Inadequate feed and nutrition are major constraints to livestock production in sub-Saharan Africa. National and international research agencies, including the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), have developed several feed production and utilisation technologies. However, adoption of these technologies has so far been low. Identification of the major socio-economic and policy factors influencing the adoption of improved feed technologies is required to help design policy and institutional interventions to improve adoption.
This report is concerned with the ‘who?’ ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ of pro-poor extension. It builds on the analytical framework proposed in the Inception Report of the same study (Christoplos, Farrington and Kidd, 2001), taking it forward by fleshing out the analysis with empirical information gathered from several countries during the course of the study (from primary data in Bolivia, Colombia, Nicaragua, Uganda and Vietnam, and from secondary sources in a range of other countries, including India), and drawing conclusions on the scope for action by governments and donors in a range of contexts.
Cross bred cow adoption is an important and potent policy variable precipitating subsistence household entry into emerging bulk markets. This paper focuses on the design of policies that create and sustain milk-market expansion among a sample of households in the Ethiopian highlands. In this context it is desirable to measure a household's `proximity' to market in terms of the level of deficiency of an essential input. This problem is compounded by four factors.
The findings of a Nigerian case study discussed in this paper indicate that the notion of wives of leisure is really not applicable to most women in Nigeria, as women have always worked. Even those in purdah engage in income generating activities within the confines of the compound. It is therefore wasteful to continue to by-pass or displace women in development. Selective mechanisation of difficult processes in agriculture could become a useful method of integrating women into, and enhancing their contributions to, development.
KIT and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) published this joint publication in which farmers were put in the driver’s seat. Within the programme ‘farmer empowerment for innovation in smallholder agriculture’ (FEISA) farmers were provided tools and skills to enhance collaboration with private enterprises, as well as service providers, in multi stakeholder ‘innovation triangles’ within value chains for the benefit of smallholder farmers.
Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) is a set of farming methods, and also a grassroots peasant movement, which has spread to various states in India. It has attained wide success in southern India, especially the southern Indian state of Karnataka where it first evolved. The movement in Karnataka state was born out of collaboration between Mr Subhash Palekar, who put together the ZBNF practices, and the state farmers association Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), a member of La Via Campesina (LVC).