Over the years, CTA has contributed to building ACP capacity to understand innovation processes, strengthen the agricultural innovation system and embed innovation thinking in agricultural and rural development strategies. The CTA Top 20 Innovations project set out to prove that innovation is taking place in ACP agriculture and in the process has demonstrated that smallholder farmers are beneficiaries as well as partners in agricultural innovation.
CCAFS (through the International Livestock Research Institute and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society) and the Africa Climate Policy Center sponsored a workshop on ‘Strengthening Regional Capacity for Climate Services in Africa’, held on 27th October 2015 at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has a pluralistic agricultural extension system. In addition to the public extension service, donors contract private service providers to deliver extension services in specific project areas. This study assesses the impact of an outsourced extension service on rural households in the Mutasa district of Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, and examines the financial cost and benefit of this service. The extension service was delivered by a local agribusiness firm and funded by USAID. The study analyses survey data gathered from 94 client and 90 non-client rural households.
An analysis of the impact of simulation modelling in three diverse crop-livestock improvement projects in Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) reveals benefits across a range of aspects including identification of objectives, design and implementation of experimental programs, effectiveness of participatory research with smallholder farmers, implementation of system change and scaling-out of results. In planning change, farmers must consider complex interactions within both biophysical and socioeconomic aspects of their crop and animal production activities.
This paper asks: What have been the impacts of farmer- or community-led (informal) processes of research and development in agriculture and natural resource management in terms of food security, ecological sustainability, economic empowerment, gender relations, local capacity to innovate and influence on formal agricultural research and development institutions?
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.
The report synthesises the research conducted under the PRO AKIS project for the topic "Designing, implementing and maintaining agricultural/rural networks to enhance farmers’ ability to innovate in cooperation with other rural actors".
This is the proceedings of the international conference ‘Innovations in Organic Food System for Sustainable Production and Enhanced Ecosystem Services’. The proceedings are a compilation of peer-reviewed articles based on presentations of 18 speakers invited conference speakers and published as a Special Issue of the scientific journal ‘Sustainable Agriculture Research’ by the Canadian Centre of Science and Education.
How much do poor rural households rely on environmental extraction from natural ecosystems? And how does climate variability impact their livelihoods? This paper sheds light on these two questions with household income data from the Poverty and Environment Network pantropical data set, combined with climate data for the
This study aims to achieve a better understanding of the agricultural risk and risk management situation in Tanzania with a view to identifying key solutions to reduce current gross domestic product (GDP) growth volatility. For the purpose of this assessment, risk is defined as the probability that an uncertain event will occur that can potentially produce losses to participants along the supply chain.