The Chinese Government has initiated a series of agricultural reforms since the 1970s to encourage agents to provide more services to farmers. In 2006, a new round of agricultural reforms was extended nationwide; however, the effectiveness of these reforms has not been examined. Based on a comparison of survey data sets before and after the reforms, we found that overall they significantly increased the time agents spend on agricultural extension services, although their effectiveness differs among three major components of the reforms.
Extension Education orientations defined as the degree of willingness to accept profession of academician or trainer to develop different types of extension human resources needed to work as an extension workforce. Extension education is the fundamental academic activity to be undertaken in extension to develop necessary human resources to work as extension educationists, extension workers, extension service provider and extension trainer. Till today there was no any tool to measure the orientation of Postgraduate scholars towards Extension education.
This paper considers how farmers engage with, utilise and share knowledge through a focus on the Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) initiative in the UK. In exploring the importance of social contexts and social relations to these practices, the paper brings together understandings of knowledge with those from the literature on good farming to consider how different knowledges gain credibility, salience and legitimacy in different contexts.
Forests are intrinsically linked to water – forested watersheds provide 75 percent of our accessible freshwater resources (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) – and both forest and water resources are relevant to the achievement of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the important interlinkages, the forest-water nexus is often unaccounted for in policy and planning. For example, three quarters of forests are not managed for soil and water conservation, which poses a fundamental challenge to achieving sustainable and resilient communities and ecosystems.
European agriculture is facing increasing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges, from changes in demographic trends to the effects of climate change. In this context of high instability, the agricultural sector in Europe needs to improve its resilience and sustainability. Local assessments and strategies at the farming system level are needed, and this paper focuses on a hazelnut farming system in central Italy. For the assessment, a participatory approach was used, based on a stakeholder workshop.
Although agricultural value chain resilience is a crucial component to food security and sustainable food systems in developing countries, it has received little attention. This paper synthesizes knowledge from the social-ecological systems (SES), supply chain management, and value chain development literature to make three contributions to this research gap. First, it is conceptualized the agricultural value chain resilience and relate it to overall food system resilience.
Innovative approaches are needed to shift towards more sustainable, equitable and healthy agri-food systems. Building on the increasing recognition of the relevance of traditional agroecological knowledge (TAeK) in sustainable food systems, this paper aims to describe innovative agri-food initiatives and explore how the use and valorization of TAeK may transform conventional agri-food systems. It employs a case-study approach in Spain, where we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 representatives of alternative agri-food initiatives.
Most of the existing literature focus on the cultivation of crops and vegetables, and lack relevant research of the Chinese dairy industry. Meanwhile there lacks micro data on adoption of raw milk safety measures by Chinese smallholder dairy farmers in the macro context of changing dairy industry. To fill this gap, a field survey was conducted in Inner Mongolia, which has the largest raw milk production base, dairy enterprises and diversified production types.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is considered as an ecological conservation technology for crop pests' management; however, the technology adoption is intensely affected by surrounding socio-psychological environment, which is poorly studied, particularly in developing nations. The present study therefore aimed at addressing this gap through application of an extended form of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in order to examine the determinants of Iranian farmers' ecological conservation behavior regarding the use of IPM practices.
Collaborative co-development of decision tools by researchers and corporate and financial actors, that draws upon their distinct needs and knowledge sets, can improve the utility of these tools for real-world application (e.g.