This paper comparatively analyzes the structure of agricultural policy development networks that connect organizations working on agricultural development, climate change and food security in fourteen smallholder farming communities across East Africa, West Africa and South Asia.
In this paper, is first described the design and development process of a modular ICT application system called GeoFarmer. Geofarmer was designed to provide a means by which farmers can communicate their experiences, both positive and negative, with each other and with experts and consequently better manage their crops and farms. We designed GeoFarmer in a collaborative, incremental and iterative process in which user needs and preferences were paramount.
This article presents programmatic lessons on scaling up research for development innovations that were implemented through the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF). Co-funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC), CIFSRF was a nine-year, two-phased program (2009–2018) that supported applied research to develop, test and scale proven food and nutrition security innovations. The outline of this paper is as follows.
This study examined the trend in climate in Ghana, how smallholder horticultural farmers perceive this changing climate and how they are responding to its perceived effects. A survey of 480 resource-constrained horticultural producers was conducted in two municipalities of Ghana. Descriptive analysis and Weighted Average Index were employed to rank identified adaptation strategies and challenges. The results showed that farmers are already experiencing increasing temperature and declining rainfall patterns consistent with trends of observed climate changing in the last two decades.
The present chapter outlines a descriptive analysis of the sorghum value chains across the globe, the identified major constraints of the sorghum value chain, the business service provisions, and suggested specific areas of interventions for upgradation of the value chain. Considering the VC of sorghum, it is very new and value addition is limited up to harvesting and marketing of whole sorghum grain.
This paper provides a snapshot of the agriculture-nutrition nexus in the region, outlines the pathways through which agriculture can influence nutrition outcomes, elaborates on the objectives of the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research consortium within this context, and highlights the core findings of the six papers that form the body of this Special Issue. The paper ends with five key lessons that have emerged from this research, during this decade
In this paper, is explained how previous waves of innovation in South Asian agricultural and food systems have combined to create the present situation, and we suggest how alternative kinds of innovation may enable South Asian countries to escape from the triple burden of malnutrition.
This study examines whether agroecological farming practices, when employed by highly vulnerable households in sub-Saharan Africa, can improve food security and dietary diversity. The research involved a four-year study with 425 smallholder households, selected purposively based on high levels of food insecurity and/or positive HIV status. The households carried out agroecological experiments of their own choosing over a four-year period.
This study was part of a larger project that applied an integrated framework for combined nutritional, food safety and value chain analysis to assess the dairy value chain in two regions of Tanzania, namely Morogoro and Tanga. Here, we report on the use of participatory rural appraisals (PRAs) with producers and consumers to investigate seasonality, constraints and opportunities in cow milk production and consumption in ten villages in Tanzania and describe attitudes and practices surrounding milk quality and safety.
The objective of the study was to outline the determinants of market awareness and participation in the Kaonafatso ya Dikgomo (KyD) scheme in South Africa. The study utilised a cross-sectional survey of a randomly selected sample of 116 KyD farmers in KwaZulu-Natal Province. A Logit model was used to analyse the data. The results show that more farmers are aware of farmgate market channels, but however, they tended to utilise auction market channels.