Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, examines the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas that emerge in particular settings, such as family farming in Brazil, do not travel easily across space and socio-political realities.
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.
Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and development. This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that would seem to have an important role in efforts to tackle poverty reduction and food security. These organisations appear to occupy a niche that sits between mainstream for-profit enterprises and the developmental activities of government programmes, NGOs and development projects.
The 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2021) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year existence. The report is produced by the Global Network against Food Crises (which includes WFP), an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger.
While smallholder farmers are the primary food producers in Southern Africa, contributing to 90 percent of food production in some countries, often systems in the region do not support profitability for them. WFP is working across Southern Africa to address bottlenecks in food systems to enhance the resilience of smallholder farmers. This factsheet gives an overview of WFP’s approach to smallholder farmers.
The objective of the assessment is to analyse the agricultural and rural sector of Zimbabwe from a gender perspective at the macro (policy), meso (institutional) and micro (community and household) levels in order to identify gender inequalities in access to critical productive resources, assets, services and opportunities. In particular, the assessment identifies needs and constraints of both women and men in selected FAO areas of competence as well as priorities and gaps. Also, it provides rec ommendations and guidance to promote gender sensitivity of future programming and projects.
The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures final report provides an overview of the evidence and discusses the challenges and choices for policy makers and others whose interests relate to all areas that interact with the food system.
Innovation in Vidzeme Planning Region is realized in the frame of National innovation system, the elements of which correspond to innovation and innovation system theories, and the best practices of which are applied in the most innovative countries of the world. Nevertheless, innovation in Vidzeme Planning Region is fragmented and is being introduced slowly, and its impact on economic development is faintly visible. It witnesses a problem, which was identified, analysed and its solutions searched by the authors.
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.
This Economic and Sector Work paper, “Enhancing Agricultural Innovation: How to Go Beyond the Strengthening of Research Systems,” was initiated as a result of the international workshop, “Development of Research Systems to Support the Changing Agricultural Sector,” organized by the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank in June 2004 in Washington, DC.