Harsh, Jessica (author), Lamm, Alexa (author), Telg, Ricky (author), and Meyers, Courtney (author)
Format:
Paper abstract
Publication Date:
2018-02
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 199 Document Number: D10019
Notes:
Abstract of paper presented at the National Agricultural Communications Symposium, Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) Agricultural Communications Section, Jacksonville, Florida, February 4-5, 2018.
12 pages, Food waste and food insecurity are two concurrent major public health issues. To address them, gleaning programs can reduce waste and enhance food security by diverting produce to food pantries. To understand the experiences of farmers and gleaning programs, interviews were completed with 12 farmers who had participated in a gleaning program and 16 farmers who had not donated produce through a gleaning program within the Greater Kansas City metro area. For farmers who had participated in the gleaning program, the ease of donating and tax incentives were primary benefits. Inadequate experience and inefficient volunteers were cited as challenges. Farmers without experience with gleaning programs cited safety and liability issues as concerns. Because farmers communicate frequently with other farmers, food rescue organizations should consider enlisting their support. Communities and government agencies should provide financial support to improve the resources and infrastructure of gleaning organizations to improve farmer-gleaner relationships.
15 pages., via online journal, Radio is the most widely used medium for disseminating information to rural audiences across Africa. Even in very poor communities, radio penetration is vast; it is estimated there are over 800 million radios in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper summarizes evidence on food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa and strategies to provide information on innovative agricultural practices to smallholder farmers. The research in this paper is then discussed within the context of research on information and communication technologies (ICTS) for development. Next, the paper presents the ICT-enhanced participatory radio campaign approach and ICT innovations introduced by Farm Radio International, a Canadian nongovernmental organization. The paper analyzes two participatory radio campaigns that use both listening groups and ICTs to engage African farmers. Research on these radio campaigns in six African countries is reported to examine how the participatory approach impacted listenership, knowledge and initial adoption of agricultural techniques and practices presented in the radio campaigns. The authors conclude that the findings of research on these projects could be highly relevant for increasing awareness and adoption of agricultural practices in Sub-Saharan Africa. They also appear promising for other development sectors and for other developing regions
14pgs, Background
Businesses and organizations involved in growing, distributing, and supplying food may face severe disruptions from natural and human-generated hazards, ranging from extreme weather to political unrest. Baltimore, Maryland, is developing policies to improve local food system organizations’ ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptive events and ultimately to contribute to food system resilience.
Objectives
To identify factors that may be associated with organization-level food system resilience, how these factors may play out in disaster response, and how they may relate to organizations’ confidence in their ability to withstand disruptive events.
Design
Semi-structured in-depth interviews with representatives of key food system businesses and organizations identified by means of stratified purposive sampling and snowball sampling.
Participants/setting
Representatives of 26 food system businesses and organizations in Baltimore stratified by two informant categories: organizations focused on promoting food access, such as governmental offices and nonprofits, and businesses and organizations involved in supplying and distributing food in Baltimore City, such as retailers, wholesalers, and producers.
Analyses
Interviews were analyzed using a phronetic iterative approach.
Results
The following 10 factors that may contribute to organization-level resilience were identified: formal emergency planning; staff training; staff attendance; redundancy of food supply, food suppliers, infrastructure, location, and service providers; insurance; and post-event learning. Organizations that were larger, better resourced, and affiliated with national or government partners typically demonstrated more resilience factors compared with smaller, independent, and nonprofit organizations.
Conclusion
To ensure reliable access to safe food for all people, food system organizations must strengthen their operations to safeguard against a variety of potential threats. This study’s examination of factors that contribute to resilience can help food system organizations, researchers, and government officials identify priorities for investigating vulnerabilities in diverse operations and potential strategies to improve resilience in the face of ongoing and growing threats.
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.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 124 Document Number: D11200
Notes:
Online from ProPublica website. 4 pages., "Here's our roundup of some standout reporting about the food on your plate." Identifies and briefly describes 11 examples across a range of related aspects and issues.
8 pages, Agricultural extension can be defined as the entire set of organisations that support and facilitate people engaged in agricultural production to solve problems and to obtain information, skills and technologies to improve their livelihoods and well-being. Extension officials should ensure that farmers are engaged and capacitated so that they can make production decisions that are not in conflict with nature, yet such decisions ensure that their well-being is improved. With 75% of the world’s poor living in rural areas, the topic of improved agriculture through agricultural extension is viewed as central to poverty reduction. There have been questions posed by stakeholders (communities, policy-makers and politicians) about the non-visibility and accountability of agricultural extension in the communities that it is supposed to help. There are however a number of factors (perceived or real) that make agricultural extension less or not visible nor accountable. Therefore, this paper investigates and proposes a theoretical framework or model to ensure that agricultural extension is visible and accountable to all stakeholders. This will in turn ensure that there are noticeable increases or improvement of the lives of the resource poor farmers and communities.
