We look at the trade-off between smallholder cocoa intensification and the ecosystem in Indonesia and investigate the determinants of environmental efficiency in cocoa production. In our analysis, we apply a distance output function that includes cocoa production and the abundance of native rainforest plants as outputs. Our data set, based on a household and environment survey conducted in 2015, allows us to analyze 208 cocoa producers with both measured and self-reported data. We find that the intensification of cocoa farms results in higher ecosystem degradation.
Farm workers in developing countries often belong to the poorest of the poor. They typically face low wages, informal working arrangements, and inadequate social protection. Written employment contracts with clearly defined rights and obligations could possibly help, but it is not clear how such contracts could be introduced and promoted in traditional peasant environments. To address this question, we develop and implement a randomized controlled trial with farmers in Côte d’Ivoire.
This brief explains the concept of gender equality in advisory services and discusses the opportunities that gender equality in rural advisory services can create for global and local food production, women’s economic empowerment, household food security, and nutrition. It summarises experiences of how gender equality can be pursued in advisory services and provides some practical examples.
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) partnered with the Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI) in 2011 to conduct a series of policy dialogues on the prioritization of demand-driven agricultural research for development in South Asia. Dialogues were conducted with a wide range of stakeholders in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal in mid-2012 and this report captures feedback from those dialogues.
This paper explores the application of the innovation systems framework to the design and construction of national agricultural innovation indicators. Optimally, these indicators could be used to gauge and benchmark national performance in developing more responsive, dynamic, and innovative agricultural sectors in developing countries.
Agriculture and food supply face a repositioning in the context of challenges associated with the Millennium Development Goals. From a development perspective it is of central importance to identify the role that the sector should perform in the fight against poverty and in a world that is increasingly urbanized.
This background note for the development of an AIS Investment Sourcebook provides a menu of tools and guidance to invest in agricultural innovation in different contexts. The content is drawn on tested good practice examples and innovative approaches with emphasis on lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and replicability
The Andhra Pradesh sorghum coalition illustrates the valued added by working in coalition. By combining different perspectives to give rise to new, synthesised ideas, the member organisations worked at a faster pace and achieved their objectives more successfully and sustainably than they could have done if working separately. The methodology of their research was designed collaboratively. As a result, scientists carried out repeat experiments on poultry, at the request of poultry farmers and feed manufacturers, which greatly increased their confidence in the evidence.
Drawing on a systematic review of over 500 documents, this study finds that, although FFS (farm field schools) projects have changed practices and raised yields in pilot projects, they have not been effective when taken to scale. The FFS approach requires a degree of facilitation and skilled facilitators, which are difficult to sustain beyond the life of the pilot programmes. FFS typically promotes better use of pesticides, which requires hands-on experience to encourage adoption. As a result, diffusion is unlikely and has rarely occurred in practice.
There is renewed attention on the importance of advisory services and extension in rural development processes. This paper, based on the publication ‘Mobilizing the potential of rural and agricultural extension', focuses on five opportunities to mobilise the potential of extension and advisory services. The five areas are: (1) focusing on best-fit approaches; (2) embracing pluralism; (3) using participatory approaches; (4) developing capacity; and (5) ensuring long-term institutional support.