Poverty is prevalent in the small-farm sector of many developing countries. A large literature suggests that contract farming —a preharvest agreement between farmers and buyers— can facilitate smallholder market participation, improve household welfare, and promote rural development. These findings have influenced the development policy debate, but the external validity of the extant evidence is limited. Available studies typically focus on a single contract scheme or on a small geographical area in one country.
In the existing literature, the effects of contract farming on household welfare were examined with mixed results. Most studies looked at single contract types. This paper contributes to the literature by comparing two types of contracts – simple marketing contracts and resource- providing contracts – in the Ghanaian oil palm sector. We investigate the effects of both contracts on farm income, as well as spillovers on other household income sources. We use survey data collected with an innovative sampling design and a control function approach to address possible issues of endogeneity.
Ghana’s cocoa production belt also serves as the main forests repository of the country. Cocoa farm- ing is both a direct and indirect driver of deforesta- tion in Ghana (UNEP, 2008). This implies that critical interventions are needed to deal with deforestation emanating from cocoa production.
Le principal défi des systèmes alimentaires africains à l’avenir sera de fournir de la nourriture à une population en croissance rapide dont les régimes alimentaires et les préférences alimentaires évoluent. Alors que la population européenne diminue, les consommateurs exigeant des aliments produits de manière écologiquement et socialement responsable, la population africaine va plus que doubler entre 2020 et 2050, la demande alimentaire augmentant encore plus en raison des changements alimentaires.
The main challenge for African food systems in the future will be to provide food for a rapidly growing population with changing diets and food preferences. Whilst the population of Europe is decreasing, with consumers demanding food that is produced in an environmentally and socially responsible way, Africa’s population will more than double between 2020 and 2050, with food demand increasing even more as a result of dietary changes.
Though Odisha is India’s top sweetpotato-producing state, most farmers grow low-yielding varieties of limited nutritional value. The Odisha Directorate of Horticulture and the International Potato Center (CIP) spent four years promoting improved varieties and good agricultural practices in four districts of Odisha, resulting in a 25 per cent growth in the area dedicated to the crop, a 17 per cent increase in farm productivity, and a 40 per cent increase in farmer incomes within the project areas; as well as the introduction of a nutritious, orange-fleshed sweetpotato variety.
Capacity building for integrating gender in research and development (R&D) on agricultural innovations often remains with organizing single gender training. Alternatively, it is often limited to hiring a gender specialist to allocate a small amount of her/his time to the project. This has proofed to be ineffective and a heavy burden for gender specialists. This success story presents an innovative approach to capacity development, which successfully changed agricultural researchers’ attitude to gender in Southeast Asia, with a specific focus in Vietnam.
Smallholder farmers’ organizations aim to help farmers to achieve a common goal. A counselor or an agribusiness development can give support through the diagnostic tools, that allow to give a picture of the organizations and to set a working strategy that will be used to address the identified problems of the organizations and assist farmers develop sustainable solutions for these problems.
This guide on Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning was prepared under the project Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS), a global partnership (Agrinatura, FAO and eight pilot countries) that aims to strengthen the capacity of countries and key stakeholders to innovate in complex agricultural systems, thereby achieving improved rural livelihoods. CDAIS uses a continuous learning cycle approach to support national agricultural innovation systems in eight countries in Africa, in Asia and Central America.
En este libro se exhibe el caso del Perú, con la expectativa de proporcionar la información y análisis necesarios para tener una mejor comprensión de la situación económica actual del maíz, así como los principales factores que han contribuido y siguen contribuyendo a la evolución de su producción, consumo y comercio. El diagnóstico presentado es el resultado del relevamiento de información secundaria (documentación y estadísticas existentes) y primaria, producto de entrevistas personales y telefónicas a los principales actores de la cadena.