This study analyse how agricultural extension can be made more effective in terms of increasing farmers’ adoption of pro-nutrition technologies, such as biofortified crops. In a randomised controlled trial with farmers in Kenya, the authors implemented several extension treatments and evaluated their effects on the adoption of beans biofortified with iron and zinc. Difference-in-difference estimates show that intensive agricultural training can increase technology adoption considerably.
Classical innovation adoption models implicitly assume homogenous information flow across farmers, which is often not realistic. As a result, selection bias in adoption parameters may occur. We focus on tissue culture (TC) banana technology that was introduced in Kenya more than 10 years ago. Up till now, adoption rates have remained relatively low.
Food systems in developing countries are transforming, involving a rapid expansion of supermarkets. This supermarket revolution may affect dietary patterns and nutrition, but empirical evidence is scarce. The few existing studies have analyzed implications for food consumers and producers separately. We discuss a more integrated framework that helps to gain a broader understanding. Reviewing recent evidence from Kenya, we show that buying food in supermarkets instead of traditional outlets contributes to overnutrition among adults, while reducing undernutrition among children.
Iron deficiency is a widespread nutritional problem in developing countries, causing impaired physical activity and cognitive development, as well as maternal mortality. Although food fortification and supplementation programmes have been effective in some countries, their overall success remains limited. Biofortification, that is, breeding crops for higher micronutrient content, is a relatively new approach. We propose a methodology for ex-ante impact assessment of iron biofortification, which builds on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and a large household data set.
How we eat has a major impact on our individual health status, our quality of life and our well-being. Many of the foods we eat have a major social, environmental, climate and animal welfare footprint. This expertise defines policies to promote sustainability in food consumption as policies that integrate all four target dimensions: human health, social aspects, the natural environment (including climate) and animal welfare. Achieving greater sustainability in food consumption poses great challenges.
La production et la commercialisation de lait en Afrique de l’Ouest fait partie intégrante de l’économie et du mode de vie des familles d’éleveurs ruraux. La filière présente des potentiels de croissance certains avec un cheptel important, un secteur de la transformation dynamique et des débouchés en forte augmentation du fait de la croissance démographique et de l’urbanisation. Cette filière lait local est cependant aux prises à de nombreuses difficultés internes qui limitent fortement son développement.
Note de synthèse du rapport réalisé par la commission Agriculture et alimentation (C2A) de Coordination SUD. Il met en lumière les enjeux d’une adaptation des agricultures familiales aux changements climatiques sous l’angle des politiques publiques à partir de l’étude de cas des politiques mises en place au Costa Rica, au Niger et au Vietnam.
Many of the world’s food-insecure and undernourished people are smallholder farmers in developing countries. This is especially true in Africa. There is an urgent need to make smallholder agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive. African farm households are known to consume a sizeable part of what they produce at home. Less is known about how much subsistence agriculture actually contributes to household diets, and how this contribution changes seasonally. We use representative data from rural Ethiopia covering every month of one full year to address this knowledge gap.
Farm input subsidies are often criticised on economic and ecological grounds. The promotion of natural resource management (NRM) technologies is widely seen as more sustainable to increase agricultural productivity and food security. Relatively little is known about how input subsidies affect farmers’ decisions to adopt NRM technologies. There are concerns of incompatibility, because NRM technologies are one strategy to reduce the use of external inputs in intensive production systems.
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.