The digital transformation in agriculture introduces new challenges in terms of data, knowledge and technology adoption due to critical interoperability issues, and also challenges regarding the identification of the most suitable data sources to be exploited and the information models that must be used.
The mergers of some of the world's largest agribusinesses have led to speculation about what sort of global citizens the new companies will become and whether vulnerable rural populations, especially smallholder men and women farmers, will be negatively impacted. As innovation leaders in the agriculture industry, these new companies will be expected to play key roles in finding solutions for major agricultural challenges facing the world today.
Increasing on-farm production diversity and improving markets are recognized as ways to improve the dietary diversity of smallholders. Using instrumental variable methods to account for endogeneity, this paper studies the interplay of production diversity, markets and diets in the context of seasonality in Afghanistan. Accordingly to the authors improved crop diversity over the year is positively associated with dietary diversity in the regular season, but not in the lean season.
Existing studies which have examined the impact of group farming on farm productivity have focused predominantly on former socialist regimes, usually comparing production under various types of collectivised/cooperatized farms with farm enterprises that emerged in the post-reform period, or after decollectivisation. Given this specificity, their experience is at best indicative; it cannot provide substantive lessons on the potential outcomes of group farming in today’s developing countries. This paper seeks to do so.
After years of neglect, there is a renewed interest in agricultural mechanization in Africa. Since government initiatives to promote mechanization are confronted with major governance challenges, private-sector initiatives may offer a promising alternative. However, given limited scientific studies on such private-sector options such approaches are often viewed skeptically. One concern is that multi-national agribusiness companies take advantage of smallholder farmers. Another concern is that mechanization causes rural unemployment.
USAID/CINSERE (Services d’information climatiques pour améliorer la résilience et la productivité au Sénégal) est un projet de 4 ans qui vise à renforcer les capacités nationales pour la production, l’accès et la diffusion efficiente d’informations météorologiques et climatiques (IMC) et à développer des stratégies pour une mise à l’échelle durable de l’utilisation des services d’information météorologiques et climatiques (SIC) sur toute l’étendue du territoire sénégalais.
This paper looks at the process of agricultural innovation and the contribution agricultural research can make. To be able to analyse the process of agricultural innovation, three dimensions are distinguished: 1) opportunity assessment to identify ‘entry points for change’, defined drawing on the expertise and experience of many actors; 2) experimentation under realistic circumstances, leading to ‘tested and tried promising new practices’; and 3) bringing into routine use for ‘impact at scale’, which invariably incurs in further adaptation to fit a diversity of ‘local realities’.
The objective of this present study is to scrutinize the challenges in implementing PPP by examining the factors that hinder the successful adoption of PPP in Malaysia. A questionnaire survey was used to elicit the perceptions of the public and private sectors concerning the constraints of PPP implementation in Malaysia. A total of 122 usable responses were obtained.
This article explored patterns of farming system diversity through the classification of 70 smallholder farm households in two districts (Savelugu-Nanton and Tolon-Kumbungu) of Ghana’s Northern Region. Based on 2013 survey data, the typology was constructed using the multivariate statistical techniques of principal component analysis and cluster analysis.
In this paper the authors present the diagnosis and re-design of farm systems as part of an innovation process involving farmers and scientists to improve the sustainability of family farms in south Uruguay. Although were selected farms with a large variation in resource endowment, they shared the main critical points of sustainability: low productivity and deteriorated soil quality.