African agriculture is currently at a crossroads, at which persistent food shortages are compounded by threats from climate change. But, as this book argues, Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security. To achieve this Africa has to define agriculture as a force in economic growth by: advancing scientific and technological research; investing in infrastructure; fostering higher technical training; and creating regional markets.
Inclusive business models dominate current development policy and practices aimed at addressing food and nutrition insecurity among smallholder farmers. Through inclusive agribusiness, smallholder food security is presumed to come from increased farm productivity (food availability) and income (food access). Based on recent research, the focus of impact assessments of inclusive business models has been limited to instrumental aspects, such as the number of farmers supported, the training provided, and immediate farm outcomes, namely revenue.
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.
As the PAEPARD project is complex and multi-faceted, ensuring that appropriate information is made available to users in a timely manner and in a form that can be easily understood and used has been a major challenge.
Farm input subsidies are often criticised on economic and ecological grounds. The promotion of natural resource management (NRM) technologies is widely seen as more sustainable to increase agricultural productivity and food security. Relatively little is known about how input subsidies affect farmers’ decisions to adopt NRM technologies. There are concerns of incompatibility, because NRM technologies are one strategy to reduce the use of external inputs in intensive production systems.
The report specifically analyses the NIS in Peru and Colombia in the coffee and dairy sectors due to their economic importance for both countries and the large percentage of small producers in these sectors. In order to analyse the NIS, we have utilised an innovations systems approach to form the analytical framework. This framework focuses on four main areas – understanding the actors in the NIS, their roles and attitudes, the patterns of interaction of these actors, and the enabling environment with a focus on small producer inclusion.
The Improved Agriculture for Smallholders Western Kenya (TASK) is one of five projects in the five-year USAID funded Development Assistance Program (DAP) II referred to as Sustainable Livelihood Security for Vulnerable Households program in Nyanza province. It aims to improve, in a sustainable manner, food and livelihood security for 4500 vulnerable households in 7 districts in Nyanza province.
This paper shows that the current generation of transgenic crop varieties has significant potential to improve economic welfare in low-income countries. These varieties might increase crop yields in low-income countries in cases when pesticides have not been used. They will reduce negative health effects of chemicals when they replace them. With low transaction costs, appropriate infrastructure, and access to intellectual property, multiple varieties of transgenics will be introduced.
This paper presents a qualitative case study of a US based beef co-operative integrated to a VBSC. Was used an analytical framework of viability, sustainability and resilience to analyse impacts at farm-level. Our analysis highlights a number of positive effects on farm-level viability, sustainability and resilience including improvements to market orientation and price stability, among others which provide crucial insights for beef PO development in Ireland.
The Global Innovation Index (GII) aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation by providing a rich database of detailed metrics for 127 economies, which represent 92.5% of the world’s population and 97.6% of global GDP. As Ban Ki-moon, the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations, noted at the UN Economic and Social Council in 2013, the GII is a ‘unique tool for refining innovation policies . . . for providing an accurate picture on the role of science, technology and innovation in sustainable development’.