Securing Water for Food has published three new documents that 1) detail SWFF’s specific support to innovators, and 2) feature select innovator achievements and successes (e.g., number of end-users reached, how many hectares of farmland that have been impacted, crops produced, yields increased, impact on women agripreneurs, improvements in vegetable quality, extension of cropping seasons, technology adoption, etc.), and 3) showcase innovators’ poverty, gender, and water impact.
Overview of Poverty Impact
Through the products and services of innovators, SWFF continues to progress in improving incomes and yields for farmers who are at or near their country’s poverty lines. To determine the proportion of innovators’ end-users who are at or below the poverty line, SWFF uses a combination of innovator provided information, household survey data, site visits, and the extrapolations of country-level data. Using these sources, SWFF estimates that 63% of innovation end-users are at or near the poverty line. In the portfolio of 40 innovators, 21% of end-users were the extreme poor, 42% were of the low-income poor, 26% were middle income, and 11% were upper income.
Overview of Gender Impact
SWFF broadly supports integrating women and gender equity into SWFF innovators’ operations, marketing, and technology adoption. Over the four open calls for innovations, SWFF required applicants to show that their innovations contribute to more equal gender relations and that they benefit women.
Of the 40 current, graduate, and alumni innovators supported by SWFF, 3 million women in 885,000 households have been impacted directly and indirectly as customers and household members. Of the current 40 innovators in the program, all of them have a specific customer outreach to women and a customer base comprised of at least 25% women (ranging as high as 100% women customers).
Overview of Water Impact
Since 2014, SWFF has sourced innovations that decrease agricultural water consumption, reallocate water to the food value chain, increase water storage capacity, or address the problems of salt-water intrusion and soil salinity. This broad focus has been maintained across four open calls for innovation.
In addition, SWFF innovators are helping farmers to create more stable livelihoods by cultivating drought-resistant crops and salt-tolerant crops in previously infertile areas, and reallocating water to the food value chain from a variety of sources. Farmers across the program have experienced yield increases in the 5%- 186% range, reduced water consumption by 18.6 billion liters compared to traditional practices, reallocated 1.78 billion liters of water, and increased water storage capacity by 16.9 million liters.
2019 SWFF Poverty Impact
2019 SWFF Gender Impact
2019 SWFF Water & Resiliency Impacts
