Soybean Innovation Lab June 2018 Newsletter
We've got a lot of great stuff for you in the June Newsletter!
SIL's June 2018 Newsletter features the following articles:
- Did You Miss the Webinar this Morning? Access the Recording! - The Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) hosted a webinar entitled “The Economics and Nutrition of Soy in School Lunch: Evidence from the Field,” on Tuesday June 12th. The event discussed SIL’s investigations into the nutritional value and financial cost of adding soy to school lunches. In this webinar, SIL researchers and partners discussed its field research findings and their implications for improving school lunches and other institutional feeding programs around the globe with soy protein.
- New Report Released on Complementary Food for Africa - SIL researchers Dr. Juan Andrade (University of Illinois) and Dr. Francis Amagloh (University for Development Studies, Ghana) released the final report from their Early Childhood Nutrition Study conducted in northern Ghana. The report, entitled “Community-Level Adaptability and Feasibility Assessments of Soy-Containing Complementary Food Blends by Women and Children in Rural Ghana,” details SIL’s work towards developing and scaling soy-fortified complementary foods.
- Public-Private Partnerships are Critical to the Mission of the Soybean Innovation Lab - Public-private partnerships (PPP) serve as a key structural component of SIL’s research-for-development (R4D) strategy. To date, SIL engages in 55 different public-partnerships across 15 countries. These partnerships serve multiple essential roles to assure SIL’s research is appropriate and scalable. The private sector increasingly shoulders more of the load in bringing key technologies to farmers and other target recipients as public research and extension dollars continue to decline. Working hand in hand, SIL matches its research expertise and deep technical knowledge of soybean systems with private sector partners who interpret market forces, maintain the correct incentives to meet market demand and have critical networks of customers and extension providers.
- Pan-African Soybean Variety Trials Accelerate in Malawi: Irrigated Winter Trials Underway - The goal of the Pan-African Soybean Variety Trial program is to increase the number of high-yielding soybean varieties available to producers by evaluating existing commercial soybean varieties, sourced from across the globe, in a formal, transparent and third party managed testing platform. SIL and its partners also expanded the trial program to include a winter trial site in Chipata, Zambia, near the Malawian border, with private sector partners at the Good Nature Agro seed company. The winter trials show a commitment by both private and public sector partners to speed up the timeline for getting new, high-yielding soybean varieties to farmers, and leverage the Pan-African Soybean Variety Trial program to do so.
- SIL In the News! - SIL's recent events and research have been covered in a number of publications and forums. Check out links to coverage of our work.
- Soybean Innovation Lab Scaling Up: Soy Food Bazaars - Through our collaborations with partners across Africa, SIL is working to scale up the technologies and innovations that will help make soy production more profitable for smallholder farmers. This month, we are featuring SIL’s Soy Food Bazaars! SIL works internationally to highlight the adaptability, acceptability and appropriateness of soy integration into local cuisines. SIL's Soy Food Bazaars bring together industry partners including soy food producers, soy processors, nutritionists, advocacy groups and government officials to highlight the role soy can play in improving the nutritional profile of African dishes and foods.
- Collaborator Corner: Steven Boahen with IITA Mozambique - SIL is launching a new series for our monthly newsletters – the Collaborator Corner! Each month a new collaborator will be featured who is helping to develop innovations and technologies to improve soybean production and utilization in Sub-Saharan Africa. This month, we are featuring Dr. Steven Boahen, a Systems Agronomist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nampula, Mozambique and a researcher in tropical soybean production in Sub-Saharan Africa. His research focuses on the development of improved crop management strategies for legume-based cropping systems.