This technical report covers the rapid assessment of agriculture finance and its recommendations, the findings of the situation and gap analysis of the Uganda Agricultural Insurance Scheme (UAIS), and where appropriate, presents the WBG’s recommendations for strengthening the scheme; it also includes a proposal for two additional insurance programs, one for crop and one for livestock, targeted at small-scale farmers.
The impulse towards a larger introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the agricultural field is currently experiencing its momentum, as digitisation has large potentialities to provide benefits for both producers and consumers; on the other hand, pushing technological solutions into a rural context encounters several challenges.
China has put in place a series of policies to support private companies to engage in biotechnology research. This study uses data from a survey of 103 major agribusiness firms in the agricultural chemical and seed industries in China to evaluate the impact of government policies on private R&D investment in biotechnology. The results show that firms with positive profit expectation, public R&D subsidies, R&D collaboration with universities/research institutes or state-owned enterprises are more likely to embark on biotechnology research activities.
While livestock constitute a strategic sector to reduce poverty and enhance growth in developing countries, decision makers often lack data reflecting the diversity of livestock functions and systems. The authors therefore mobilised the Livestock Sector Investment Policy Toolkit to assess the economic contributions of livestock in Zambia. Valuing their plural contributions by system, we found that mixed rainfed systems were the main contributors to added value, even if specialised intensive systems provided around 45% of meat and milk production.
El establecimiento de prioridades de investigación e innovación es una preocupación permanente en la gobernanza de la ciencia y la tecnología, debido a que permea la definición de los objetos de estudio, la asignación de recursos por parte del Estado y la apropiación social de los resultados. Este artículo analiza las Agendas Estatales de Innovación en México, un programa impulsado por el gobierno mexicano para definir prioridades de innovación en la escala estatal.
El cambio climático afectará la distribución, productividad y rentabilidad del cultivo de café en América Central, perjudicando las economías nacionales y los medios de vida de los pequeños productores. Es necesario entender cómo el cambio climático está afectando a los pequeños caficultores en la región para promover medidas que permitan enfrentar estos cambios y adaptarse a ellos.
Este artículo tiene por propósito comparar las redes de compras públicas para la agricultura campesina y familiar en los programas de alimentación escolar de los municipios de Granada (Antioquia-Colombia) y São Lourenço do Sul (Rio Grande do Sul-Brasil) en los años de 2016 y 2017. Para tal fin, se construyó un abordaje teórico-metodológico desde la perspectiva de las redes de política pública, articulado a dos metodologías, el Análisis de Redes Sociales y la comparación de Sistemas de Máxima Diferencia.
How can the transition and transformation towards more sustainable food and agriculture (SFA) materialize at country-level? Who will own, drive and be committed to this process? How can the process be sustainable and reach scale? The practical, "how-to" contribution titled "System-Wide Capacity Development for SFA" attempts to answer these questions.
Connecting science with policy has always been challenging for both scientists and policy makers. In Ghana, Mali and Senegal, multi-stakeholder national science-policy dialogue platforms on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) were setup to use scientificevidence to create awareness of climate change impacts on agriculture andadvocate for the mainstreaming of climate change and CSA into agriculturaldevelopment plans.
Efficient agricultural value chains create competitiveness and accelerate industrialisation. Though they have the ability to advance economic partnership and competition, in most African countries, agricultural value chains remain underdeveloped and underexploited; moreover, they are hardly affected by political instability with direct consequences on society. Regional integration with many spill-over, affects agriculture, while food prices and countries' macroeconomic policies affects food security.