As countries around the world have urbanized rapidly over the past fifty years, infrastructure construction, particularly in the Global South, has struggled to keep pace. Many urban dwellers rely on sanitation systems that fail to adequately treat human waste, harming the environment and placing significant economic burdens on low-income households, who must often pay for…

A growing public health concern across Southeast Asia is groundwater contamination, specifically from heavy metals such as arsenic. Given the significant adverse health impacts, it is important from a policy perspective to determine the causes of such contamination. I am conducting research exploring a novel link between agricultural practices and groundwater arsenic contamination in India….

Agricultural soils around the world are under increasing pressure as urbanization covers once prime farmland with concrete and asphalt while intensified agricultural production degrades soil fertility. Yet even as their soils’ fertility declines, farmers around the world will be expected to feed more people than ever before as the global population grows to more than…

This blog post is part of a series exploring India’s small farm aggregation landscape using TCI’s Database for Indian Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). Part of the FPO Hub within the TCI Center of Excellence, the first-of-its-kind database brings together comprehensive data on FPOs in India. The FPO Hub and this research were made possible through…

India’s efforts to reduce hunger could negatively impact its ability to meet its climate change goals if it does not change its current food production practices, according to Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) Director Prabhu Pingali. In an interview with Mongabay India, Pingali discussed TCI’s efforts to mitigate the tradeoffs between hunger reduction…

Innovation has been the foundation of major agricultural advancements that have improved food security in India. While the 1960s saw high-yield dwarf crop varieties enter breeding research, the Green Revolution scaled up breeding for commodity crops to a whole new level, and a focus on agronomic crop management practices backed by government policies pushed Indian…

During two days of meetings on April 19 and 20, the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) brought together a host of experts to explore opportunities to lower agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in Bihar, India. The meetings were part of TCI’s Zero-Hunger, Zero-Carbon Food Systems project, which aims to develop policy options for minimizing…

Fresh fruits and vegetables are an important source of micronutrients, but access to them is limited in developing countries like India because of several factors, including food loss and waste. New research on tomato supply chains from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) at Cornell University sheds light on where and when most…

As a TCI scholar pursuing a PhD in international nutrition, Kathryn Merckel led a trial testing the potential of orange-fleshed sweet potato to improve nutritional outcomes in Uttar Pradesh, India. After graduating in 2020, Merckel now works to improve nutrition through interventions across the world as the associate director for nutrition and food systems at…

In an interview with The Times of India, Prabhu Pingali, founding director of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) at Cornell University, explained that while climate change poses a serious threat to India’s food system, timely adaptations can mitigate the worst of its effects. Asked about the vulnerability of India’s food system to…