Innovations in Agriculture: Tackling Food Security Challenges Big and Small
From low-cost solar irrigation pumps that enable farmers to make use of groundwater and increase resilience in Nepal's Terrai region to cost-effective fish food based on indigenous, locally produced and sustainable ingredients, the agriculture community is always seeking creative solutions to food security challenges faced across the world.
This October on Agrilinks, we are excited to feature innovations in agriculture. We’ll be showcasing innovations from the Global Innovation Exchange, a platform enabling innovators, researchers, and funders to scale development projects.
NovFeed’s fish feed innovation, for example, tackles the price challenge that fish farmers face. In Tanzania, fish feed often accounts for 70 percent of a farmer’s costs. Most feed is mixed onsite in small batches from local crops, which is often insufficient nutritionally, resulting in a lower yield of fish and lower sales. NovFeed’s solution is indigenous, locally produced, and sustainable fish feed with ingredients like macrophytes and maggots, as opposed to soybean meal commonly found in fish feed. NovFeed has partnered with both Chemonics and UNLEASH and has started implementation in Tanzania.
Along with projects like NovFeed’s cost-effective fish food, 2,074 other agriculture innovations exist on the Global Innovation Exchange, with India contributing the largest number of innovations and Kenya coming a close second.
This month, we’ll take a closer look at some of these innovations, the unique challenge they set out to solve, what stage of implementation they’re at, and where they are implemented.
We want to hear from our Agrilinks community as well on what agriculture innovations you’ve been a part of. We look forward to seeing solutions to food security challenges big and small.