On December 4–5, 2024, the Observatory of Public Policies for Agrifood Systems (OPSAa) held a hemispheric workshop on “The Transition to a New Generation of Agrifood Systems Policies” at the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) headquarters in Costa…

Price volatility affects all members of the agricultural value chain, but smallholder farmers in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to adverse prices. In general, price hedging mechanisms for smallholder farmers are limited and, in many cases, not used. With appropriate…

In a recent visit to Latur, a district in Maharashtra, India, we gained an understanding of the marketing channels and infrastructure available for local soybean producers. In India, Latur is a significant agricultural hub for soybean cultivation, with the second-highest…

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.…

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…

As demand for high-value, diverse agricultural products rises throughout the developing world, smallholder farmers face pressure to either commercialize or exit the farm sector altogether. Farmers that can scale up their operations have a significant opportunity to improve their livelihoods.…

Dr. Leslie Verteramo Chiu is a research economist at TCI. His research area includes risk management for smallholder farmers, food-value chains, and agricultural finance, all under the context of developing countries. At TCI, he analyzes the effects of interventions on…