After working on field-based research projects in rural India for more than five years, Anaka Aiyar’s career took a new turn when she moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in economics at the University of California. Driven by a passion for positively impacting the lives of underprivileged people, she later joined the…

This is the first in a series of blog posts exploring the experiences of farmer producer organizations (FPOs) and FPO promotion in India and Latin America. The next post will examine soy bean value chains and FPOs in Maharashtra, India. Farmer producer organizations (FPOs) are the latest iteration in the long history of small farm…

Tata-Cornell Institute (TCI) Scholar Shree Saha and her team took home the award for market readiness at the 2023 Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture Hackathon on March 20. Saha’s team developed a platform, called TransportX, that would help smallholder farmers in India bring their products to market. The app connects farmers with potential buyers, then…

Rice is perhaps the most important crop grown in India, where it accounts for roughly a third of all cultivated land. But the relatively high greenhouse gas emissions associated with rice production contribute significantly to climate change, while the disproportionate share of starchy rice in Indian diets increases the risk of non-communicable diseases. Moving away…

As it makes its journey from the farm to consumers’ plates, around a third of the total food produced in the world is lost or wasted. Reducing such waste is key to efforts to achieve sustainable food systems, but before significant progress can be made, researchers must first agree on exactly what they mean by…

At the World Sustainable Development Summit in New Delhi last week, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) organized a panel event entitled “True Value of Food: A Call to Action to Solve Climate Change and other Crises.” The discussion focused on using true cost accounting to transform the agri-food…

UPDATED JAN. 18, 2024: Nuthalapati’s term has been extended through the fall 2025 semester. Chandra S.R. Nuthalapati, a researcher from the Institute of Economic Growth in New Delhi, joined the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) as a visiting professor. Nuthalapati will be at TCI through the Fall 2023 semester. While at TCI, Nuthalapati…

It was a beautiful rainy Tuesday morning when I was greeted by the pleasant whistle of the toy train on my way to one of the most famous tea gardens in the Darjeeling district. The tea garden supervisor had told me to arrive at 7 a.m. sharp if I wanted to meet the female workers…

“They [wild animals] want the best and the most expensive tea leaves,” remarked a tea estate staffer during my visit to an estate in The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. While the purpose of my visit was to primarily understand the adoption of digital technologies in agriculture and allied sectors, the “human-animal conflict” I noticed in every…

Before planning your week, it is probably not unusual for you to check the weather forecast on your smartphone. For a farmer in a rural developing economy, however, weather news is more likely to come from the TV, radio, or social networks. Timely weather updates are critical for farmers who rely on their yields as…