Thrive Podcast

Cassava, or Tapioca as it is more popularly known, is a very important staple crop in Vietnam, as well as most of Southeast Asia. This robust crop is facing some serious threats, in the form of pests, depleted soils, and unsustainable farming practices.

One of the highlights of this year's Global Landscapes Forum in Paris was the Dragons Den session, hosted by the Youth in Landscapes Initiative. Eavesdropping from the workshop to the final pitches was Andrew Johnstone.

Why are many apparently simple, technical solutions to agricultural problems not widely adopted? Why don't people change their behaviour when provided with information that ought to be useful? In this episode of the Thrive podcast, Katherine Snyder from CIAT, shares her views on silver bullet solutions to dilemmas in agricultural development.

On this Thrive podcast, we discuss water rights with Tim Williams and Alan Nicol of IWMI. What are the consequences of leaving water out of large-scale land acquisition agreements? And what about another type of human right: the right to water for crops? 

Hovering over almost all of the discussions at Stockholm World Water Week was the question of climate change, and one of the few aspects of climate change we can be absolutely certain about is that things are going to become more variable. Claudia Ringler and Jeremy Bird join us on this episode of Thrive Podcast. 

Today we head to Northern Myanmar where filmmaker Douglas Varchol reports from the field. Varchol joins a research team from the project on "Working together for a better Kachin landscape.”

On this episode of Thrive podcast, we sit down with CIAT's Dr. Deborah Bossio,  who has spent the last 20 years working at the nexus between soil and social sciences.

The latest episode of the Thrive podcast takes a close look at the ground beneath our feet. Soil, on which terrestrial life depends, is often ignored precisely because it is everywhere and yet invisible. 

It is no coincidence that we're launching the Thrive podcast today, World Environment Day. The theme this year is sustainable consumption and production, and that's exactly what drives the podcast's first guest: Andrew Noble, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems.

During his time in north western Ethiopia, Dr. Steven Prager observed the complex relationship between upstream and downstream farmers in the Fogera region of Ethiopia. His results, he said, were unexpected. Dr. Prager discusses the relationship between farm plot location and resilience in this podcast.