The Challenge Program on Water and Food

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The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) is a multi-institutional, research-based initiative that aims to increase water productivity for agriculture in order to improve livelihoods and leave more water for other users and the environment.

In 2005, CPWF diversified its research portfolio and welcomed several new partner institutions. In addition to on-going first call projects, CPWF objectives are now advanced by input from basin focal projects, small grants for impact, synthesis research and capacity building activities.

Currently active in nine benchmark basins in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 33 first call projects, as well as three others, have made great strides during the first phase of research.

	CPWF focuses on building the capacity of individuals, specifically researchers, as learners, appliers and promoters of integrated scientific approaches. Capacity building provides both short and long term training in applied and integrative formats.

Highlights include:

• working with farmers to improve the efficiency with which rainwater and soil nutrients are used by a variety of crops and retained by the soil
  
  
• increasing livestock water productivity by using water accounting to determine where in the system water can be freed for other uses
  
  
• demonstrating how multi-stakeholder platforms could bring water policy and policy making into the public domain
  
  
• collecting case study evidence to show the considerable payoffs of systems for multiple water use

The CPWF works with farmers to improve crop
efficiency through rain water and nutrients retained in the soil.

Basin focal projects, designed to conduct basin-wide analyses of agricultural water use and identify strategic opportunities for poverty alleviation through improvements in agricultural water use, have moved beyond the inception phase and are currently being executed in the Karkheh, Mekong, Sao Francisco and Volta basins. The projects have established a set of methodological guidelines and open the way to additional projects in another 6 basins by the end of 2006.

During the last quarter of 2005, CPWF awarded small grants for impact to 14 new projects and associated partners.  Projects were selected based on their ability to identify existing small-scale or local-level water and agricultural management strategies or technologies that have the potential to improve agricultural water productivity at some wider scale. The range of technologies and knowledge being investigated include surface, groundwater, runoff and rainwater harvesting; water storage and distribution techniques; training women to increase the water-holding capacity of soil; market-based approaches to on-farm water productivity; farmer to farmer exchange and farmer-led experimentation; and out scaling best practices, among others.

The synthesis research component of the program brings together outputs from a broad range of projects in an attempt to draw out new insights that will be available as international public goods.  With inputs from theme leaders and basin coordinators, the first program synthesis document will be released in 2006.

 
Building on its research portfolio, the CPWF capacity building strategy started in earnest.  Researchers in developing countries were identified as the primary target group for capacity building activities and an initial needs assessment of Mekong River Basin organizations was completed in November 2005. 

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