Organic farming can play an important role in rural development and food production, by reinforcing the trend toward sustainable agriculture and its purpose of ecosystem conservation. The agribusiness of organic farming is particularly relevant in family farming, given the labor availability and the short marketing circuits. The innovative techniques of organic farming, namely with soil fertility, weed and pest control, opens a wide range of possibilities in its development and extension.
The purpose of this study was to assess the perceptions of agricultural technical school (ATS) instructors in Egypt related to implementing experiential learning in the form of internships. In July 2007, 90 ATS instructors attended workshops focused on conducting internship experiences. Self–perceived competency of ATS instructors to implement internships was assessed immediately following inservice training. Approximately a year later (June 2008), ATS instructors’ self–perceived importance and application of internship competencies were assessed. A discrepancy score was also calculated.
TAP and its partners carried out regional surveys in Asia, Africa and Central America to assess priorities, capacities and needs in national agricultural innovation systems. This document provides a Regional synthesis report on capacity needs assessment for agricultural innovation in Africa. FARA was selected as Recipient Organization by FAO to facilitate TAP implementation in Africa. This is mainly due to its position as the umbrella organization bringing together and forming coalitions of major regional stakeholders in agricultural research and development.
Zimbabwe has a pluralistic agricultural extension system. In addition to the public extension service, donors contract private service providers to deliver extension services in specific project areas. This study assesses the impact of an outsourced extension service on rural households in the Mutasa district of Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, and examines the financial cost and benefit of this service. The extension service was delivered by a local agribusiness firm and funded by USAID. The study analyses survey data gathered from 94 client and 90 non-client rural households.
This chapter presents an analytic framework to identify agricultural innovations that are sustainable and suitable for the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the population. The framework contains a set of tools to collect and evaluate information on appropriate innovations based on relevant criteria. It considers the dimensions of environmental resilience, economic viability, and social sustainability, as well as technical sustainability considering important properties of the innovation itself.
This white paper is intended to summarize the key insights gleaned from prior work applying information and communication technologies (ICTs) in support of agriculture and food systems, identifying approaches and opportunities that hold promise for enhancing global food security, and to identify important knowledge gaps that remain, offering guidance for new work that investigates how to apply information and communication technologies in agriculture.
The main objective of this study was to investigate and analyse the farmers’ perceptions on criteria and indicators for sustainable management of indigenous agroforestry systems in Uttarakhand state of India. The present study was conducted to document the traditional knowledge and considered five broad categories including agriculture management, livestock management, forest sustainability, social benefits, and policy inputs along with 16 criteria and 34 indicators were identified.
Agricultural development interventions tend to favour men. Women do most of the work and receive fewer benefits. A starting point is to assess gender capacities to give momentum to the implementation of strategic interventions responding to the needs of both men and women. The gender capacity assessment tool is participatory; the process can be seen as a gender sensitization activity for partners; it helps to generate useful data for M&E of gender capacity development interventions; It provides the opportunity to design a strategic gender capacity development intervention.
Se plantea en este trabajo producto de la investigación Asociatividad y Competitividad en la Agroindustria Alimentaria en Oaxaca, México, cuyo objeto es diseñar un modelo para la Agroindustria Alimentaria; para lo cual es necesario un análisis descriptivo documental que permite caracterizar los elementos que condicionan la Asociatividad en las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas del sector agroindustrial alimentario, y su utilización como estrategia para ser competitivas las MiPyMEs así como para hacer la contribución decisiva a la seguridad alimentaria. Se presenta en el documento la situa
El objeto de esta investigación es aproximarse a una construcción teórica que permita entender la asimilación del conocimiento popular desde la función de extensión universitaria, ofreciendo la posibilidad de rescatar su valor como forma válida del saber. Para ello, se exploró la evolución de la extensión universitaria y del conocimiento popular, desde una perspectiva real, procediéndose seguidamente a identificar los elementos presentes y sus respectivas relaciones de interdependencia, en un plano teórico.