IDRC believes that poverty alleviation, food security, and environmental sustainability go hand in hand. IDRC Photo: Jason Taylor
For nearly 40 years, IDRC has supported researchers from the developing world in their search to grow food and feed their cities and rural communities.
• In Rosario, Argentina, a project financed by IDRC has helped 10,000 families establish 790 community gardens that feed more than 40,000 people.
• In Colombo, Sri Lanka, a coalition of municipal authorities, community organizations, and researchers working with McGill University’s School of Architecture are upgrading a crowded slum to accommodate urban agriculture and provide poor families with nutritious food and much needed income.
• In South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi, IDRC-supported research on the links between food policy, the burden of disease, and increases in HIV/AIDS prevalence is informing policy in the health, education, and agricultural sectors.
Learn more about how IDRC is turning research into action.
Escape From a Toxic "Catch-22" IDRC-supported research is turning the tide against the use of highly toxic pesticides that have increased potato yields at the expense of people’s health in the poverty-stricken highlands of Ecuador.
Feeding the Sustainable City Thanks to pioneering research initially led by IDRC, many Southern cities are now re-examining their attitude to urban agriculture. The challenge they face is how to control agricultural activity so that it can benefit the urban farmers and the rest of the city’s population.
Feature articles
A Multipronged Approach to Ensuring Food Security IDRC believes that poverty alleviation, food security, and environmental sustainability go hand in hand. It also believes that effectively addressing these interlinked challenges requires working actively with the main actors, from farmers to researchers to government officials.
Food Security — Seeds of Threat, Seeds of Solutions Over the past few decades, plant breeders have developed new high-yielding cereal varieties. This very success, however, could lead to a gradual loss of plant species, threatening the world’s future food security. Only the help of small farmers in remote areas of the world who have benefited little if at all from the advances in plant breeding can overcome this threat.
HIV/AIDS and Food Insecurity: Double Jeopardy In 1989, while working at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Stuart Gillespie spent six months examining the connection between HIV/AIDS and food security. It quickly became clear to him that the epidemic’s long-term impacts could have a devastating effect on hunger throughout the developing world.
From Green to Evergreen: Updating the Food Revolution Hunger can be eradicated “in my lifetime,” says the man known as the father of the Green Revolution in India. M.S. Swaminathan speaks about his values, his achievements, and his ambitions.
The Zimbabwe Exiles Forum: Campaigning for Freedom in the Homeland Once the "breadbasket of Africa," Zimbabwe today is wracked by hyperinflation and periodic shortages of foreign exchange, fuel, and food. The Zimbabwe Exiles Forum is working for political change in its homeland.
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