Gender integration focuses on applying a gender lens to look at how social relations of gender and underlying power dynamics affect men’s and women’s participation in and benefit from development programmes. In Plantwise, gender mainstreaming aimed to (1) understand gender relations and how they affected access to agricultural advisory services and adoption of plant health management practices, and (2) remove gender related barriers to access and adoption and improve gender equity.
The invasive pest, fall armyworm (FAW) was confirmed to be in Ghana in 2016. Stakeholders, including CABI, worked to support the development of a national FAW management plan. A review of the management plan implementation was undertaken using outcome harvesting, a Sprockler inquiry and key informant interviews. Results showed evidence of stakeholder collaboration, leading to increased public awareness of FAW and related management practices, and more coordinated research into low-risk management options.
Based on international literature, preliminary experiences in a three-country West African research programme, and on the disappointing impact of agricultural research on African farm innovation, the current paper argues that institutional change demands rethinking the pathways to innovation so as to acknowledge the role of rules, distribution of power and wealth, interaction and positions. The time is opportune: climate change, food insecurity, high food prices and concomitant riots are turning national food production into a political issue also for African leaders.
The Sourcebook is the outcome of joint planning, continued interest in gender and agriculture, and concerted efforts by the World Bank, FAO, and IFAD. The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff inaddressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations.
The purpose of this paper is to map some elements that can contribute to an IFAD strategy to stimulate and support pro-poor innovations. It is an initial or exploratory document that hopefully will add to an ongoing and necessary debate, and is not intended as a final position paper. The document is organized as follows.
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the challenges and the practical successes that a selected number of countries are experiencing in moving towards 'climate-smart' agriculture while also meeting the food requirements of a growing population, broader economic development and green growth objectives. It complements papers prepared in 2010 on technologies and policy instruments, research, and farmers' perspectives.
This case study describes the history and business model of the Rural and Community Bank (RCB) network in Ghana, analyzes its performance, identifies key issues, and makes recommendations on the way forward. The study analyzes the service delivery and financial performance of the RCBs. Before the establishment of RCBs in the late 1970s and the subsequent expansion of other service providers into rural areas, access to institutional credit for farm and nonfarm activities was scarce. The main sources of credit were moneylenders and traders that charged very high interest rates.
Poverty, environment, social development, and gender are important cross-cutting themes of the World Bank and government investment programs, especially within the Sustainable Development Network (SDN). For developing sectoral strategies and programs, economic, environment and social assessments are undertaken, however, these are usually done separately, and most often gender issues are not included.
Sustainable agricultural intensification requires the use of multiple agricultural technologies in an integrated manner to enhance productivity while conserving the natural resource base. This study analyses the adoption and impacts of sustainable intensification practices (SIPs) using a dataset from Ghana. A multivariate probit (MVP) model was estimated to assess the adoption of multiple SIPs. Moreover, we used a multivalued semi-parametric treatment effect (MVTE) model to estimate the effects of adopting multiple SIPs on maize productivity.
Many smallholder farmers in developing countries grow multiple crop species on their farms, maintaining de facto crop diversity. Rarely do agricultural development strategies consider this crop diversity as an entry point for fostering agricultural innovation. This paper presents a case study, from an agricultural research-for-development project in northern Ghana, which examines the relationship between crop diversity and self-consumption of food crops, and cash income from crops sold by smallholder farmers in the target areas.