DWFI allocated $19 million for global food security

The U.S. Agency for International Development, Washington, D.C., selected the University of Nebraska’s Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute to lead a global collaboration focused on smallholder irrigation and mechanization needs. 

The collaboration includes a $19 million federal grant to coordinate a global network of partner organizations to achieve sustainable irrigation and agricultural mechanization by small farmers in developing countries. 

“This project incorporates many urgent issues under the umbrella of irrigation and mechanization, and it is all interconnected,” says Nicole Lefore, who will direct the institute’s Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Irrigation and Mechanization created by the grant. Lefore is the institute’s associate director of sustainable agriculture water management. 

Nepal, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, Honduras and Guatemala will be countries of specific focus initially for the DWFI project, along with the East Africa and Southern Africa regions generally, according to a release from DWFI.