IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development [to 23 April 2016]
https://www.ifad.org/newsroom/press_release/list/tags/y2016

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21 April 2016
New country office opening signals strengthened partnership with Morocco

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20 April 2016
Italian Chef Carlo Cracco draws attention to climate change threats for small scale farmers in Cambodia

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18 April 2016
Global Science Leaders call for better policies on pulses
2016 International Conference on Pulses for Health, Nutrition and Sustainable Agriculture in Drylands opened today
April 18, 2016, Rabat, Morocco – The 2016 International Conference on Pulses for Health, Nutrition and Sustainable Agriculture in Drylands opened today in Marrakesh, Morocco, including 350 participants coming from 35 countries, alongside policy-makers, agriculture research organizations, scientists, farmers, the private sector and donors. Pulses are highly nutritious food legumes. The goal of the conference is to improve the nutritional situation of almost two billion people in sustainable environments throughout the world, and particularly in developing countries, where 800,000 people do not have access to sufficient food to meet their basic nutritional needs. This population will become even more vulnerable with climate change, droughts and heats, in particular in drylands.

The Conference schedule featured a first-of-its-kind high level discussion about enhancing policy frameworks that would enable targeted pulses research to result in producing more food with less inputs, leading to better soil health…

…Pulses, which are high in protein and form the bases of diets of millions would need an enabling policy environment to meet the current and future food and nutritional security challenges as their consumption is estimated to increase by 23% in the next 15 years.

Based on the estimated population in 2020 and 2030, and based on the last 10-year growth trend in global consumption, the demand for pulses for these two years would increase to 75.9 million tons in 2020, and 81.9 million tons in 2030, from the current level of a little over 70 million tons. The conference participants concluded that “through improved policies and investments in pulses research and technology transfer, the rising global gap between the demand and supply of pulses could be bridged.”…