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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 through more productive and profitable farming. The initiative is coordinated by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the University of Minnesota and is supported by a grant to IFPRI by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.〔(About HarvestChoice )〕〔(IFPRI Website )〕 Phase I of HarvestChoice ran from October 2006 to June 2010, while Phase II began in December 2010 for a period of 4 years and a total budget of some $8.2M. ==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. With these techniques and tools in mind, each farmer must assess their local context and analyze the costs and benefits of adopting them, such as the additional labor and/or investment required. Careful and informed assessment is especially more important for farmers with limited resources, like smallholder farmers in developing countries. Even if farmers recognize that new approaches will likely improve production versus their traditional practices, they may still be highly risk averse for many legitimate reasons (e.g., lack of insurance markets, bad experiences in the past, or conceiving the inherently uncertain nature of farming). Likewise, at a higher level, the national and international donors and policymakers share the farmers’ goal of improving food security cost-effectively. They, like farmers, must strategically assess the feasibility and profitability of available strategic and policy options and decide which ones to promote and where, with even greater deals of risks and uncertainties. If reliable estimates could be made of the current and potential patterns of crop productivity, many agricultural development investment and policy decisions would be significantly improved, or made with greater confidence. HarvestChoice and its partners develop databases, tools, analyses, and syntheses designed to improve strategic investment and policy decisions. The overriding objective is to accelerate and enhance the performance of those crops and cropping systems most likely to bring significant benefits to the world's poor and undernourished.〔(Profile of HarvestChoice on AfricanCrops.net ), accessed on May 19, 2010〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HarvestChoice」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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