The Newsletter of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) provides regular updates on global activities by TAP and its partners, on the CDAIS projects and on upcoming related events. This issue specifically refers to the period from July 2020 to September 2020, including also some activities of October 2020.
Sustainable food systems are fundamental to ensuring that future generations are food secure and eat healthy diets. To transition towards sustainability, many food system activities must be reconstructed, and myriad actors around the world are starting to act locally. While some changes are easier than others, knowing how to navigate through them to promote sustainable consumption and production practices requires complex skill sets.
Los sistemas alimentarios sostenibles son fundamentales para garantizar que las generaciones actuales y futuras tengan seguridad alimentaria y puedan llevar una dieta saludable. Para hacer la transición hacia la sostenibilidad, es necesario reconstruir muchas actividades del sistema alimentario, y un sinnúmero de actores en todo el mundo están empezando a actuar localmente. Si bien algunos cambios son más fáciles que otros, saber cómo navegar a través de ellos para promover prácticas de consumo y producción sostenibles requiere un conjunto complejo de aptitudes.
Agricultural transformation and development are critical to the livelihoods of more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural people in developing countries. Extension and advisory services play an important role in such transformation and can assist farmers with advice and information, brokering and facilitating innovations and relationships, and dealing with risks and disasters.
The building of sustainable innovation capabilities in Africa requires an innovation system capable of producing, disseminating and using new knowledge. This paper assesses the process of constructing the National Innovation System (NIS) in Rwanda. It is posited that consensus on and acceptance of the concept of NIS among stakeholders is crucial in the early process of constructing an efficient and dynamic innovation system. Primary empirical data are presented for the case of Rwanda and analyzed in a regional context.
Access to and usage of smartphones for agricultural purposes amongst small-scale farmers in rural areas of developing countries is still limited. Smartphones may provide an opportunity to develop farmers’ capacities with specific applications offering fast access to continually updated and reliable information. This study develops a framework to investigate the cognitive and affective behavioural drivers of smallholder farmers´ intention to use a smartphone in a developing country context.
Policy brief No. 2. The majority of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers in developing countries. These smallhol- ders face several obstacles that limit their produc- tivity and profits, such that their incomes remain low. Institutional changes in the agricultural value chains are required to reduce poverty rates among smallholder farmers, and to stimulate agricultural growth.
Policy brief No. 3. Adequate nutrition is a crucial welfare dimension. Malnutrition at a young age can have severe con- sequences for a person’s development of human, social, and economic capital. Also in later phases of one’s life, malnutrition can severely affect health and restrict productivity as well as overall quality of life. Efforts to improve nutrition among rural populations, for example through more diversified diets, are therefore key components of many rural development agendas, especially in Africa where undernutrition is still a large public health prob- lem.
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.
Poverty is prevalent in the small-farm sector of many developing countries. A large literature suggests that contract farming —a preharvest agreement between farmers and buyers— can facilitate smallholder market participation, improve household welfare, and promote rural development. These findings have influenced the development policy debate, but the external validity of the extant evidence is limited. Available studies typically focus on a single contract scheme or on a small geographical area in one country.