Executive Summary
Globally, 870 million people are food insecure, and climate change is crippling the interconnected water and energy resources that are essential to grow more food. Solutions to increase harvests must address this food-energy-water nexus; however, previous efforts have focused on only one component.
To effect change, holistic, local solutions are urgently needed, or food insecurity will surge, decimating impoverished populations. To meet this need, our multinational university and NGO partners collaborate with vulnerable communities in Ethiopia and Nepal, implementing a threefold food-energy-water solution: one comprising technology—and policy-based—interventions; community-driven capacity building; and experiential STEM education.
Our low-cost, multisectoral approach includes on-farm implementation of horticultural, water reuse, and renewable energy technologies, and decision-support systems that inform policy frameworks. Our solution increases yields using less water and renewable energy; improves diets and public health; strengthens community-driven empowerment efforts; and can be expanded globally, building climate resilience and sustaining food security for all.
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Accomplishments
Over the past year, despite limitations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, University and NGO partners in the US, Israel, Ethiopia, and Nepal have continued with project-related research, education, outreach, and evaluation activities. Our partners at CultivAid have expanded operations in the Amhara and Tigray Regions of Ethiopia, established an agricultural school in Dodoma, Tanzania and are developing new programs in Kenya and Uganda. Collectively, these activities effectively scale our work from Ethiopia to East Africa, with a local and international staff of agronomists and engineers. In collaboration with our partners at the Sanskriti Farms & Research Center and Kathmandu University in Nepal, we have submitted six smaller grants and are awaiting funding decisions to establish additional demonstration sites and train-the-trainer programs. In the coming year, we are hopeful that the pandemic will subside, enabling partners, located across four continents, to engage with one another in-person.
