Navigating the food crises: insights from AgriFoSe2030 Projects – reports from East Africa and Southeast Asia

This report includes AgriFoSe2030 reports from Kenya, Uganda, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines. Project teams from East Africa and Southeast Asia contributed chapters on how their projects are responding to the food crises challenges and showcase how their interventions are contributing to more resilient agri-food systems and improved food security. The shared themes across the regions include climate change, with consequent droughts and floods; the COVID-19 pandemic, with the disruption of mobility and markets; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to increased costs of agricultural supplies and transportation and, ultimately, higher food prices.

In the face of these challenges, the AgriFoSe2030 researchers list many key actions that could be taken to combat the current food crisis and build more-resilient food systems, including:

• supporting the use of local knowledge by, for example, promoting locally available foods and the planting of climate-resilient crops
• facilitating the organization of smallholder farmers to voice concerns and interests and to improve participation in critical decision-making and policymaking processes
• improving communication among farmers, extensionists, value-chain actors, and local governments on how to improve conditions for increased food production and value addition to local crops and food sources
• supporting knowledge services and extension programmes, for improved agricultural practices that build pathways for sustainable intensification
  connecting smallholders to value addition opportunities, improving their access to agricultural supplies (better seeds, fertilizers, etc.) and credit, and facilitating diversification of their market channels through e-commerce platforms and social media.

These seven perspectives of stress and solutions were launched in April 2023.