Semi-Annual Report: Securing Water for Food

The program has made significant progress toward its overall goal since its inception more than three years ago. SWFF has funded 40 innovations, with the recent addition of the fourth cohort, and has helped small small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that haven't yet begun to scale face numerous challenges on the ground. However, many are beginning to have some early success helping farmers combat drought and increase resilience to changing rainfall patterns. SWFF innovators have helped save approximately 1.5 billion liters of water, have helped produce nearly 650,000 tons of food, and have reached more than 1.5 million farmers and other customers. More than 600,000 hectares of rangeland and cropland are under improved practices due in part to SWFF innovations. To date, SWFF innovators have leveraged SWFF funding for almost $13 million in additional funding through more than 100 partnerships and achieved more than $2 million in sales. The SWFF program, through the SWFF Technical Assistance Facility (TA Facility), has begun to analyze the overall impact of the program as a whole and the impact of individual innovations. These analyses and lessons learned will help the program make more cost-effective, more efficient choices and increase the likelihood some innovations will reach sustainable scale by the end of the program. So far, nearly 60% of SWFF innovations have experienced increased usage/uptake, more than 50% of SWFF innovators have increased technical capacity, and approximately 60% of acceleration support given to innovators was a long-term success. SWFF's goals include enhancing access to innovations that help agricultural producers grow more food with less water, improving water storage practices, and increasing the use of saline water and soils to grow or process food. The program works to alleviate poverty by identifying and accelerating science and technology innovations and market-driven approaches that improve water sustainability and boost food security. The SWFF ecosystem includes four founding and funding partners: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Sweden through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (MFA-NL), and South Africa's Department of Science and Technology (DST). The SWFF TA Facility, supported by a $10.76M contract awarded to The Kaizen Company, provides acceleration support to SWFF innovators through a voucher system of support vendors. The facility is led by Dr. Donna Vincent Roa, Chief of Party, and includes a team of experts in acceleration facilitation, grants and financial management, monitoring and evaluation, and program coordination. Since the 2013 launch, Securing Water for Food has issued four calls for innovation, with the most recent cohort announced in March 2017 at the Global Agripreneurs Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. SWFF innovators are working in 32 countries to address the challenges of water scarcity and food insecurity.