Rice is a staple food for half of the human population which is why parts of our work is focussed on i) rice diversification for sustainable production and ii) knowledge transfer of sustainable rice research into the hands of farmers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Estelle and Tom were very excited to attend the United Nations World Food Program Congress on China-Africa Rice Value Chain to learn and discuss strategies based on rice storage, processing, and nutrition to help improving food security in China and Africa.
The talk by WFP's country director of Guinea, Dr. Hyoung-Joon LIM, was particularly impressive. Dr. LIM managed to implement Zero Hunger Villages through the introduction of a new rice variety that enables higher harvesting frequencies and quantities through a solid enabling and reward strategy for farmers. To us, this strategy had everything that is currently also discussed in the scientific literature on the topic and should be highly scalable.