2 March 2012
No. 1508
The next phase of the Tropical Legumes II project will focus on gender specific aspects of legume production, marketing and consumption.
Smallholder farmers to benefit from second phase of tropical legumes project With US$ 21 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Tropical Legumes II project will get a boost in implementing research-for-development initiatives to overcome productivity constraints and nonavailability and lack of access to quality seed of improved legume varieties, thereby improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and their families in 15 countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
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second phase of an agricultural research for development project aimed at improving the livelihoods of poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia has been recently agreed on. This is one of seven grants which Bill Gates announced on 23 February in Rome at the 35th Session of the Governing Council of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). This announcement, nearly US$ 200 million in grants, brings the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s total commitment to agriculture to more than $2 billion since the program began in 2006.Â
The three-year, US$ 21 million project known as Tropical Legumes II (TL II), is part of a ten-year plan which seeks to improve the livelihoods of 60 million smallholder farmers and their families in 15 countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It is also expected to bring about US$ 1.3 billion in added value to the productivity of the target crops, namely: chickpea, common bean, cowpea, groundnut, pigeonpea and soybean. Grain legumes contribute to the livelihoods, health and nutrition of more than 700 million poor people in the dryland tropics of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. to page 2 ...4