Only tortillas and beans

by Diana Carolina Lopera | Aug 1, 2018

Every day we hear expressions like these in rural households in Guatemala. Families must make decisions on how to distribute food within their household. Not only on the food produced on their own farms – that often is scarce due to constant droughts affecting crops –...

CPT, a timely and reliable climate tool for Honduran farmers

by Ángela María Morales | Mar 22, 2018

Faced with new weather patterns and climate variability, farmers in Honduras need to prepare for future weather conditions and climate change that could, potentially, disrupt current farming practices. CIAT, through its Decision and Policy Analysis (DAPA) Research...

How can we measure the health of soil simply and cheaply?

by José Luis Urrea | Mar 16, 2018

Authors: Ashly Arévalo, José Luis Urrea, Jacobo Arango and Juan A. Cardoso from CIAT Tropical Forages Program; Claire Horrocks and Jennifer Dungait from Rothamsted Research. Soil is more than just a  base to grow plants in: it is a living system where minerals,...

Let’s not blame it on the cow!

by José Luis Urrea | Feb 6, 2018

An opportunity to reduce emissions by improving livestock feeding is investigated in Nicaragua Livestock is frequently associated with negative environmental impacts such as deforestation for cattle grazing, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and greenhouse gas...

Cupping Fair Trade Coffee Impact

by Natalia Gutiérrez | Feb 5, 2018

by Natalia Gutiérrez & Martha Del Río| Feb 5, 2018   After 3 years of the impact evaluation project “Measuring and assessing impacts of Fair Trade for All on farmers, farmworkers, and the overall Fair Trade market system” supported by the Ford Foundation and...

CIAT and CATIE join forces to strengthen agricultural development in Central America

by Sylvia Pineda | Feb 5, 2018

Seven different themes were identified by CIAT and CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) as possible areas of joint work in the Central American region, among which the following stand out: germplasm, cacao, coffee, sustainable livestock...