Adoptions of improved technologies and production practices are important drivers of agricultural development in low-income countries like Nepal. Adopting a broad class of such technologies and practices is often critical for meeting the multifaceted goals of efficiency, profitability, environmental sustainability, and climate resilience.
In the context of an exponential rise in access to information in the last two decades, this special issue explores when and how information might be harnessed to improve governance and public service delivery in rural areas. Information is a critical component of government and citizens’ decision-making; therefore, improvements in its availability and reliability stand to benefit many dimensions of governance, including service delivery.
The rural production in Brazil has experienced a significant competitive impact with the stabilization of the economy promoted by the Real Plan in 1994. Indeed, the Brazilian agriculture has achieved efficiency gains in terms of technology, economies of scale and general modernization of the activity in the field. In this context, the professional management of rural production evolved. However, the governance process does not evolve in the same dimension, and the “governance risk” is still poorly addressed in the rural environment, which often limits the potential of operations.
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.
Building on previous research, the purpose of this study was to describe the needs of the extension agents, in the Riyadh Region of Saudi Arabia, for training on Organic Agriculture (OA). This knowledge will be used to develop organic educational programs for extension agents. The specific objectives were to:
CCAFS-MOT is a tool to support farmers, policy advisors and agricultural extension services on the choice of management practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) without risking food security. It is an Excel-based tool which brings together several empirical models to estimate GHG emissions in rice, cropland and livestock systems, and provides information about the most effective mitigation options. Greenhouse gas emissions are estimated in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare (kg CO2eq ha− 1) and carbon dioxide equivalent per unit of product (kg CO2eq kg− 1).
Given the increasing tension between food production and food demand in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the poor development of the rice sector in Africa, the present paper examines the impact of agricultural extension on adoption of chemical fertilizers and their impact on rice productivity in Ghana. A parametric approach was employed to account for selectivity and endogeneity effects, which most impact studies fail to address. The empirical results reveal that agricultural extension service is endogenous in the chemical fertilizer adoption specification
Food sustainability transitions refer to transformation processes necessary to move towards sustainable food systems. Digitization is one of the most important ongoing transformation processes in global agriculture and food chains. The review paper explores the contribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to transition towards sustainability along the food chain (production, processing, distribution, consumption). A particular attention is devoted to precision agriculture as a food production model that integrates many ICTs.
In Vietnam, while glutinous rice farming represents a very small sub-sector of rice production, it plays an important role in the food and cultural security of farming households in many remote areas. This paper examined glutinous rice farming in households, as a food and for cultural security, and the extension services in areas producing glutinous rice. Data were collected from 400 local farmers based on interview schedules and statistical analysis using the percentage, arithmetic mean, and hypothesis testing with logistic regression
In this paper it is assessed the types of knowledge networks utilised by small-scale farmers in four case studies (located in Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom). We focus on knowledge acquired to inform three new activities being undertaken by study participants: agricultural production, subsidy access and regulatory compliance, and farm diversification (specifically agritourism).