From El Niño Cotton Risk to Papaya Mealybugs: SAN's Week

July 27 – August 3, 2026

This week's field reports from across the Sustainable Agriculture Network told a consistent story: agricultural transformation only works when knowledge, tools and resources actually reach the people using them. From digital diagnostics in the field to hard conversations about pesticide harm, SAN members showed what that looks like in practice.

SAN Members showcased their expertise on a variety of crops and landscapes

Digital Tools Are Reaching the Farm, Not Just the Lab

CABI had a busy week putting data directly into farmers' hands. The organization promoted its PlantwisePlus Factsheets app, which combines expert-reviewed diagnostics, photo-based pest identification, weather data and spray calculations for farmers and advisers. It also shared insight from Senior Data Architect Arun Jadhav on why better agricultural data sharing is essential for tracking crop losses and informing policy, and flagged the Global Burden of Crop Loss initiative ahead of the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026. On the pest front, CABI warned growers to watch for the papaya mealybug, a highly invasive species capable of significant crop damage.

In Colombia, Fundación Natura Colombia highlighted its Community-Based Monitoring and Assurance System, developed with SAN, Preferred by Nature and Rainforest Alliance, which trains small-scale producers to use digital tools to understand and apply environmental and agronomic information — a clear example of digital agriculture built for local use rather than as an end in itself.

Women Are Leading, Not Just Benefiting

CABI's reporting also spotlighted the resource gap facing women farmers: equal access to land, finance and training could lift yields by 20-30%, yet that access remains uneven. The organization's Gender Technical Working Groups are working to close that gap across four countries, while a parallel effort in Telangana is scaling a gender-responsive digital-skills initiative that aims to reach 1,000 women farmers and train 400 extension professionals.

CottonConnect offered a vivid example of what that leadership looks like on the ground: the organization recognized Preeti Shridhar Dombe, a Better Cotton Initiative farmer in Maharashtra who established a Bio-Input Centre now supplying affordable biological inputs to neighboring farmers, cutting chemical dependence and improving soil health.

Climate Resilience, from Cotton Fields to Himalayan Pastures

Climate variability was a throughline this week. CottonConnect CEO Alison Ward discussed how El Niño and shifting weather patterns are forcing conventional cotton production models to adapt.

Further east, the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance shared fieldwork with Changpa herders in eastern Ladakh, framing resilience not as simply recovering from shocks but as a dynamic, place-based process shaped by mobility and livelihood diversification amid rapid land-use and ecological change.

Agroecology in Practice — and the Cost of Ignoring It

PELUM Uganda promoted an organic, farmer-developed weed-control alternative to synthetic herbicides and announced Agroecology Week 2026, running 26–30 October in Kampala to bring farmers, innovators and policymakers together to advance agroecology in Uganda.

RAAA Perú paired hands-on training with pointed advocacy. The organization shared its biodigester system, which converts pig waste into liquid and semi-solid organic fertilizer, and invited visitors to its agroecological demonstration farm, managed without synthetic inputs for 25 years and now open for technical internships. At the same time, RAAA Perú denounced recurring pesticide poisonings among agricultural workers and the absence of accountability for those affected — a reminder of the health stakes behind the shift toward agroecological alternatives.

Traceability and Tougher Sustainability Standards

Preferred by Nature raised a pointed question this week: are sustainability systems spending so much energy on measuring emissions correctly that they lose sight of stopping deforestation itself? The organization also detailed what EU Deforestation Regulation compliance actually requires for companies importing coffee, cocoa, palm oil and other covered commodities into the EU.

Rainforest Alliance warned that vague environmental claims are becoming a regulatory liability as Europe's Empowering Consumers Directive takes effect, not just a reputational one — a signal that precise, verifiable language now matters as much as the underlying practice.

Restoring Ecosystems, Strengthening Communities

Back in Colombia, Fundación Natura Colombia reported that community nurseries in the La Mojana ecoregion are propagating more than 61 native forest and fruit-tree species to restore dry forests, wetlands and scrublands — restoration work that starts long before a single tree is planted.

Fundación Global Nature raised the alarm on wildfire severity in Spain this summer, calling for renewed discussion on reducing territorial vulnerability to fire. And CABI's research this week connected invasive species like Opuntia stricta to a less visible consequence of ecological degradation: livelihood loss, food insecurity and human displacement.

Turning Research and Field Work into Action

CORAF used the ninth African Agricultural Science Week to make a systemic point: transforming science into impact requires partnerships, political commitment and public policy, not research alone.

That same principle showed up in the field. REEDS Pakistan organized a Farmer Field Day under the Better Cotton Initiative in Vehari, bringing farmers and stakeholders together to promote sustainable cotton production. And in Ecuador, Fundación Pachamama completed three financial-training workshops for Amazonian bio-businesses under its "PachaEmprende" programme, pairing environmental goals with the business skills needed to sustain them.

Radical Collaboration, in Practice

Taken together, this week's activity is a snapshot of what SAN's Global Impact Network is built to do: connect science with practice, data with decision-making, and local knowledge with global standards. Whether it's an app diagnosing pests in real time, a Bio-Input Centre run by a woman farmer in Maharashtra, or herders in Ladakh adapting to a changing climate, the throughline is the same — agriculture healing and nourishing people and planet takes radical collaboration, not isolated effort. That's the work SAN's members carried forward this week, and it's the work the network will keep amplifying.