Iron deficiency is a widespread nutritional problem in developing countries, causing impaired physical activity and cognitive development, as well as maternal mortality. Although food fortification and supplementation programmes have been effective in some countries, their overall success remains limited. Biofortification, that is, breeding crops for higher micronutrient content, is a relatively new approach. We propose a methodology for ex-ante impact assessment of iron biofortification, which builds on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and a large household data set.

This paper examines the impact of mobile phones on farmers’ marketing decisions and prices they receive based on household- and village-level information collected from rural Ethiopia. It explains the reason for the weak impact of mobile phones observed in this study as well as in previous studies in Africa. We argue that even though many farmers participate in information searching, the number of farmers who use mobile phones for information searching is very small.

Smartphones have become a useful tool in agriculture because their mobility matches the nature of farming, the cost of the device is highly accessible, and their computing power allows a variety of practical applications to be created. Moreover, smartphones are nowadays equipped with various types of physical sensors which make them a promising tool to assist diverse farming tasks. This paper systematically reviews smartphone applications mentioned in research literature that utilize smartphone built-in sensors to provide agricultural solutions.

The adoption of innovations and Precision Agriculture Technologies (PAT) is fundamental for establishing the patterns of agricultural production. However, the dynamics of adoption of PAT by farmers differs by regions. Although there is large number of related researches, there are considerable gaps in the literature: studies on adoption of PAT can be systematically reviewed and integrated in a conceptual model of technology adoption by rural producers, which still lacking in the literature.

If agro-ecological systems are to realize their potential as sustainable alter- natives to conventional agricultural systems, innovation diffusion needs to be enhanced. We conducted surveys among 214 small-scale vegetable farmers in Benin, a food-deficit country in West Africa, on how they perceived the different attributes of eco-friendly nets (EFNs). The nets act as physical barriers against insects in vegetable production and so reduce pesticide use. Understanding farmer perceptions about new technologies helps reveal farmers’ propensity to adopt them.

In the past 50 years, the application of synthetic nitrogen (N) fertilizer to farmland resulted in a dramatic increase in crop yields but with considerable negative impacts on the environment. New solutions are therefore needed to simultaneously increase yields while maintaining, or preferably decreasing, applied N to maximize the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of crops. In this review, we outline the definition of NUE, the selection and development of NUE crops, and the factors that interact with NUE.

In response to population growth, rising income and urbanisation, the demand for livestock products, such as milk, meat and eggs is growing in Ethiopia. The growing demand for milk products offers opportunities for smallholders to realize better livelihoods. Whereas the growing demand for milk products in Ethiopia is widely recognised, the dairy sector has not been able to produce adequate milk to satisfy this demand, mainly due to low productivity of dairy animals.