Since the early 1990s, liberalization of the seed market in Tanzania has attracted several foreign companies that now market maize hybrids in the country. In this article, we analyze the impacts of proprietary hybrids on maize yields, production, and household living standards. We build on a recent survey of smallholder maize farmers in two zones of Tanzania. Hybrid adoption rates are 48% and 13% in the North and East, respectively. Average net yield gains of hybrids are 50-60%, and there are also significant profit effects.
Supermarkets and high-value exports are currently gaining ground in the agri-food systems of many developing countries. While recent research has analyzed income effects in the small farm sector, impacts on farming efficiency have hardly been studied. Using a survey of Kenyan vegetable growers and a stochastic frontier approach, we show that participation in supermarket channels increases mean technical efficiency by 19%. This gain is bigger at lower levels of efficiency, suggesting the potential for positive income distribution effects.
Food systems in developing countries are transforming, involving a rapid expansion of supermarkets. This supermarket revolution may affect dietary patterns and nutrition, but empirical evidence is scarce. The few existing studies have analyzed implications for food consumers and producers separately. We discuss a more integrated framework that helps to gain a broader understanding. Reviewing recent evidence from Kenya, we show that buying food in supermarkets instead of traditional outlets contributes to overnutrition among adults, while reducing undernutrition among children.
Rising demand for agricultural commodities coupled with population growth, climate change, declining soil fertility, environmental degradation and rural poverty in the developing world call for strategies to sustainably intensify agricultural production. Sustainable intensification refers to increasing production from the same area of land while reducing its negative environmental consequences.
The creation of Competitive Research Grants (CRGs) is globally recognized as an institutional innovation for improving the effectiveness of agricultural research. Unlike block grants for research, CRGs are expected to bring in many top-quality proposals from a wide range of actors, selecting the best out of them and thus getting more value for money.
The Korea National University of Agriculture and Fisheries (KNUAF)'s innovative program is helping South Korea overcome issues relating to its ageing rural population while simultaneously developing elite human resources to establish and promote a highly competent agriculture sector. Since its inception, the KNUAF has been producing young highly competent professionals to manage its high tech agriculture either as entrepreneurs or farm managers.
This paper illustrates the Small Stock Innovation Platform, an initiative which is one of the key tangible outcomes of the Strengthening Capacity in Agricultural Research for Development in Africa (SCARDA) program, focused on strengthening capacity in agricultural research systems in selected countries and institutions in all three sub-regions of Sub Saharan Africa.
The contributions and dynamic interaction of thousands of stakeholders from all sectors have created the GCARD (Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development) Roadmap, providing a clear path forward for all involved. The Roadmap highlights the urgent changes required in Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) systems globally, to address worldwide goals of reducing hunger and poverty, creating opportunity for income growth while ensuring environmental sustainability and particularly meeting the needs of resource-poor farmers and consumer.
The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures final report provides an overview of the evidence and discusses the challenges and choices for policy makers and others whose interests relate to all areas that interact with the food system.
In comparison with the other EU (27) countries Innovation capacity indicators in Latvia remain low and considerably underperform. Problems and solutions are illustrated to represent innovation capacity in Latvia. The article consists of the following parts: first - theoretical aspects are selected to describe the essential definition of the analyzed subject. In the second part, experience from abroad is described, at the end – Latvian innovation policy and situation is analyzed and suggestions for further needs are formulated.