Stories

In 2020, the world is seeing once again that when crisis strikes, it is the poorest and most vulnerable people who suffer the most. 

Although you won’t find the little village of Wowetta on any Internet map, it’s the centre of the universe for Priscilla Torres, a 37-year-old Wapishana woman. A very active and outspoken mother of three, Priscilla is a true community leader.

Until COVID-19 hit in March, the G-Star Youth Group’s banana processing factory was buzzing with activity.

Globally, between 200 and 500 million pastoralists manage rangelands that cover over a third of the Earth’s landmass. 

It is increasingly clear that human health and our relationship with nature are inescapably intertwined. This holds true across many dimensions of health, including the potential for the transmission of disease – just as we are seeing with the current COVID-19 pandemic. 

Fatima Amaguar came home from university with an idea. 

It is something of a paradox that, while there is broad agreement that micro-, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are an integral part of the economy in developing countries, they remain underserved.

COVID-19 is not the only health crisis threatening to devastate the population of Kiribati. Cases of diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have tripled between 2005 and 2010. 

Guadalupe Moller lives in Turco, a small community in rural western Bolivia. She’d spent most of her life in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, but four years ago she moved back to Turco, where her family’s roots are.

When exports of dried pineapple resumed at the beginning of May, after the lockdown, Jean Damascène Hakuzimana, President of the Tuzamurane farmers’ cooperative, was relieved.

Despite the lush greenery that surrounds Ngarpongtang village in Thangrong, Bhutan, until recently, it was impossible to grow vegetables there. “I used to have to go to other villages to exchange pinewood for vegetables,” says Wangdi, a 54-year-old farmer. “We couldn’t get vegetables to grow here.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how vulnerable agricultural value chains are to external shocks – and how much more we need to do to build the sector’s resilience.

In rural Pakistan, women are important partners in agricultural development. They perform a variety of crucial tasks, including weeding and tilling land, planting seeds, collecting farmyard manure and harvesting. They are also responsible for cleaning, drying and storing grains.

In north-eastern Brazil, as in so many other places, rural women's work is often invisible. But a revolution is taking place – and IFAD is a part of it.

Bees support countless ecosystems, bolster biodiversity, anchor food chains and help ensure humans’ agricultural security. Not bad for insects no bigger than a paperclip.

The COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted agricultural and food systems around the world, along with the livelihoods and food security of the poorest rural communities – precisely the groups of people whom IFAD concentrates its efforts on. 

Without initially knowing it, last year more than 13,000 young women in Colombia began to prepare for the current economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enfrentada históricamente a las tasas de  inseguridad alimentaria más altas del país, la vida de la comunidad afrocolombiana siempre ha tenido capacidad de resiliencia.

Victoria Muteti, a 44-year old farmer living in Kenya’s Makueni County, has many reasons to be satisfied. In January 2020, she was able to harvest more than 2,500 kilograms of sorghum from her 2.5-acre farm – far more than the 1,000 kg she harvested in 2019. 

We’ve been asking our Recipes for Change chefs to tell us how they are adapting to life during the coronavirus pandemic – and to share a delicious recipe that can be made with basic cupboard ingredients.