Alomia-Hinojosa,Victoria (author), Groot, CJ (author), Andersson, Jens (author), Speelman, Erika (author), McDonald, Andrew (author), and Tittonnell, Pablo (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2022-06-02
Published:
United States: Wiley Online
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 205 Document Number: D12562
13 pages, Intensified livestock production is considered as a promising pathway for smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, this pathway may entail prohibitive investment requirements of labour, capital or trade-offs at farm level that preclude sustainable intensification. We used fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to assess farmers' perceptions of changes in the farm household system resulting from adding livestock to their mixed farms. Farmers identified trade-offs between the increased income and farmyard manure production versus increases in labour requirements for fodder imports. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis performed on the FCMs showed that an increase in milk market demand could have strong positive effects on livestock production and income. We conclude that FCM is a good tool to rapidly identify trade-offs and analyse perceptions of farmers which revealed that although they consider intensification a promising strategy, the perceived deepening of labour constraints and increasing dependency on fodder import makes a concurrent (sustainable) intensification of these farm systems unlikely.
8 pages., via online journal., Social media provides huge opportunities and incentives that could ease promotion of agricultural extension, facilitate real-time service delivery and enable wider farmer coverage. Ineffective dissemination approaches, expanding farmer population, low staffing, and aging agricultural extension agents continue to negatively affect the provision of agricultural extension services in Kenya. Despite the social media potential in agricultural communication, lack of awareness and low usage in the rural areas of developing countries have been documented. This study sought to establish the level of social media familiarity among smallholder rural farmers with the aim of exploring the possibility of usage in agricultural extension. The study was undertaken in Thika Sub-County of Kiambu County on 140 farmers through a researcher administered semi-structured questionnaire. Probability-proportional-to-size sampling method was employed to derive the sample size from existing extension farmer groups. Simple random sampling technique was further used to identify the actual respondents from each group. A low level of social media familiarity was established among the farmers with education, age and gender having significant influence. The study recommends awareness creation initiatives to promote social media familiarity with a particular focus on women who form the bulk of the farmers but with the lowest level of social media knowledge.
Okello, Julius Juma (author), Okello, Ruth M. (author), and Ofwona-Adera, Edith (author)
Format:
Book chapter
Publication Date:
2010
Published:
Kenya
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D02156
Notes:
Pages 1-18 in Blessing M. Maumbe (ed.), E-agriculture and e-government for global policy development: implications and future directions. Information Science Reference, Hershey, Pennsylvania. 321 pages.
25 pages., The study adopted survey research design. The population of the study consisted 1200 respondents comprising (staff of the Zamfara State Agricultural Development Project, FADAMA III Project, IFAD, Animal rearers and Farmers). Instruments of data collection used for the study were the questionnaire, interview and discussions. One thousand two hundred questionnaires were distributed to respondents and only 988 (82.2%) were dully returned and found usable. The results of the responses were interpreted using simple percentage and frequency tables. The findings of the study include, that 95% of Zamfara State population are farmers, Maru and Gusau Local Government Areas recorded the highest farmers’ population. It was also discovered that there was a high rate of awareness of climate change information in the State with Radio, Television, extension services as major sources of climate change information in the State. It was also discovered that farmers in the State utilize climate change information like taking decisions on what and when to plant, planting improved crop varieties among others. There is also the challenges of reduction in annual rainfall, deforestation, insect-pests attack, high temperature among others. Recommendations were made for intensified awareness campaign on climate change, increased budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector for more mitigation and adaptation capacity for the farmers.
International: Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, ACP-EU, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 153 Document Number: D11614
Notes:
3 pages., Online from publisher., Author addresses "large gap between African extension services ... and the number of farmers being reached." ... "Africa's existing mobile network (currently the second biggest mobile market in the world) could be better utilised to bridge this gap and provide mobile-based agricultural information, advice and support to smallholder farmers."
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), Washington, D.C.; Rome, Italy; Nairobi, Kenya; and Paris, France.
Format:
Report
Publication Date:
2008-04
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 166 Document Number: C27798
Notes:
1 page., Suggests the answer, "Yes." Executive summary of a set of reports agreed to at an Intergovernmental Plenary Session in Johannesburg, South Africa, in April, 2008. This was a small part of a study during the past three years by UN organizations, the World Bank and many governments involving 400 experts.
