4 pages, Resource constraints have lowered the number of collegiate livestock judging teams, dropping the number of opportunities for collegiate judging, even though interest among students remains high. These opportunities can be provided for less expense through student-led extracurricular organizations. This approach increases the student initiative required, but also provides an increased opportunity for developing and demonstrating leadership skills.
10 pages, Extension faculty are tasked with developing and communicating educational programs to local clientele, and communication skills are a considerable piece of the Extension faculty job. Thus, UF/IFAS Extension included a communication portion to the on-board training for newly hired Extension faculty to develop their design skills so they can more effectively communicate through their educational and marketing materials. We used Rogers’ (2003) innovation-decision process to assess Florida early career Extension faculty’s adoption of design principles after completion of the 2019 UF/IFAS Extension Faculty Development Academy. Thirty-two Extension faculty completed the spring and fall sessions of the Academy. A mixed methods approach was utilized to gather survey data at the immediate completion of the Academy and qualitative, telephone interview data four to five months after completing the Academy. The faculty retrospectively perceived they increased their knowledge about design principles. They had an overwhelmingly positive attitude about learning design principles to better their communication efforts, but they decided not to fully adopt design principles in their work as other information and elements of learning their job took precedent.
37 pages., Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic is the most recent example that global development problems can occur anywhere, rebutting the assumption of a world divided into developed and developing countries. Recent scholarship has coined the term “global development” to capture this changing geography of development problems.
Purpose
Our article contributes to these debates by proposing a novel empirical approach to localize global development problems in country contexts worldwide.
Methods and approach
Our approach rests on a universal understanding of “development.” We identify countries that are particularly relevant for global problem-solving and consider not only the problem dimension but also countries’ capacities to address these problems.
Findings
Our results show that countries with the most severe combinations of problems are as diverse as Afghanistan, Nigeria and the United States. Two thirds of countries with above-average contributions to global problems are authoritarian regimes. We also find that middle-income countries have hardly anything in common apart from their income level.
Policy implications
Our analysis shows that traditional development concepts of a binary world order and of foreign aid as financial transfer to remedy imbalances are not enough to address constellations of global problems and capacity that have long evolved beyond rich and poor.
20 pages., Given the multi-benefits, enset cultivation has been continuously underutilized in Ethiopia. We assess best practices, processing technologies, environmental maintenance, multi-benefits of enset and its potency in hunger reduction in Ethiopia by reviewing evidence on good farm practices, improved technologies, sustainability, hunger reduction, inputs cost, and yields advantage of enset. The review results identify those best practices that optimize enset yield, technologies that facilitate extension services, processing and food qualities of enset. Moreover, we find that enset is a first-rated climate-smart crop, superior hunger solution because of its apparent capability to endure long periods (more than 5 years) of drought, highest yield, energy food supply, and costs advantages. In contrast, its long-period maturity, cultural perceptions, and little development policy attention given to enset limit its expansion. Therefore, exploring and creating universal access mechanism of early maturing and high-yielding varieties, processing technologies and mobile-based advices, involving best practices of enset in regular agricultural extension services, changing social perceptions optimize enset yield and production thereby it contributes environmental sustainability and cuts hunger challenges.
20 pages., Agricultural extension and advisory services in information and technology dissemination and delivery are critical in a
developing country’s food security and sustainability. Without extension service provision, the productivity and
production smallholder farmers are experiencing would have been much lower, and current global hunger and
malnutrition worse. This paper assesses the effects of COVID-19 on the sustainability of agricultural extension
models/approaches for smallholder farmers in developing countries. Over 60 papers were reviewed covering 2019-2021,
commencing with the disease outbreak in China. Based on characteristics and usage, the findings indicate most reviewed
extension models were disrupted. No single model was entirely disbanded as the impact of COVID-19 was being felt.
However, each model incorporated a digital means of communication to keep farmers and service providers in touch.
There is considerable criticism around the inadequacy of these extension techniques in advancing the agenda for
smallholder farming’s long-term viability that needs to be addressed
21 pages, The transformation of smallholder farming is poised to be one of the key drivers of achieving the dual objectives of food security and poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Smallholder farmers account for between 60–80% of the food produced in the region but face many challenges that impede their productivity. Such challenges include a lack of timely access to appropriate agricultural information and services, which results in poor decision-making, particularly in addressing challenges and responding effectively to opportunities. In that context, the effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in improving accessibility to appropriate agricultural information and services presents substantial prospects for transforming the productivity and livelihoods of the farmers. Currently, the region experiences massive penetration and propagation of mobile and web-based applications. However, there is a dearth of compelling, comprehensive reviews evaluating their importance in enhancing agricultural information and services dissemination to smallholder farmers. Therefore, the current review explores the potential of enhancing agricultural information and services dissemination to smallholder farmers through ICTs and highlights gaps in their development and deployment in SSA. Five existing mobile applications used to disseminate agricultural information and services to smallholder farmers were identified, and their advantages, limitations, and opportunities were discussed. These were Esoko, iCow, Community Knowledge Workers, WeFarm and DigiFarm. The development and deployment of user-driven mobile applications that provide curated skill-sharing platforms, encourage farmers to give feedback to extension systems in real-time and promote the participation of women and youth in agriculture are recommended.
