Senior IFPRI Research Fellow and co-principal of HarvestChoice Stanley Wood is leading a breakout session at the Global Land and Poverty Summit on September 28, 2010 in Washington, DC.

The session, “Agriculture – Dirt Poor: Seeking solutions to poverty from the ground up” highlights on-the-ground success stories from the CGIAR and its partners that demonstrate the impact of land-based improvements in the well-being of poor farm households and the quality of the natural resources on which future rural livelihoods depend. It will emphasize the growing reliance on geo-referenced information and location-specific analysis to improve the targeting, design, monitoring, and evaluation of agricultural interventions.

The presentations will showcase how improved insights into the spatial and socioeconomic contexts of land-related constraints and opportunities can help create solutions to poverty. (Click here to learn more about these issues on HarvestChoice’s recently-launched blog: HarvestChoice Labs.) The idea for this session came from Emmy Simmons, the former Assistant Administrator at the USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade who will also chair the session. The hour-long event takes place at 3 p.m.

Organized by ESRI, the one-day Global Land and Poverty Summit focuses on how to use geographic technology to help solve diverse problems faced by the poor. It aims to “create low-cost, practical solutions for healthy, sustainable societies.”