Chennai: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) have entered into a strategic partnership on research and programmes around agriculture and food security, nutrition, climate change adaptation, community resilience building, and sustainable livelihoods in India.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed today between Mr. Bishow Parajuli, WFP India Representative and Country Director, and Dr. Madhura Swaminathan, Chairperson MSSRF.

“WFP and MSSRF are committed to delivering solutions and scalable models to improve food security, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable communities. The increasing and frequent climate crises and shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic have worsened global hunger, threatening food security, nutrition, and the livelihoods of millions.” Mr. Parajuli said.

“The partnership will allow combining the strengths of research, national and global advocacy, grassroots dissemination, and policy inputs especially around the aspect of nutrition and resilient livelihoods,” he added.

“The partnership with WFP builds on several organic linkages between the two organizations to leverage research and advocacy, awareness-raising activities, exploring the use of technologies and climate services for last-mile actions for better community resilience and adaptation, undertaking analysis of trends in food and nutrition security, working around issues of nutrition and school feeding and other related areas,” Dr. Madhura added.

“WFP in India and MSSRF will also develop and implement joint pilot programs and advocacy for scale-up including potential collaboration for climate vulnerability analysis in select states,” she added.

Over the past two decades, the partnership between WFP and MSSRF in India has seen pioneering work on food and nutrition security analysis through the creation of several national-level food insecurity atlases, and other policy and research-related contributions towards enhanced food security.

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World Food Programme is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. It is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability, and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.

MSSRF, a non-profit organization, accelerates the use of science and technology for agricultural and rural development to improve lives and livelihoods and follows a pro-poor, pro-women, and pro-nature approach to address practical problems faced by rural populations in agriculture, food, and nutrition and climate change. Substantial research is being undertaken in six thematic areas besides special projects and cross-cutting areas and themes such as coastal systems research; climate change; biodiversity; biotechnology; eco-technology; food security; nutrition, information, education, and communication; gender and grassroots organizations

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For more information please contact:

Parvinder.singh@wfp.org

Parvinder Singh; WFP/New Delhi; Tel: +91 9999241701

Jitendra@mssrf.res.in

Jitendra; MSSRF/Chennai; +91- 9650680491