Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 136 Document Number: D11434
Notes:
5 pages., Online from FMI Foundation., This report summarizes findings of an online survey distributed to 2,000 U.S. egg/chicken consumers with demographics representing the U.S. population. Findings indicated that "price is a significant driver for the majority of consumers, that consumer response is sensitive to information provided about cage-free production practices, and that willingness-to-pay for cage-free eggs changes in the presence of other label attributes."
10pgs, Conservation agriculture-based sustainable intensification (CASI) is gaining prominence as an agricultural pathway to poverty reduction and enhancement of sustainable food systems among government and development actors in the Eastern Gangetic Plains (EGP) of South Asia. Despite substantial investment in research and extension programs and a growing understanding of the agronomic, economic and labor-saving benefits of CASI, uptake remains limited. This study explores farmer experiences and perspectives to establish why farmers choose not to implement CASI systems despite a strong body of recent scientific evidence establishing the benefits of them doing so. Through thematic coding of semi-structured interviews, key constraints are identified, which establishes a narrative that current households' resources are insufficient to enable practice change, alongside limited supporting structures for resource supplementation. Such issues create a dependency on subsidies and outside support, a situation that is likely to impact any farming system change given the low-risk profiles of farmers and their limited resource base. This paper hence sets out broad implications for creating change in smallholder farming systems in order to promote the adoption of sustainable agricultural technologies in resource-poor smallholder contexts, especially with regard to breaking the profound poverty cycles that smallholder farmers find themselves in and which are unlikely to be broken by the current set of technologies promoted to them.
An analysis of secondary data from the National Panel Survey in Tanzania revealed physical, socioeconomic, and institutional factors influencing the adoption of soil conservation technologies among small-scale maize farmers. Findings revealed, for example, only 13.9 percent of those had adopted soil conservation technology. This was cited as small, compared with other countries.
Gale, Wayne (author / Chair, American Seed Trade Association)
Format:
Commentary
Publication Date:
2019-06-18
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 114 Document Number: D11041
Notes:
The June 7, 2019 commentary by Barber in the New York Times was retrieved online at: https://seedfreedom.info/opinion-save-our-food-free-the-seed. It is filed with this document., Online via seedworld.com. 3 pages., Response to an opinion piece in the New York Times by celebrity chef Dan Barber. Barber reported on visiting a 24,000-acre farm in North Dakota and observing the large scale of operations. He concluded: "We should be alarmed by the current architects." In this commentary author Gale offered a differing view of the changes in plant breeding and the seed industry over the past 100-plus years - and what they mean for the future.
