Smallholders in Asia and Africa are affected by increasingly complex national and global ecological and economic changes. Agricultural innovation and technology shifts are critical among these forces of change and integration with services is increasingly facilitated through innovations in institutions. Here the authors focused mainly on innovation opportunities for small farmers, with a particular emphasis on marginalized small farm communities. The chapter elaborates on the concept of the ‘small farm’ and offers a synthesis of the findings of all the chapters in this volume.
Smallholders have begun to take advantage of a growing pool of investment in climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, early movers in this area are working to develop innovative models that will allow projects to be financially sustainable and scalable while benefiting local actors. This study focuses on two of these projects in East Africa, managed by Vi Agroforestry in Kenya and ECOTRUST in Uganda. They engaged in a participatory action research process to identify ways that local actors could take on expanded roles within the projects
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.
Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, examines the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas that emerge in particular settings, such as family farming in Brazil, do not travel easily across space and socio-political realities.
This book summarizes the achievements as well as some of the challenges faced while implementing integrated systems research to support the sustainable development of smallholder farming in the uplands of the Mekong region.
The globalisation of agrifood systems is a mega-trend with potentially profound nutritional implications. This paper describes various facets of this globalisation process and reviews studies on nutritional effects with a particular focus on developing countries. Results show that global trade and technological change in agriculture have substantially improved food security in recent decades, although intensified production systems have also contributed to environmental problems in some regions.
This study was undertaken to assess the utility of remotely sensed net primary productivity (NPP) data to measure agricultural sustainability by applying a new methodology that captures spatial variability and trends in total NPP and in NPP removed at harvest. The sustainable intensification of agriculture is widely promoted as a means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and transitioning toward a more productive, sustainable, and inclusive agriculture, particularity in fragile environments.
Objective
The association between farm production diversity and dietary diversity in rural smallholder households was recently analysed. Most existing studies build on household-level dietary diversity indicators calculated from 7d food consumption recalls. Herein, this association is revisited with individual-level 24 h recall data. The robustness of the results is tested by comparing household- and individual-level estimates. The role of other factors that may influence dietary diversity, such as market access and agricultural technology, is also analysed.
On observe depuis les années 2000 la volonté des acteurs de la sécurité alimentaire de rapprocher résilience et sécurité alimentaire. Ce rapprochement n’apparaît cependant pas si évident au vu de la diversité d’éléments de langages utilisés pour les associer. Cet article vise donc à faire un état des lieux de l’association de ces notions, voire de leur intégration mutuelle. L’application de la résilience à la sécurité alimentaire met-elle en avant les mêmes dimensions que lorsqu’elle est appliquée aux systèmes socioécologiques ? Y aurait-il ainsi plusieurs concepts de résilience ?
The adoption of modern technologies in agriculture is crucial for improving productivity of poor farmers and poverty reduction. However, the adoption of modern technology has been disappointing. The role of value chains in technology adoption has been largely ignored so far, despite the dramatic transformation and spread of modern agri-food value chains. We argue that value chain organization and innovations can have an important impact on modern technology adoption, not just by downstream companies, but also by farmers.