Across a village in southern Bihar, cropping calendars collapse into a handful of critical days. Missing the planting window by even a couple of days can reduce yields enough to affect a household’s livelihood. Everyone needs the same machine at once, but most smallholders cannot afford to own a tractor or combine harvester themselves. Instead,…

Rice and wheat comprise the bulk of India’s diet, making them crucial crops for the country’s food system. However, the rice-wheat cropping system that dominates agriculture in states like Bihar damages soil quality. Rising temperatures and decreasing groundwater supplies further threaten to reduce yields, posing significant challenges for India’s food security. New research from the…

The Transforming Food Systems Forum, a new webinar series from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI), will start on Monday, September 14, with an examination of sustainable technologies for smallholder farmers. The series will feature insightful, data-driven discussions about topics relevant to Indian food systems, such as climate and sustainability and markets and…

Installing a solar-powered pump is only the beginning. What comes next—figuring out how people share it—is a more complex challenge. During my summer internship with the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI), I spent my first week visiting solar irrigation sites and the water user groups that managed them across Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar…

Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) Director Prabhu Pingali and Chandra S. Nuthalapati, a former visiting professor at TCI, co-edited a new book, “Innovative Agricultural Technologies and the Private Sector for a Hunger-Free World.” The book was published in honor of the economic historian Carl E. Pray. The fifth volume in the World Scientific…

A study supported by the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) reveals that selling directly to supermarkets yields nutritional dividends for India’s smallholder farmers. Published in the journal Agricultural Economics, the study demonstrates that farm households who sell vegetables directly to supermarkets consume significantly higher amounts of vitamin A and zinc, in addition to…

The Tata-Cornell Institute is partnering with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), CGIAR, and regional and global cohosts for the 2026 edition of the annual Delivering for Nutrition in South Asia Conference. The conference will be held December 1–3, 2026, in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Online participation is also available.   The 2026 conference theme,…

Field-based study is the cornerstone of the research agenda of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI), rooting its work in the real world and ensuring that it can be impactful for the communities involved. So, when COVID-19 spread across the globe and the world ground to a halt, Vanisha Sharma’s plans for a…

Amid India’s efforts to provide its growing populace with nutritious foods, increasing agricultural production is paramount. A new study by Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) alumnus Chanchal Pramanik identifies India’s agricultural “hotspots,” districts with high crop yields. Lessons from those hotspots can potentially help increase production in low-yield areas. In a paper published…

Women want to work. They want to step outside the house, earn an income, and feel the quiet satisfaction of being independent, of taking pride in something that is theirs. Even a small earning carries meaning: the ability to contribute to household expenses, to buy gifts for the children, to feel that one belongs to…