Keywords
17 pages, British Columbia’s food system is experiencing an emerging trend in the digitalization of agriculture, which will impact agricultural practices in the province. The rapid growth of this field has created a niche for training and education in digital agriculture and more specifically, in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and computing. However, it remains unclear whether current educators and trainers in British Columbia are communicating both the benefits and risks of digital agriculture, and the need for an inclusive and equitable approach to digital agriculture. To understand the emerging education and training landscape in digital agricultural technologies, this exploratory study engaged in a key informant interview with 12 participants, including educators, relevant government staff, and private training consultants/practitioners in the food and agricultural sector in British Columbia. The small sample is reflective of the nascent nature of this area of research, which seeks to better understand digital agriculture from the perspectives of agricultural educators and trainers both in the public and private sectors. The study found that there is currently a lack of consideration for equity and food sovereignty in digital agricultural training and education. This is primarily due to a gap in engagement with the social aspects of digital agriculture. Without engaging critical social scientists and critical data studies, digital agriculture education, and training may be conducted in ways that do not promote responsible and ethical innovation, and are therefore counterproductive to the development of a just and sustainable food system.
19 pages, Farmers are often overlooked and undervalued as sources of innovation, but can be powerful drivers of ingenuity and development. We evaluate historical developments in the Australian subterranean clover seed-production industry as a case study of farmer-driven innovation. Subterranean clover seed machinery patents (75% of which were patented by farmers) are analysed using conventional innovation frameworks, such as the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), to extract lessons for supporting farmer-driven innovation. The small scale of this industry, compared with mainstream cereal-cropping industries and the isolation of farmers, provides analogous lessons for agriculture in developing countries. Economic drivers are important in enabling farmer innovation and the value proposition for developing new inventions must be clear to justify the time and expense. Farmers are different from firms and their on-farm knowledge and experience can form an essential part of innovation. Drivers of innovation also differ, with farmers less likely to attempt to commercialize inventions. Farmers can also be hesitant to share their inventions, instead holding them as trade secrets in competitive industries. Support and collaboration are needed from government and researchers to assist in commercialization or dissemination of useful innovations and to prevent knowledge from being confined to a localized farmer or region. Advances in agriculture require farmer input in research and development, but the benefits will be greater if farmers are enabled to be drivers of innovation.
18 pages, This paper presents the findings of challenges facing Zimbabwe’s extension services and how these have affected the adoption of technologies they render to small-scale farmers. This study uses a critical review of relevant literature on Zimbabwe’s primary public extension agency (AGRITEX). Additionally, 21 key informant interviews (KIIs) were conducted to corroborate data collected in secondary research on extension approaches currently in use, the key factors affecting technology adoption, and the technology adoption process of small-scale farmers. The study found AGRITEX’s major challenges to be poor funding, poor remuneration and incentives for extension personnel, lack of in-service training, lack of appropriate technology, as well as poor operational resources like transport to reach all farmers. Consequently, services offered to small-scale farmers were compromised, which led to poor adoption of recommended technologies. Furthermore, the study determined that key factors influencing technology adoption are related to the farmers’ circumstances, the operating environment, and the attributes of technology itself. As a lasting solution to poor technology adoption, an adaptive extension system that promotes building the capacity of extension workers and researchers, as well as embracing farmers and their indigenous knowledge, is proposed
24 pages, Soybean (Glycine max (L. Merr.) has been a crop of interest to address both poverty
and malnutrition in the developing world because of its high levels of both protein and
oil, and its adaptability to grow in tropical environments. Development practitioners
and policymakers have long sought value added opportunities for local crops to move
communities out of poverty by introducing processing or manufacturing technologies.
Soy dairy production technologies sit within this development conceptual model. To
the researchers’ knowledge, no research to date measures soy dairy performance,
though donors and NGOs have launched hundreds of enterprises over the last 18 years.
The lack of firm-level data on operations limits the ability of donors and practitioners
to fund and site sustainable dairy businesses. Therefore, the research team developed
and implemented a recordkeeping system and training program first, as a 14-month
beta test with a network of five dairies in Ghana and Mozambique in 2016-2017.
Learning from the initial research then supported a formal research rollout over 18
months with a network of six different dairies in Malawi and key collaboration from
USAID’s Agricultural Diversification activity. None of the beta or rollout dairies kept
records prior to the intervention. The formal rollout resulted in a unique primary dataset
to address the soy dairy performance knowledge gap. The results of analysis show that
the dairies, on average, achieve positive operating margins of 61%, yet cannot cover
the fixed costs associated with depreciation, amortization of equipment and
infrastructure, working capital, marketing and promotion, and regulatory compliance.
The enterprises in our sample operate only at 9% of capacity, which limits their ability
to cover the normal fixed costs associated with the business. The challenge is not the
technology itself, as when operated, it produces a high-quality dairy product. The
challenges involve a business that requires too much capital for normal operations
relative to a nascent and small addressable market.
