Food security is predicted toface considerable challenges in the upcoming period. This couldbe more profound in developing countries due to rapid societal change and ecological pressure in theseregions. Concerted efforts to deal with these challenges areof great importance, including accelerating th euse of improved agricultural input technology (IAIT) such as high yield varieties of seeds and improved fertilizer formulas. This type of innovation is more suitable to being introduced amongst developing countries farmers in order to increase their productivity.
In response to population growth, rising income and urbanisation, the demand for livestock products, such as milk, meat and eggs is growing in Ethiopia. The growing demand for milk products offers opportunities for smallholders to realize better livelihoods. Whereas the growing demand for milk products in Ethiopia is widely recognised, the dairy sector has not been able to produce adequate milk to satisfy this demand, mainly due to low productivity of dairy animals.
The development and scaling of orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) during the past 25 years is a case study of a disruptive innovation to address a pressing need – the high levels of vitamin A deficiency among children under five years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. When the innovation was introduced consumers strongly preferred white or yellow-fleshed sweetpotato, so it was necessary to create a demand to respond to that need. This was at odds with the breeding strategy of responding to consumers’ demands.
The latest turmoil of production and price volatility in the global food sector has put agriculture back to the top of the development agenda. Population growth, changing consumer preferences, bioenergy demand and climate change are some of the huge challenges for agricultural production today and in the future. In the last decades, productivity has been constantly improved through the introduction of improved crop varieties and the greater use of mechanization, irrigation, chemical fertilizer and pesticides.
The main purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between trainers’ qualification and learning success and satisfaction of small-scale farmers during training activities in Bihar, India. Moderated mediation analysis is utilized to measure the direct and indirect effects of trainers’ qualification on learning success and satisfaction. Therefore, the psychological constructs of attitude and perceived control from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) operate as mediators, subjective norms act as moderator, and gender and age serve as covariates
Ce document présente une série d'initiatives visées á renforcer les capacités de la société civile, par exemple en promouvant la participation des citoyens dans les processus de prise de décisions, ou en améliorant la gestion des ressources et l’accès à l’éducation pour les enfants.
As a key pillar of the Ugandan economy, the agriculture sector is a critical driver of economic growth and poverty alleviation. Uganda's agricultural sector is dominated by smallholders with low levels of productivity. The agriculture sector is highly exposed to co-variant risks, which include weather, biological, infrastructure (post-harvest loss), price, and market risks. This plethora of risks suppresses appetite for investment in the sector. Despite the sector's contribution to the economy, farmers' access to finance remains a major constraint.
TECA is an FAO online platform for the exchange and sharing of agricultural technologies and practices for smallholder farmers and producers. The platform facilitates the transformation process in rural areas by making relevant and innovative technologies available to farmers in the field. In doing so, TECA further enhances the access to knowledge of smallholder producers in rural areas increasing their capacity to innovate and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This paper compares lessons learned from nine studies that explored institutional determinants of innovation towards sustainable intensification of West African agriculture. The studies investigated issues relating to crop, animal, and resources management in Benin, Ghana, and Mali.The studies showed that political ambitions to foster institutional change were often high (restoring the Beninese cotton sector and protecting Ghanaian farmers against fluctuating cocoa prices) and that the institutional change achieved was often remarkable.
The agricultural innovation systems approach emphasizes the collective nature of innovation and stresses that innovation is a co-evolutionary process, resulting from alignment of technical, social, institutional and organizational dimensions. These insights are increasingly informing interventions that focus on setting up multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as innovation platforms and networks, as mechanisms for enhancing agricultural innovation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.