Decision support systems (DSS) have long been used in research, service provision and extension. Despite the diversity of technological applications in which past agricultural DSS canvass, there has been relatively little information on either the functional aspects of DSS designed for economic decisions in irrigated cropping, or the human and social factors influencing the adoption of knowledge from such DSS.
International agricultural research is often motivated by the potential benefits it could bring to smallholder farmers in developing countries. A recent experimental literature has emerged on why innovations resulting from such research, which often focuses on yield enhancement, fail to be adopted due to either external or internal constraints. This article reviews this literature, focusing on the traits of the different technologies and their complexity and distinguishing between yield-enhancing, variance-reducing, and water- or labor-reducing technologies.
Les travaux portant sur l’inclusion des petits exploitants dans l’agriculture contractuelle dans le monde dressent des constats contradictoires. En Algérie, l’État a engagé en 2009 un programme d’appui à l’intégration des filières lait et tomate industrielle, en accordant des primes aux entreprises et aux agriculteurs qui s’engagent ensemble dans des contrats de commercialisation.
To achieve food security for all, new resource policies for sustainable land and water use are needed. Land, water and energy need to be considered jointly in policies, not in isolation.
Agriculture continues to be the backbone of the economy of Rwanda contributing more than a third of the country’s GDP. The government of Rwanda with collaboration of researchers and its population has to stress on policies and projects to stimulate productivity as they are many corners in agriculture sector to be improved. Bolstering the livelihoods in developing countries is feasible through maintenance of food sovereignty and safety by increasing 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 rapid transformation of agri-food value chains in Africa and other developing countries has important implications for economic growth and poverty reduction. Policy makers increasingly recognize this but there is a need for a better understanding of what value chain transformation entails and what the main policy options are. This paper provides an overview and analysis of different value chain models that have emerged in the past decades and reviews the literature on the main development implications.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, young entrepreneurs in agrifood systems in sub-Saharan Africa were already facing a number of challenges. The main challenges include limited access to natural resources, finance, technology, knowledge and information, and insufficient participation in policy dialogues and other decision-making processes. The COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions to agricultural value chains are presenting additional hurdles for these agripreneurs.
Ever since the Asilomar Conference on ‘Recombinant DNA' in February 1975, regulatory policies relating to recombinant DNA technology have focused on the idea that this technology implies threats to human health and the environment [1].
This article departs from the assumption that the challenge of putting the Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F) into action stems from the broader challenge of attaining cross-sectoral policy integration. Policy integration has been part of the EU's policy approach for a long time and has predominantly been achieved in the form of environmental policy integration (EPI). However, the scope of the F2F extends beyond EPI, as it includes the integration of climate-related concerns into sectoral policies, for instance.