Providing farmers with essential agricultural information and training in the era of COVID-19 has been a challenge that has prompted a renewed interest in digital extension services. There is a distinct gender gap, however, between men’s and women’s access to, use of, and ability to benefit from information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Responding to global food crisis, such as imposed by climate change, requires resilient food systems that are able to respond to shocks. Resilience thinking, as an approach to agriculture development, focuses on enhancing the capacity of both the human and ecological systems inter alia. In this paper, the concept of resilience is approached from the perspective of socio-ecological systems dynamics. In particular, the study examined the contribution of farmers to research towards enhanced resilience of traditional African vegetable production systems in northern Ghana.
La notion de service écosystémique est devenue incontournable dans les discours institutionnels et académiques en dépit des controverses et des critiques. Initialement portée par les acteurs de la conservation de la biodiversité, elle connaît depuis plusieurs années un déploiement dans les milieux agricoles. Si l’idée selon laquelle les fonctionnalités des écosystèmes sont déterminantes dans la production agricole n’est pas nouvelle, cette notion permet de mettre en évidence les nouveaux enjeux liés aux changements climatiques et aux besoins alimentaires croissants.
La crise économique et sanitaire due à la Covid-19 interpelle les trajectoires de reconfiguration des systèmes alimentaires en République du Congo. Elle questionne la capacité des mesures de régulation prises par les pouvoirs publics et des stratégies d’adaptation des acteurs à induire des inflexions dans la gouvernance structurelle du système alimentaire du pays. L’article analyse les stratégies d’adaptation à la crise en mobilisant des données secondaires et des expériences d’accompagnement de politiques publiques agricoles et alimentaires conduites par les auteurs.
While vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 were launched worldwide, a drama has been unfolding in the Moroccan countryside. It has been marked, over the last couple of decades, by rapid agrarian transformation, manifestations of which have included expanding irrigation frontiers and the increasing growth of high-value crops. These dynamics rely strongly on female agricultural wageworkers. Although they earn low wages, their income is crucial and is used to care for loved ones by paying for school fees, rent, electricity, and medicines.
Le secteur agricole constitue une activité importante au Maroc, représentant 14 % du produit national brut et employant 40 % de la population active. Avec l’émergence de la pandémie de la Covid-19, il a été ébranlé par des incertitudes économiques et par la distanciation physique qui a accentué les contraintes du travail. Toutefois, l’agriculture s’est imposée comme une activité cruciale, puisqu’elle a continué à assurer l’approvisionnement alimentaire à des prix abordables.
Accurate and operational indicators of the start of growing season (SOS) are critical for crop modeling, famine early warning, and agricultural management in the developing world. Erroneous SOS estimates–late, or early, relative to actual planting dates–can lead to inaccurate crop production and food-availability forecasts. Adapting rainfed agriculture to climate change requires improved harmonization of planting with the onset of rains, and the rising ubiquity of mobile phones in east Africa enables real-time monitoring of this important agricultural decision.
Climate smart agriculture (CSA) technologies are innovations meant to reduce the risks in agricultural production among smallholder farmers. Among the factors that influence farmer adoption of agricultural technologies are farmers' risk attitudes and household livelihood diversification. This study, focused on determining how farmers' risk attitudes and household livelihood diversification influenced the adoption of CSA technologies in the Nyando basin. The study utilized primary data from 122 households from two administrative regions of Kisumu and Kericho counties in Kenya.
Food insecurity remains a major challenge to rural households in Eastern Ethiopia. To improve food and nutrition security of vulnerable households in eastern Ethiopia, several agricultural technologies have been scaled-up by Haramaya University for more than six decades. However, the impact of these technologies on household nutritional outcomes was not systematically studied. This study examined the impact of selected agricultural technologies on household food and nutrition security. Cross-sectional data were generated from 248 randomly selected rural households.
The spatial and temporal variability of soil properties (fluid composition, structure, and water content) and hydrogeological properties employed for sustainable precision agriculture can be obtained from geoelectrical resistivity methods. For sustainable precision agricultural practices, site-specific information is paramount, especially during the planting season.