HarvestChoice

(Spam Twitter)-HarvestChoice is a research initiative, which generates information to help guide strategic investments in agriculture aimed at improving the well‐being of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia through more productive and profitable farming. The initiative is coordinated by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the University of Minnesota and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Purpose of the Initiative

Farming entails a great deal of risk and uncertainties. Weather varies, price fluctuates, soil degrades, pest damages, and, even climate changes. Farmers everywhere must cope with these uncertainties. Throughout the history of agriculture, many options, such as fertilizer application, irrigation, improved varieties, and farming machinery have been developed to help manage the risks, increase yields, increase efficiency, and, increasingly, promote sustainability of the overall system.

Types of Information provided

The use of spatially‐referenced data and spatially‐explicit analysis to generate spatially‐specific knowledge is a cornerstone of the HarvestChoice initiative. A fundamental characteristic of agriculture (particularly subsistence agriculture) is the close coupling of its performance with prevailing biophysical conditions, conditions that can vary widely over space and time. HarvestChoice relies on its own and its partners' spatial datasets to provide new information on:

the location of the poor and undernourished in relation to major crop production systems

the dependence of both urban and rural poor on specific crops and crop products

the incidence and severity of major production constraints such as drought and disease in focus crops and locations

the potential benefits to the poor from alleviating such constraints

an inventory and characterization of existing and prospective technologies that might help address

an economic evaluation of the potential crop production, consumption, price, and trade, as well as the likely hunger and income consequences of a range of technology scenarios, and

the potential commercialization challenges that promising technology options might face.

Types of spatial data

There are five major, intertwined geographies of direct relevance to the work of HarvestChoice;

the spatial distribution and performance of agricultural production systems,

the spatial distribution and severity of production constraints (e.g., drought, low fertility soils, pests and diseases),

spatial variation in the potential efficacy of on‐farm interventions (e.g., improved seeds, mulching, supplemental irrigation, fertilizer use, biological control of pests),

spatial variation in access to input and output markets (e.g. time of travel to markets, farmgate prices of fertilizer and agricultural products),

spatial variation in national and local policies and regulations (that influence, for example, marketing decisions, the quality of infrastructure and services, the generation of and access to, and uptake of new technology).

Spatial products

HarvestChoice makes available spatially (and socio‐economically) explicit estimates of the potential welfare benefits of a range of interventions (e.g., on‐farm, market and market access, and national policy).

These maps (alongside tables, graphs, and text) provide information of direct relevance to agricultural development investors and policymakers. They do this by detailing the potential scale and distribution of economic benefits – including the identification of locations and social groups whose welfare might be impacted negatively. These outputs will, however, be supplemented by a larger collection of novel spatial data products that represent key, intermediate factors.