Agricultural transformation and development are critical to the livelihoods of more than a billion small-scale farmers and other rural people in developing countries. Extension and advisory services play an important role in such transformation and can assist farmers with advice and information, brokering and facilitating innovations and relationships, and dealing with risks and disasters.
The publication reviews forty years of development experience and concludes that donors and partner countries alike have tended to look at capacity development as mainly a technical process, or as a transfer of knowledge or institutions from North to South.
Seed is the starting point of plant life, and hence the most fundamental input of agriculture. A seed system that assures the availability of the desired quality of seed to the producer at the right time is indispensable for his farming enterprise. In the case of the potato crop, the seed most commonly used is strictly speaking no seed, but a tuber. The constraints and opportunities in seed potato systems in East Africa are of a combined social, economic and technical nature.
This briefing note highlights the major findings of the project 'Wealth creation through integrated development of potato production’, which has brought a wide range of positive livelihood changes for potato farmers in the highlands of Ethiopia. The project began in 2008 and was aimed at addressing constraints faced by potato producers in Ethiopia and improving the wealth and livelihoods of potato producers.
Ethiopian agriculture is changing as new actors, relationships, and policies influence the ways in which small-scale, resource-poor farmers access and use information and knowledge in their agricultural production decisions. Although these changes suggest new opportunities for smallholders, too little is known about how changes will ultimately improve the wellbeing of smallholders in Ethiopia. The authors of this paper examine whether these changes are improving the ability of smallholders to innovate and thus improve their own welfare.
KIT and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) published this joint publication in which farmers were put in the driver’s seat. Within the programme ‘farmer empowerment for innovation in smallholder agriculture’ (FEISA) farmers were provided tools and skills to enhance collaboration with private enterprises, as well as service providers, in multi stakeholder ‘innovation triangles’ within value chains for the benefit of smallholder farmers.
Using household survey data from Ethiopia, this paper evaluates the impact of agricultural cooperatives on smallholders’ technical efficiency. The authors used propensity score matching to compare the average difference in technical efficiency between cooperative member farmers and similar independent farmers. The results show that agricultural cooperatives are effective in providing support services that significantly contribute to members’ technical efficiency.
Agriculture is central to Ethiopian economy but its sustainable development faces enormous challenges. Low innovation capacity, low productivity, dwindling natural resources and climate change, small-scale subsistence farming, and low levels of market integration and value addition have all made agricultural development more complex. In spite of the decades of research and development efforts, the rate of growth for both crop and livestock productivity has remained low.
This paper uses household and key informant survey data from Ethiopia to: (1) understand the organizational structures that influence change in dairy production systems; (2) explore how local-level innovation system networks are functioning in the smallholder dairy production and (3) identify intervention points for strengthening innovation capacity. Results revealed that public sector actors are the major role players in the dairy production system despite their minor role in marketing linkages. We also found out that the private sector actors play peripheral roles in the network.
The Sourcebook is the outcome of joint planning, continued interest in gender and agriculture, and concerted efforts by the World Bank, FAO, and IFAD. The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff inaddressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations.