The prevalence of “grass-fed” labeled food products on the market has increased in recent years, often commanding a premium price. To date, the majority of methods used for the authentication of grass-fed source products are driven by auditing and inspection of farm records. As such, the ability to verify grass-fed source claims to ensure consumer confidence will be important in the future. Mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy is widely used in the dairy industry as a rapid method for the routine monitoring of individual herd milk composition and quality.
The aim of this survey is to identify and characterize new products in plant biotechnology since 2015, especially in relation to the advent of New Breeding Techniques (NBTs) such as gene editing based on the CRISPR-Cas system. Transgenic (gene transfer or gene silencing) and gene edited traits which are approved or marketed in at least one country, or which have a non-regulated status in the USA, are collected, as well as related patents worldwide. In addition, to shed light on potential innovation for Africa, field trials on the continent are examined.
Given its superior importance of digital agricultural solutions to overcome challenges in agricultural activities, many of the solutions are in face of challenges to scale in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
CONTEXT: Adoption and diffusion of digital farming technologies are expected to help transform current agricultural systems towards sustainability. To enable and steer transformation we need to understand the mechanisms of adoption and diffusion holistically. Our current understanding is mainly informed by empirical farm-level adoption studies and by agent-based models simulating systemic diffusion mechanisms. These two approaches are weakly integrated.
This brochure gives an overview of the work of of the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS). It illustrates history, main objectives and medium to long-term plan of JIRCAS for the period 2021-2025. The three main programs of JIRCAS - focused, respectively on Food, Environment and Information - are also presented.
Scaling is a ubiquitous concept in agricultural research in the global south as donors require their research grantees to prove that their results can be scaled to impact upon the livelihoods of a large number of beneficiaries. Recent studies on scaling have brought critical perspectives to the rather technocratic tendencies in the agricultural innovations scaling literature.
Despite significant work to enhance women’s empowerment in agriculture, women remain marginalized across the globe. This includes gender gaps in agricultural extension and advisory service implementation that can lead to inequitable resource and knowledge access by farmers, specifically women. However, gender does not exist in isolation, it is place and time specific. This study investigated the impact of gender and geography on smallholder farmer access to and agency over resources/knowledge.
There are growing expectations that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) applications could help improve on-farm yields amongst smallholder farmers in developing countries, and consequently, food and nutrition security. However, few studies have quantified the actual contribution of ICT applications on farmers’ yields, and these studies predominantly focused on crop production. We assessed the potential of ICT applications to close milk yield gaps among small- and medium scale dairy cattle farmers in Africa.
Food insecurity remains a major challenge to rural households in Eastern Ethiopia. To improve food and nutrition security of vulnerable households in eastern Ethiopia, several agricultural technologies have been scaled-up by Haramaya University for more than six decades. However, the impact of these technologies on household nutritional outcomes was not systematically studied. This study examined the impact of selected agricultural technologies on household food and nutrition security. Cross-sectional data were generated from 248 randomly selected rural households.
The challenges faced by agricultural systems call for an advance in risk management (RM) assessments. This research identifies and discusses potential improvements to RM across 11 European Union (EU) farming systems (FS). The paper proposes a comprehensive, participatory approach that accounts for multi-stakeholder perspectives relying on 11 focus groups for brainstorming and gathering suggestions to improve RM.