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2. Constraints to the utilisation of conservation agriculture in Africa as perceived by agricultural extension service providers
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Brown, Brendan (author), Nuberg, Ian (author), Llewellyn, Rick (author), and School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide CSIRO Agriculture
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018
- Published:
- Elsevier
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 16 Document Number: D10460
- Journal Title:
- Land Use Policy
- Journal Title Details:
- 73: 331-340
- Notes:
- 10 pages., Via online journal., Conservation Agriculture (CA) is a knowledge-intensive set of practices which requires substantial access to functional agricultural extension services to enable utilisation. Despite this importance, the perspectives of those providing extension services to smallholder farmers have not been fully investigated. To address this, we qualitatively explore the perspectives of agricultural extension providers across six African countries to understand why uptake of CA has been limited, as well as the institutional changes that may be required to facilitate greater utilisation. Across the diversity of geographical, political and institutional contexts between countries, we find multiple commonalities in the constrained utilisation of CA by smallholder farmers, highlighting the difficulties non-mechanised subsistence farmers face in transitioning to market-oriented farming systems such as CA. The primary constraint relates to the economic viability of market-oriented farming where farmers remain in low input and low output systems with limited exit points. The assumed exit point used by CA programs appears to have led to a culture of financial expectancy and reflects a continuation of top-down extension approaches with inadequate modification of CA to the contextual realities of subsistence farmers. If African agricultural systems are to be sustainably intensified, we find a need for greater flexibility within extension systems in the pursuit of sustainable intensification. If extension systems are to persist with CA, it will need to be promoted through more transitional pathways that disaggregate the CA package, and with that there is a need for the provision of a mandate to, and necessary funding for, more participatory extension services.
3. Linking small-scale farmers to the durum wheat value chain in Ethiopia: Assessing the effects on production and wellbeing
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Hermann, Raoul (author), Ciani, Federico (author), Burchi, Franchesco (author), and Biggeri, Mario (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2018-08-01
- Published:
- International: Elsevier
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 204 Document Number: D12457
- Journal Title:
- Food Policy
- Journal Title Details:
- Vol. 79
- Notes:
- 15 pages, Food security and agricultural-led industrialisation are pivotal development objectives in Ethiopia. One of the main challenges this country faces is increasing agricultural productivity by integrating smallholder farmers into a high-value agricultural commodity supply chain. This paper examines an integrated project—the Agricultural Value Chains Project in Oromia (AVCPO)—that aims to improve the livelihoods of smallholders in the Bale Zone by involving them in the production of high-quality durum wheat and linking them to the pasta industry via farmers’ cooperatives. Using primary data collected in 2014 and retrospective information, this paper investigates the AVCPO’s effects on the quantity of cereal production, the share of cereals that have been sold through cooperatives, food security, and education. In order to account for potential violations of the exclusion restriction assumption, an instrumental variable approach is applied, together with three additional estimation strategies. The results suggest that the project has had a large and positive effect on gross and net values of cereal production per hectare, as well as on the share of production sold to pasta makers through cooperatives. These benefits accrue equally to land-rich and land-poor farmers. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that the AVCPO has improved educational outcomes and reduced food insecurity, without affecting crop rotation practices. Overall, our findings point to the effectiveness of the project. Before replicating or scaling up this intervention, however, it is necessary to understand how to better involve poorer farmers and which adjustments are needed if the areas selected have a lower potential than Bale Zone.
4. Myths about the feminization of agriculture: Implications for global food security
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Kawarazuka, Nozomi (author), Doss, Cheryl (author), Rozel Farnworth, Cathy (author), and Pyburn, Rhiannon (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2022-06-01
- Published:
- lobal Food Security: Elsevier
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12540
- Journal Title Details:
- 33
- Notes:
- 8 pages, The term “feminization of agriculture” is used to describe changing labor markets that pull men out of agriculture, increasing women's roles. However, simplified understandings of this feminization persist as myths in the literature, limiting our understanding of the broader changes that affect food security. Through a review of literature, this paper analyses four myths: 1) feminization of agriculture is the predominant global trend in global agriculture; 2) women left behind are passive victims and not farmers; 3) feminization is bad for agriculture; and 4) women farmers all face similar challenges. The paper unravels each myth, reveals the complexity of gendered power dynamics in feminization trends, and discusses the implications of these for global food security.
5. Rights-based food systems and the goals of food systems reform
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Anderson, Molly D. (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- unknown
- Published:
- USA: Springer
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 166 Document Number: C27689
- Journal Title:
- Agriculture and Human Values
- Journal Title Details:
- DOI 10.1007/s10460-008-9151-z
- Notes:
- Accepted March 25, 2008, Online Early
6. Seeing green: lifecycles of an arctic agricultural frontier
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Price, Mindy Jewell (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2023-07-14
- Published:
- USA: Wiley Periodicals LLC
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12929
- Journal Title:
- Rural Sociology
- Journal Title Details:
- V. 0, N.0
- Notes:
- 31 pages, Imaginaries of empty, verdant lands have long motivated agricultural frontier expansion. Today, climate change, food insecurity, and economic promise are invigorating new agricultural frontiers across the circumpolar north. In this article, I draw on extensive archival and ethnographic evidence to analyze mid-twentieth-century and recent twenty-first-century narratives of agricultural development in the Northwest Territories, Canada. I argue that the early frontier imaginary is relatively intact in its present lifecycle. It is not simply climactic forces that are driving an emergent northern agricultural frontier, but rather the more diffuse and structural forces of capitalism, governmental power, settler colonialism, and resistance to those forces. I also show how social, political, and infrastructural limits continue to impede agricultural development in the Northwest Territories and discuss how smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities differently situate agricultural production within their local food systems. This paper contributes to critical debates in frontiers and northern agriculture literature by foregrounding the contested space between the state-driven and dominant public narratives underpinning frontier imaginaries, and the social, cultural, and material realities that constrain them on a Northwest Territories agricultural frontier.
7. Some experiences in the implementation of integrated rural development programmes
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Zaman, M.A. (author) and Human Resources, Institutions and Agrarian Reform Division, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Rome, Italy
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 1977-10
- Published:
- Italy: Elsevier
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 160 Document Number: D07769
- Journal Title:
- Agricultural Administration
- Journal Title Details:
- 4 (4): 307-316
8. Using ICT to strengthen agricultural extension systems for plant health
- Collection:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC)
- Contributers:
- Wright, Holly Jane (author), Ochilo, Willis (author), Pearson, Aislinn (author), Finegold, Cambria (author), Oronje, Mary Lucy (author), Wanjohi, James (author), Kamau, Rose (author), Holmes, Timothy (author), and Rumsey, Abigail (author)
- Format:
- Journal article
- Publication Date:
- 2016
- Published:
- Taylor & Francis
- Location:
- Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 16 Document Number: D10458
- Journal Title:
- Journal of Agricultural & Food Information
- Journal Title Details:
- 17(1): 23-36
- Notes:
- 15 pages., Via online journal., Plant pests cause crop losses of 30–40%, contributing significantly to global food insecurity. The Plantwise program works alongside national agricultural extension services, who advise smallholder farmers on plant health issues and collect data on problems they face. In a 1-year pilot, Plantwise tested the use of information and communication technologies (ICT)—tablets and short message service (SMS)—with 60 Kenyan extension workers. They were able to assist more farmers with better advice, had significantly improved access to plant health information, valued being able to ask their peers for advice, and dramatically improved the quality and speed of the data they collected.