The Markets, Institutions, and Policies (MIP) Cluster at ICRISAT is dedicated to conducting theory-informed and action-oriented research to promote nutrition-sensitive, inclusive, and resilient farm and food systems in the drylands. Our cluster generates evidence-based strategies that support market-led innovations, reshape markets and value chains, and facilitate agri-business innovations to ensure the supply of healthy food from producers to consumers and create more job opportunities along value chains.
We influence a conducive policy environment for the adoption of technological, social, and institutional innovations that improve the lives of smallholder farmers with a particular focus on women. Our research focuses on developing strategies that enable farmers to produce nutritious and affordable foods, while also safeguarding the soil, water, and biodiversity in rural landscapes.
Through close collaboration with other research teams, we engage in demand-driven product development and create an enabling policy environment for the adoption of innovations. By adopting a participatory approach, we have developed an evidence-based scientific framework to guide climate-smart investments. We have also collaborated with various stakeholders to scale climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in the state of Telangana, India. This framework can be easily adapted to other states in India and, by extension, to other countries in Asia and Africa.
The MIP Cluster strives to drive transformative change by providing robust research findings, policy recommendations, and innovative approaches to enhance market systems, improve institutional arrangements, and shape policies for the benefit of smallholder farmers and the overall sustainability of agriculture in the drylands. Through our work, we aim to contribute to the development of resilient, inclusive, and nutrition-sensitive farm and food systems that create lasting impacts for both producers and consumers.
Focus Areas:
Conducting analyses of commodity value chains and market opportunities for new investments
Developing scaling frameworks and evidence-based integration of climate-smart agricultural practices and policies
Assessing and developing markets and value chain models for millets and legumes-based food-feed products
Creating policy evidence to promote the uptake of regenerative technologies and sustainable natural resource management
Developing decision support tools for policymakers, farmer producer organizations (FPOs), and other stakeholders
Facilitating the science-policy interface for scaling innovation
Conducting food systems analysis to identify critical linkages among agriculture, poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, gender outcomes, and sustainability
Identifying barriers to consumption and market uptake of nutritious commodities
Developing strategies to improve access and attractiveness of nutritious crops in the semi-arid tropics (SAT)
Implementing resilience-enhancing, nutrition-sensitive interventions for sustainable farm and food systems, with a focus on marginalized and vulnerable value chain actors such as small-scale farmers, women, and youth.
