Feeding a growing global population sustainably while avoiding cropland expansion and biodiversity loss remains one of the defining issues of our time. The problem is particularly acute in low-income countries, where both the quantity and nutritional quality of food are often insufficient to meet basic dietary requirements. At the same time, food systems face multiple interacting pressures, including climatic variability, demographic change, constraints on key resources such as land, fertilizer, and water, and geopolitical instability.
Agronomy lies at the center of these interconnected issues, as effective crop and soil management practices are fundamental to enhancing agricultural productivity while safeguarding natural resources. However, ensuring food security, adapting to a changing climate, and conserving biodiversity require multidisciplinary approaches, strategic investments, and careful navigation of trade-offs among competing environmental, economic, and societal objectives. Our research follows an “agronomy-at-scale” approach with a focus on:
Sustainable intensification
Generating empirical evidence of the drivers of crop yield trends and the analysis of yield gaps and resource-use efficiency in farmers' fields, with the goal of contributing to global food security and curbing cropland expansion. By combining crop models, machine learning and farmer field data, this work bridges agronomy with economics, environmental sciences, and human nutrition to guide agricultural R&D investment and identify where productivity gains are most needed and most achievable.
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Farming systems research
Examining how soil fertility management practices shape productivity, resource use efficiency, and farmer livelihoods across diverse smallholder contexts. We account for the diversity of smallholder agriculture (in farm size, soil constraints, and market access) to acknowledge that what works in one context may not work in others. Spatial targeting frameworks and ex-ante assessments further identify where interventions are likely to have the greatest impact, providing actionable guidance for farmers, researchers, and policymakers.
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Our work is triangulated through multiple data sources (farm surveys, field trials, legacy datasets, soil and climate data, and crop model outputs) and conducted in a multidisciplinary and international setting together with CGIAR research centers, universities, national research institutes and development organizations. We are committed to research that is scientifically excellent and that informs investment decisions and ultimately improve farmers’ livelihoods.
