3 pages, Figure 1 above appeared on July 31, 2018, in Bloomberg. Bloomberg tweeted this graphic on August 13, and twenty-four hours later it had been retweeted by 84 twitter accounts and “liked” 118 times. Chances are you have seen this graphic on your social media newsfeed (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) by now. It is a novel idea to portray how U.S. land use could be represented across the United States. However, to the casual observer, which is most everyone viewing a graphic on social media, this graphic is misleading.
22 pages, Commercialisation of smallholder agriculture is important for rural economic growth. While previous studies have analysed effects of commercialisation on productivity and income, implications for farm household nutrition have received much less attention. We evaluate the effects of commercialisation on household food security and dietary quality with a special focus on calorie and micronutrient consumption. We also examine transmission channels by looking at the role of income, gender, and possible substitution effects between the consumption of own-produced and purchased foods. The analysis uses survey data from farm households in Kenya and a control function approach. Generalised propensity scores are employed to estimate continuous treatment effects. Commercialisation significantly improves food security and dietary quality in terms of calorie, zinc and iron consumption. For vitamin A, effects are insignificant. Commercialisation contributes to higher incomes and increased nutrients from purchased foods, but it does not reduce the consumption of nutrients from own-produced foods. Enhancing market access is important not only for rural economic growth, but also for making smallholder agriculture more nutrition-sensitive.
14 pages., For improved rice production, farmers need access to timely and relevant knowledge at each stage of the rice-cropping calendar. To understand how farmers involve themselves in acquiring and sharing agricultural knowledge, this study investigates how knowledge management best practices can be enhanced among rice farmers in selected rural areas of Tanzania. Data were collected from 226 rice farmers in three districts (Kilombero, Kilosa and Mvomero) of the Morogoro region in Tanzania. Findings from structured questionnaires and focused group discussion indicate that rice farmers accessed, shared and used agricultural knowledge. It was found that individual, institutional and knowledge factors influence the performance of agricultural knowledge management activities. For enhancing effective agricultural knowledge management, it is important to take into consideration the knowledge management best practices, which include developing effective knowledge infrastructure, involving different stakeholders and using appropriate information and communications technology tools in enhancing access to knowledge. It is concluded that effective knowledge management activities increase the level of adoption of agricultural innovations. It is recommended that the proposed agricultural knowledge management best practices be adapted for improving rice production.
24 pages, We present a systematic review of the extensive body of research on farmer risk preference measurement across Europe. We capture the methodological developments over time and discuss remaining challenges and potential areas for further research. Given the constantly evolving policy environment in Europe, and increasing climate-change related risks and uncertainties, there is large value to be gained from enhancing our understanding of this fundamental aspect of farmers’ decision-making processes and consequent actions.
The concept of technology adoption (along with its companions, diffusion and scaling) is commonly used to design development interventions, to frame impact evaluations and to inform decision-making about new investments in development-oriented agricultural research. However, adoption simplifies and mischaracterises what happens during processes of technological change. In all but the very simplest cases, it is likely to be inadequate to capture the complex reconfiguration of social and technical components of a technological practice or system. We review the insights of a large and expanding literature, from various disciplines, which has deepened understanding of technological change as an intricate and complex sociotechnical reconfiguration, situated in time and space. We explain the problems arising from the inappropriate use of adoption as a framing concept and propose an alternative conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating technological change. The new approach breaks down technology change programmes into four aspects: propositions, encounters, dispositions and responses. We begin to sketch out how this new framework could be operationalised.
Sustainable agriculture is among the most urgently needed work in the United States, for at least three reasons: we face an environmental crisis, a health crisis, and a rural economic crisis. Addressing these pressing crises through sustainability transition will require growing our agricultural workforce: both because the current farm population is aging, and because sustainable agriculture is knowledge-intensive work that substitutes experiential knowledge of farm ecosystems for harmful industrial inputs. Given its social value, sustainable agriculture ought to be a welcoming profession. But at present, US agriculture is decidedly unwelcoming for nearly all who work in it – and it puts new entry and sustainable farmers at a distinct disadvantage. In this paper, we first examine why it is so hard to enter and succeed in sustainable farming. We find that new entrants struggle to gain critical access, assets, and assistance, encountering substantial barriers that stand between them and the land, capital, markets, equipment, water, labor, and training and technical assistance they need to succeed. Secondly, we review promising policy and civil society interventions targeted at addressing these barriers, nearly all of which have already been piloted at the local and state levels or through modest public funding. These interventions are most effective, we find, when they are linked up through robustly governed networks to provide “wraparound” coverage for new entry sustainable farmers. Such networks can help patch together complementary sources of support (e.g. federal, state, local, NGO, cooperative) and synergistically address multiple barriers at once. Finally, we propose additional interventions that are more aspirational today, but that could offer important pathways to support new sustainable farmers in the longer term.
12 pages, Many environmental dilemmas such as water scarcity originate from human behavior. This study aimed to analyze Iranian farmers’ water conservation behavior using Bandura’s social-cognitive theory. To this end, a cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect the required data. The research instrument was a questionnaire. A sample of 380 farmers was selected using a multistage stratified random sampling method. The results indicated that variables of social-cognitive theory could predict about 73% of farmers’ water conservation behavior variance. Investigation of direct effects of factors on farmers’ water conservation behavior revealed that the major determinants are as follows: intention of water conservation, social-structural factors, perception of others’ behavior, outcome expectancy, self-efficacy, and water conservation co-regulation. Findings showed that factors that have been mentioned in social-cognitive theory could be considered for enhancing farmers’ water conservation behaviors since the theory provides a more realistic insight into farmers’ behaviors with an emphasis on farmers’ social and structural contexts