Agriculture & Livelihoods

Cool Earth is an international NGO that funds Indigenous communities to protect endangered rainforests in Papua New Guinea, Peru, Cameroon, DRC, and Gabon. The model provides unconditional cash transfers and supports sustainable livelihoods (cacao, coffee, fish farms) while empowering communities to monitor and prevent illegal logging.

Digital Green uses locally-produced agricultural videos featuring model farmers to disseminate best practices to smallholder farmers in India, Ethiopia, and other countries. The participatory video approach, combined with AI-powered FarmerChat advisories, has reached over 8 million farmers with 50%+ adoption rates. Studies show a tenfold improvement in cost-effectiveness over traditional extension.

The Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Nairobi is the largest behavioral science organization focused on the Global South. Operating the world's largest behavioral science lab (133,000+ participants across Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, India), Busara designs and tests interventions addressing poverty, health, agriculture, and education. They emphasize that "biases are local"—behavioral insights must be adapted to specific cultural contexts rather than imported from Western research.

Farm Radio International partners with over 1,200 radio stations across 37 sub-Saharan African countries to deliver agricultural information and behavior change programming to smallholder farmers. Using interactive radio formats, SMS polling (Uliza tool), and community engagement, the program reaches 45+ million people annually, with over 50% of listeners adopting new farming practices.

4-H is one of the largest youth development organizations globally, operating in over 80 countries through USDA's Cooperative Extension System. The "learn by doing" approach develops leadership, citizenship, and life skills in youth through hands-on projects in agriculture, STEM, health, and civic engagement. International exchanges (IFYE, S4-H) build global citizenship.

SPRING was a flagship USAID program (2011-2018) that operationalized agriculture-nutrition linkages across seven countries. The project pioneered approaches to integrate nutrition outcomes into agricultural programming, trained community health workers in behavior change communication, and developed the influential "Ag-Nutrition Pathways" framework adopted by Feed the Future.