection of new multi-topic household survey data to which he has contributed to the design and supervision of over 30 new surveys during the past 8 years. In his free time he runs marathons.
Lauren Hendricks
Grameen Foundation
Lauren Hendricks is the Executive Vice President of Grameen Foundation. She was previously Executive Director for the Access Africa initiative at CARE, where she led the development of financial inclusion programs and innovative solutions to reach the poorest people in Africa. In this role, she partnered with banks, microfinance institutions, mobile network operators, and others in the private sector to adapt products and services to meet the needs of the poor, and to ensure that participants benefitted from new, digital financial services. Lauren also served as Director of the Economic Development Unit for CARE USA, where she provided strategic direction and technical leadership for more than 100 active microfinance and enterprise development programs in 54 countries.
Emily Hillenbrand
Pathways Program
Emily Hillenbrand is Team Leader for the Pathways Program, a flagship initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that aims to empower and increase the productivity and empowerment of 52,000 poor women smallholder farmers in more equitable agriculture systems. Initially targeting six countries (Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, Malawi, Bangladesh and India), the program aims to enhance the scale of high-quality women-responsive agriculture programming at CARE; and contribute to the global discourse that surrounds women and agriculture. Emily’s work and research focus is on integrating gender-transformative approaches to food and nutrition security programming. She joined CARE as Technical Advisor for Gender and Livelihoods, leading the gender approach and men-engage strategies for Pathways, and providing technical input and strategic guidance to a number of Food for Peace and other food and nutrition security programs in Africa and South Asia. She has expertise in leading and designing qualitative approaches and participatory processes to assess gender behavior changes at intra-household and community levels. She has co-produced several training curricula and published a number of articles and presentations related to gender and food security. She holds a MA in Women, Gender and Development from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands. She has previously worked as Regional Gender Advisor at Helen Keller International (HKI) Asia-Pacific Regional Office, and as Program Manager and Gender Technical Advisor for HKI Bangladesh.
Eric Solomonson
One Acre Fund
Eric Solomonson is the Agricultural Research Director at One Acre Fund, a social enterprise serving smallholder farmers in East Africa. He is responsible for coordinating efforts across One Acre Fund countries of operation to identify and research new agricultural technologies and agronomic practices to be taken to scale. He has been living and working in Kenya for the past five years and holds a BA in Economics from Northwestern University.
Event Registration Information
Spotlight Event
In-person Event
Ronald Reagan Building, Polaris Room
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, District of Columbia, 20004, United States