UM6P-J-PAL Applied Lab for Agriculture (UJALA)
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The UM6P-J-PAL Applied Lab for Agriculture (UJALA) aims to generate rigorous, policy-relevant evidence to answer critical questions around small-scale agriculture and food security worldwide.
J-PAL and University Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P) are partnering to form the UM6P-J-PAL Applied Lab for Agriculture (UJALA). Hosted at UM6P in Morocco, UJALA funds research to rigorously evaluate agricultural technologies and practices designed to increase small-scale farmers’ food security, productivity, and profitability.
Small-scale farmers face a myriad of production decisions that they need to address throughout the agricultural cycle, such as whether to adopt a new seed variety, how much fertilizer to apply, which of the information sources to trust, where to sell their output for the highest possible price, how to pay for production investments, among many others. With the rise of global food insecurity, resulting from changes in the global market, climate, and political economic forces, understanding how to improve food systems is an essential step along the path to reducing poverty and securing livelihoods across the globe. In response to this growing uncertainty, clear policies and programs that support farmers to invest in higher-yielding, more profitable, and more innovative technologies are essential. Yet, many questions remain unanswered, and these questions are changing as evolving global market and climatic conditions shift.
UJALA aims to answer critical questions related to designing and delivering effective food and agricultural subsidies, assessing the value of fertilizer customization to crop needs and soil nutrients, reducing low-income households’ reliance on imported food, alleviating farmers’ constraints to adopting and maintaining new agricultural technologies and practices, and connecting farmers to markets that sell at competitive prices.
To achieve our goals, UJALA will:
- Identify programs with the potential to answer open questions related to agricultural technology adoption globally.
- Connect the OCP ecosystem and its partners with J-PAL affiliated researchers to facilitate multi-stakeholder research partnerships.
- Fund randomized evaluations to build an evidence base on strategies that increase small-scale farmers’ food security, productivity, and profitability through the uptake of improved and accessible agricultural technologies.
- Summarize and synthesize available results to address and answer outstanding questions relevant to policy and practice.
- Disseminate the evidence to inform relevant agricultural development strategies across low- and middle-income countries worldwide.
Key Facts
Eligibility:
Open to J-PAL affiliated professors, all active invited researchers to any J-PAL initiative or J-PAL regional office, and UJALA African Scholars
Contact:
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Request for proposals
UJALA is currently accepting matchmade proposals on a rolling basis. If you are an eligible researcher interested in partnering on an impact evaluation, please reach out to [email protected].
Staff
Malik Abaddi, Policy Manager and Delivery Lead
Fatima Zahra Bendriss, Research Associate
Yasmine Bouchareb, Research and Training Manager
Hicham El Azami, Lab Director
Carlos Guzman, Senior Finance and Operations Manager
Rimane Jdaini, Policy Associate
Hamza Rkaina, Senior Finance and Operations Associate