This study considers what lessons might be learned from the cassava value chain in the context of CTA’s interest in the potentials of: digital financial services for agriculture, such as mobile payments for farmers’ products; other payment streams for financial inclusion of farmer; index based insurance services; digital services to support access to loans and credits. This research provides a comprehensive market study of cash usage behavioural practices and financial literacy among cassava farmers in Ghana and Nigeria.
This study aims at inspiring the success of further agricultural innovation policies. Findings fromthis study will provide useful inputs for researchers, governments, the private sector, donors, and other stakeholders to improve policy-maker engagement processes for innovations to ensure appropriate development and dissemination of innovation and maximise their socioeconomic impacts on the wider population.
The study responds to the request by farmers in the Hohoe and Jasikan Rice Innovation Platforms, to identify traders and consumers’ rice preferences to enable them produce rice varieties that meet users’ demands. The study provided strategic guidelines for the development of a marketing and promotional plan for locally produced rice in Ghana. The report is structured as follows: Chapter one introduces the study including the study objectives, design and methodology.
Literature is scanty on how public agricultural investments can help reducing the impact of future challenges such as climate change and population pressure on national economies. The objective of this study is to assess the medium and long-term effects of alternative agricultural research and development investment scenarios on male and female employment in 14 African countries. The authors first estimate the effects of agricultural investment scenarios on the overall GDP growth of a given country using partial and general equilibrium models.
Ghana is characterized by obvious economic disparities between northern and southern Ghana. In this paper, we analyze these disparities and economic growth by examining the current farming structure with reference to land use patterns and farming practices and linkages with the market economy.
This study addresses this particular research gap by adopting a multi-scale approach to understand how climatic and non-climatic stressors vary, and interact, across three spatial scales (household, community and district levels) to influence livelihood vulnerability of smallholder farming households in the Savannah zone of northern Ghana. This study across three case study villages utilises a series of participatory tools including semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions.
This study examines interventions in two agricultural development projects in Ghana which aimed to build competitiveness of selected value chains to generate growth and reduce poverty – the Northern Rural Growth Project, implemented between 2009 and 2016, and the Market Oriented Agriculture Programme, which began in 2004 and is still in place.
African indigenous vegetables (AIVs) have the potential to increase food and nutritional security and contribute to improved livelihoods, but farmers’ capacity to meet the growing demand for them has been constrained by a lack of good quality seed and technical knowhow. The Good Seed Initiative (GSI), funded by Irish Aid and active in Tanzania from 2013 to 2015, targeted both seed and vegetable growers, linking them to markets through an innovation platform (IP) approach.
In Nepal, the Plantwise programme, in collaboration with International Development Enterprises (iDE), has established networks of locally owned plant clinics, run by community business facilitators (CBFs) trained as plant doctors, who provide practical plant health advice. This study examines how gender is integrated into this programme in three purposively selected study districts. It presents the experiences of farmers, the challenges they faced in accessing plant health services through a gender and social inclusion lens.
This publication is one of four CABI briefings on climate change. The key messages in this briefing are:
• Farmers need timely, accurate, and clear advice on how to manage pest risks
• Digitally-enabled early warning systems can help farmers adapt and minimize losses
• The complex interactions between pests, plants, and the environment under future climate change scenarios need further research to determine best practices
• Scaling digital climate information services will require a sharp focus on equity and inclusion