Two major agricultural transformations are currently being promoted worldwide: digitalisation and ecologisation, that include different practices such as organic farming and sustainable intensification. In literature and in societal debates, these two transformations are sometimes described as antagonistic and sometimes as convergent but are rarely studied together. Using an innovation system approach, this paper discusses how diverse ecologisation pathways grasp digitalisation in the French agricultural sector; and do not discriminate against organic farming.
CONTEXT
Big data applications in agriculture evolve fast, as more experience, applications, good practices and computational power become available. Actual solutions to real-life problems are scarce. What characterizes the adoption of big data problems to solutions and to what extent is there a match between them?
OBJECTIVE
We aim to assess the conditions of the adoption of big data technologies in agricultural applications, based on the investigation of twelve real-life practical use cases in the precision agriculture and livestock domain.
METHODS
This paper addresses how co-producing knowledge can assist local farmers in reshaping their territories into sustainable farming systems. We describe the emergence and consolidation of an agroforestry system in an Eastern Amazon forest frontier, unpacking the co-production of a new farming system over recent decades. Instead of assuming pre-defined categories (e.g., traditional/technical, local/external), the analysis focuses on interactions among knowledge holders and how multiple knowledge sources are intercalated.
Malaria afflicts many people in the developing world, and due to its direct and indirect costs it has widespread impacts on growth and development. The global impact of malaria on human health, productivity, and general well-being is profound. Human activity, including agriculture, has been recognized as one of the reasons for the increased intensity of malaria around the world, because it supports the breeding of mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
A fragmented digital agriculture ecosystem has been linked to the slow scale-out of digital platforms and other digital technology solutions for agriculture. This has undermined the prospects of digitalizing agriculture and increasing sectoral outcomes in sub-Saharan African countries. We conceptualized an aggregator platform for digital services in agriculture as a special form of digital platforms that can enhance the value and usage of digital technologies at the industry level. Little is known about how such a platform can create value as a new service ecology in agriculture.
Animal-source foods (ASF), such as fish, provide a critical source of nutrients for dietary quality and optimal growth of children. In sub-Saharan Africa, children often consume monotonous cereal-based diets, a key determinate of malnutrition such as stunting. Identifying existing sources of ASF for children’s diets will inform the development of nutritious food systems for vulnerable groups.
Fish is a key source of income, food, and nutrition in Zambia, although unlike in the past, capture fisheries no longer meet the national demand for fish. Supply shortfalls created an opportunity to develop the aquaculture sector in Zambia, which is now one of the largest producers of farmed fish (Tilapia spp.) on the continent. In its present form, the aquaculture sector exhibits a dichotomy.
Plants are susceptive to various diseases in their growing phases. Early detection of diseases in plants is one of themost challenging problems in agriculture. If the diseases are not identified in the early stages, then they may ad-versely affect the total yield, resulting in a decrease in the farmers' profits. To overcome this problem, many re-searchers have presented different state-of-the-art systems based on Deep Learning and Machine Learningapproaches. However, most of these systems either use millions of training parameters or have low classificationaccuracies.
The recent proliferation of mobile phones in rural Africa has also led to increased interest in mobile financial services (MFS), such as mobile money and mobile banking. Such services are often portrayed as promising tools to improve agricultural finance, especially among smallholders who are typically underserved by traditional banks. However, empirical evidence on the actual use of MFS for agricultural activities is thin. Here, we use nationally representative data from Kenya to analyze the use of mobile payments, mobile savings, and mobile credit among the farming population.
Women in agriculture are far from the end of poverty, zero hunger, quality education, and gender equality — some of the sustainable development goals that can be significantly improved if we achieve greater participation and better working conditions for women in agriculture.