In January 2020 IFPRI launched a podcast series, which takes listeners along the IFPRI research journey, including the ups and downs of tackling a development problem, implementing cutting-edge research in remote and underserved settings, and working with partners to help the research make an impact.
What happens when researchers start learning all about marketing?
Episode 9 features IFPRI Program Manager Vartika Singh who, in a conversation with Sivan Yosef, tells the story of how IFPRI researchers in India set out to investigate whether government-issued soil health cards were effective in getting smallholders to improve their farming practices. Instead, the researchers discovered an entirely different challenge: farmers couldn’t understand the cards. Working with a visual designer, IFPRI and its partners embarked on a process usually reserved for the marketing sector: helping make a product easy to understand and use. The story holds numerous lessons on how to make research more accessible to a wide audience.
Podcast and interview transcript available here.
More episodes available here.
