This paper published in the 56th Annual Conference of The Agriculture Economics Association of South Africa, describes the opportunities of innovation bringed by the new global cannabis marketing, especially in Lesotho and aims to fill the gap of focused social scientific research on the potential of cannabis cultivation to promote inclusive growth creating conditions of improved social justice and economic emancipation
This paper has been prepared from a transcript of a presentation at the Crawford Fund 2017. This talk is a synthesis of some of the emerging issues we are seeing in the digital revolution, and how we can overcome the barriers to digitalised agricultural systems in the developing world
A value chain study on sweet potato was conducted in 11 districts of Malawi across all the three regions to analyze and identify bottlenecks and inherent opportunities for possible investments for upgrading and development of the value chain. The study applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to collect primary data from 94 farmers belonging to 7 farmer groups using Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), 14 traders and 16 key informants comprising policy makers, NGO representatives and scientists from both local and international research institutions.
The study focuses on how levels of innovation, measured by complexity and investments requirements of the adopted technologies, relates to innovative behavior and complying with social responsibility practices, as two indicators of the farmer's behavior towards innovation. A typology of farmers with different technological
levels was constructed based on multivariate techniques, according to the adoption of seven technologies. The main objective of the study was to relate SR and innovative behavior to the technology clusters
The aim of the paper is to analyse the linkage between science development, innovative ideas, their dissemination, establishment of extension services and their impact on the innovative development of the agricultural sector. As a result, solutions for expanding the coverage of the extension network, together with the diversification and improvement of its services are provided. The primary data from key stakeholders were collected through a semi-structured interview.
The aim of the paper is to evaluate the impact of value-webs as an innovation in agricultural production on welfare of cassava smallholders in Nigeria. The estimation procedure involved the alternative process of multivalued treatment models when treatment units have multiple values. The study thus extends previous impact studies which focused on estimating causal effects from binary treatment units. The treatment units were determined from the extent of utilization of cassava which informed the classification of households into value-web groups.
The main purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between trainers’ qualification and learning success and satisfaction of small-scale farmers during training activities in Bihar, India. Moderated mediation analysis is utilized to measure the direct and indirect effects of trainers’ qualification on learning success and satisfaction. Therefore, the psychological constructs of attitude and perceived control from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) operate as mediators, subjective norms act as moderator, and gender and age serve as covariates
There is a lack of quantitative information about farmers preferences of those activities, which are crucial to refine capacity development activities in the future. This study employs a discrete choice experiment analysing the willingness to pay to determine the preferences of small-scale farmers for agricultural training with respect to the training method, trainer, duration, location and additional offers
The aim of this study was to investigate the vulnerabilities of women involved in a bean value chain development intervention at the Maendeloe Innovation Platform in Eastern DRC. Specifically, the paper first discusses the roles of women and men in the value chain, what production resources and benefits they access and control, the role of the IP as a vehicle for women’s empowerment, and identifies women’s gender needs. Secondly, the paper identifies women’s vulnerabilities, and the capacities that the IP could build on, to support their participation in bean value chain development
The aim of this study is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of Russian grain production, to determine country’s production potential and its possibility to remain one of the major grain producers on the world market. On the one hand was estimated the technical efficiency during the period of transition to the market economy. By applying a novel approach to the estimation of production efficiency on a regional level, we assess the grain production potential and determine factors that influence productivity beyond the control of the farmers.