2 pages, For years agroecologists have warned that industrial agri-culture became too narrow ecologically, highly dependent on outside inputs, and extremely vulnerable to insect pests, diseases, climate change and now as demonstrated by the COVID19 pandemic prone to a complete shut down by unforeseen crisis.Like never before, COVID19 has revealed how closely linked human, animal and ecological health are. As a power-ful systemic approach, agroecology reveals that the way we practice agriculture can provide opportunities for improv-ing environmental and human health, but if done wrongly, agriculture can cause major risks to health.
8 pages, Agricultural extension is now backing on the development agenda. The acknowledged failure of the traditional extension model in India has stimulated debate on extension reforms and the introduction of new extension models. Further, Indian agriculture has recorded an alarming ‘knowledge gap’ where ‘knowledge’ became central to agricultural production. The role of extension functionaries today is more challenging and demands structural and functional changes to meet the holistic needs of farmers and they have to equip themselves to cope with the drastic chance and dire needs. Agricultural extension is not only about imparting knowledge and securing adoption of improved practices but it also aims at changing the outlook of farmers. Moreover, Indian agriculture is undergoing a rapid transformation under globalization from a simple making a living to complex endeavour. Information revolution leads to fundamental changes in economic, political, social and cultural relations. Information technology is the lifeblood of many other technologies. It is opined that there is direct relationship between communication and development of agricultural sector. New information technology provides the opportunity for innovation. The ‘free flow of information’ will help the farmers is to overcome the knowledge gap and the availability of the new technology lead farmers to make real choice. This paper emphasizes on the role of ICTs in contemporary agricultural context and critically understands the failure of traditional extension functionaries.
24 pages, Alternative food networks (AFN) are argued to provide platforms to re-socialize and re-spacealize food, establish and contribute to democratic participation in local food chains, and foster producer–consumer relations and trust. As one of the most recent examples of AFN, Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) have gained notable traction in attempting to redefine consumer-producer relations in the organic value chain. The participation of stakeholders, such as consumers, has been a key element theoretically differentiating PGS from other organic verification systems. While research on farmer participation in PGS is attracting interest, consumer participation is still widely overlooked. Using a mixed methods approach, this paper describes five PGS markets in Mexico, Chile and Bolivia. A survey was conducted with consumers in the PGS markets to explore their awareness of the PGS, how consumers participate in the PGS, and their level of trust in the respective PGS and its certified products. Results showed a low level of awareness of PGS among market consumers, few participation possibilities, and minimal consumer participation overall. Nevertheless, trust in organic quality was generally high. Consumers primarily relied on the direct relationship with producers and the PGS market itself as sources of trust. These results provide novel insight into PGS consumer-market interactions, and contribute to discussions concerning social embeddedness, awareness and participation within AFN.
Online from publication issue. 3 pages., Article summarizes findings of the 16th annual "Power of Meat" survey funded by the Food Industry Association (FMI) and the North American Meat Institute's (Meat Institute) Foundation for Meat and Poultry Research and Education. Focuses on beef, pork, and poultry consumption in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
15 pages., Securing the adoption of scalable agro-educational information and communication technology (ICT) solutions by farmers remains one of the international development community’s most elusive goals – in part due to two key gaps in the data: (1) limited comparisons of competing knowledge-delivery methods, and (2) few to no follow-ups on long-term knowledge retention and solution adoption. Addressing both of these gaps, this follow-up study measures farmer knowledge retention and solution adoption two years after being trained on an improved postharvest bean storage method in northern Mozambique. The results found animated-video knowledge delivery at least as effective as a traditional extension approach for knowledge retention (97.9%) and solution adoption (89%). As animated video can more cost-effectively reach the widest – even geographically isolated – populations, it readily complements extension services and international development community efforts to secure knowledge transfer and recipient buy-in for innovations. Implications and future research for adult learning are also discussed.
8 pages, via Online journal, The use of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) grafting is gaining traction across the United States, but small-scale growers face the challenge of creating optimum postgrafting healing conditions. The practice of blocking light for a period of 2 to 4 days while maintaining high humidity is commonly recommended for healing grafted tomato transplants; however, research is exploring alternatives to this practice. The present study investigated a low-input healing method for grafted tomato transplants with a specific focus on light and the use of propagation heat mats to regulate substrate and healing chamber air temperatures during the 7-day healing process. We hypothesized that 4 days of light exclusion and the use of propagation heat mats would improve grafted tomato transplant survival and growth. ‘Cherokee Purple’ was used as the scion and ‘RST-04-106-T’ was used as the rootstock. The whole plot factor was heat [propagation mats set at 80 °F (heat) or no propagation mat (no heat)] and the subplot factor was light exclusion (0, 4, or 6 days of dark). The highest survival rate among treatments was 97% in 0 days of dark with no heat treatment; survival decreased to 84% in 4 and 6 days of dark with no heat treatments. The plant survival rate was 96% with 0 days of dark and heat treatment; however, the survival rates were 63% and 45% for the 4- and 6-day dark treatments, respectively. The scion stem diameter was largest for transplants grown in 0 days of dark, but there was no difference in stem diameter due to heat treatments. There were no differences among scion or rootstock biomasses due to heat or light treatments. These results demonstrate that propagation mats set at 80 °F to regulate the substrate temperature were detrimental to grafted transplant survival under extended periods of light exclusion. However, this finding creates the basis to explore lower levels of substrate temperature modification. Our work also indicates that light exclusion may not be necessary for healing grafted tomato plants regardless of root-zone temperature treatments. Future work should examine the interactions of various substrate and air temperatures under full light conditions and their effects on grafted tomato transplant survival and growth. This work contributes to the ongoing research of how to optimize low-input healing methods that may be readily adopted by small-scale tomato growers.
5 pages, The current research was planned and conducted at Institute of Agricultural Extension, Education
and Rural Development, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan during the year 2019-20
and restricted to district Gujranwala with respect to potato crop. The main objective of this study
was to compare the extension services provided by the public and private sector along with
different teaching methodologies adopted by them. However, 36 respondents from each tehsil
of district Gujranwala were selected through convenient sampling technique. Thereby, getting a
sample size of 144 for the purpose of data collection for which interviews were conducted. Data
were analyzed through SPSS. Results were explained through weighted score and mean values
of all variables. According to results it was found that both sectors were giving useful knowledge
to farmers with different teaching methods. It was also concluded that farmers had desire to take
information from public sector but they have to go to private sector for products. Furthermore, it
was also concluded that performance of public sector was better than private sector.
19 pages., To harness the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), developing countries need to develop national ICT policies that will serve as a framework for integrating ICTs at all levels of society. In the absence of that, different actors often engage in various actions for the same beneficiaries and in pursuit of the same objectives. That raises the need to define a national framework for the promotion and application of ICTs in the various production areas, particularly agricultural ones. It is for that reason that this study examined through qualitative methods (policy documents and semi-structured interviews) the national policy of Mali on the use of ICTs in agriculture. Data was analysed using the Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) method with the aid of NVIVO 12 software. The results showed that the country has two policy documents that articulate the country’s strategy towards the use of ICTs in the agricultural sector, that is, the Agricultural Orientation Law and the National Strategy for the Development of the Digital Economy. Further examination revealed that that these two policy documents are neither appropriate nor coherent in today's Malian landscape. This has resulted in an underutilisation of digital tools by agricultural extension officers which led to the low agricultural productivity in the country. This study recommended therefore the recasting of both documents to take into account the reported observations
