AgMIP-MENA launch: the agricultural model intercomparison and improvement project MENA regional platform

The new AgMIP-MENA Platform will fill big gaps in crop modeling knowledge and expertise, enabling global research teams and national institutions to build vital analysis, fore-planning, and early-warning systems to strengthen agri-food systems and resilience to shocks.

Limited knowledge-sharing and a lack of expertise in crop modeling in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region can impede sustainable risk management and climate-informed adaptation, leading to under-production and a higher dependence on food imports. Given the fragility of agri-food systems in one of the world's most climate-vulnerable and water-scarce regions, improved analysis, fore-planning, and early warning are vital to ensuring high yields and resilience to shocks.

In collaboration with the global Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), ICARDA and Mohammed IV Polytechnique University (UM6P) in Morocco are launching the regional AgMIP-MENA Platform that will play an instrumental role in minimizing agricultural risks and improving resilience in crop production.

Through the development, deployment, and application of rigorous scientific knowledge-based simulation models in the MENA region, AgMIP-MENA will develop a program tailored to the region's specific demands that also draw from the global outcomes of AgMIP.

The AgMIP-MENA Platform will build crop modelers' capacities by introducing alternative approaches to conventional crop models through collaboration with other experts in multi-model activities, creating a groundbreaking opportunity for knowledge-sharing at vertical and horizontal levels and across research teams and national institutions, global economists, climatologists, private sector, and farming communities, all together in one cohesive unit.

ICARDA and UM6P provide the community with a unique advantage by ensuring the datasets from their different agricultural projects are open access and available to all researchers, making AgMIP-MENA a powerful hub for the global scientific community with access to newly developed IT tools for data entry and conversion, strengthening the delivery and impact of research and innovation at scale.  

The launch also creates a collaboration opportunity with AIM4Climate, led by the United States and the United Arab Emirates, to bring climate-smart approaches to agriculture worldwide.
 
AgMIP is a distributed network to research future climate change impact in agriculture from field to farm to the globe, link climate, crop, and agricultural economics, support farmers and policymakers with science-based strategies, and ensure future food security (science with an impact). AgMIP started in 2010 and included 1000+ agricultural scientists from around the world.