What is the KISM?
KISM is a research and knowledge gateway to help farmer organizations, food businesses, governments, and practitioners make better-informed investment and policy decisions on inclusive and sustainable food value chains.
Situated within a new CGIAR initiative on Rethinking Food Markets, the KISM is designed to share cutting edge research emerging from this multidisciplinary research initiative and convene stakeholder dialogues to make sense of this research and improve policy coherence and market reform. KISM is also your gateway to access further credible research and data in this field through other knowledge platforms such as Evidensia and Value Chains knowledge portal.
What is the research focus of KISM?
The KISM (Knowledge Platform for Sustainable Food Markets and Value Chains), is a research library and a knowledge platform for policy dialogue and exchange of ideas on rethinking food markets and value chains. It exists to share research emerging from the CGIAR Rethinking Markets Initiative that looks at three broad areas:
- Globally integrated value chains: vertical integration, food standards certification and inclusive VC contracting.
- Domestic food market value chains: sustainable VC infrastructure, product upgrading and inclusive business models.
- Cross market services: Logistics innovations and digital finance for inclusive value chain integration
KISM will host meta studies and research reviews on these topics as well as empirical research on the best technological, process and policy innovations in markets and value chains in in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Central America, and, possibly, Uzbekistan.
KISM Library – what is included?
KISM's library hosts all the resources on the site. You can find a compilation of information and insights published by the Rethinking Food Markets initiative as well as resources accessed through other credible databases such as the Evidensia platform.
It includes resources that address a wide range of innovations: innovations at product or farm level (e.g product certification), innovations within the supply chain (logistics services or contracting) and innovations in the enabling environment (e.g trade policies or R&D investments).
In KISM information is hosted under a wide range of formats including research reports but also tools, presentations and videos. The website follows a robust criteria for organising the information according to the methodology utilised by the authors and group them in 4 evidence typologies:
- Synthesis paper. Studies that synthesize the results of multiple individual studies to characterize a discrete body of literature
- Empirical studies. Empirical studies that include local case studies, ethnographic studies or qualitative research and studies that investigate the relationship between interventions and outcomes including impact evaluations with counterfactual thinking and Studies without counterfactual thinking.
- Monitoring data. Examines performance of program participants, based on monitoring data that is routinely and systematically collected on an intervention, production unit, area of land, supply chain, sector, etc.
- Modelling study. Studies that combine empirical information with secondary data to assess patterns, infer broader impacts, or evaluate scenarios for future application of such tools.
For more information, download KISM data structure