This paper comparatively analyzes the structure of agricultural policy development networks that connect organizations working on agricultural development, climate change and food security in fourteen smallholder farming communities across East Africa, West Africa and South Asia.
Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), or FAW, is an insect native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. In the absence of natural controls or good management, it can cause significant damage to crops. It prefers maize, although it can feed on more than 80 additional species of crops including rice, sorghum, millet, sugarcane, vegetable crops and cotton.
Dans le besoin urgent de lutter contre le changement climatique, une priorité essentielle est de renforcer la capacité de ces groupes et communautés les plus vulnérables, et déjà fortement affectés, à améliorer leur capacité à adapter leurs systèmes de subsistance.
Adoptions of improved technologies and production practices are important drivers of agricultural development in low-income countries like Nepal. Adopting a broad class of such technologies and practices is often critical for meeting the multifaceted goals of efficiency, profitability, environmental sustainability, and climate resilience.
In theory, under the federal structure agricultural extension services can serve communities better as it aims to be client responsive and accountable to its consumers at the village level. However, poor understanding of federalism that has only recently emerged from the persisting centralized and feudal conceptions, limited practices of democratic norms and values primarily due to the lack of understanding of local governance, and limited commitment of political actors and policy makers to federalism, may derail the good intentions behind federalism.
The purposes of this course are to review the major reforms being considered internationally that aim to change the policy and institutional structure and operations of public sector agricultural extension systems, and to examine the advantages and disadvantages of each of these reforms as illustrated by the selected case studies. Aside from the introductory chapter, the course is organized into nine modules, which are conceived as part of a larger framework.
This publication contains twelve modules which cover a selection of major reform measures in agricultural extension being promulgated and implemented internationally, such as linking farmers to markets, making advisory services more demand-driven, promoting pluralistic advisory systems, and enhancing the role of advisory services within agricultural innovation systems.
Over the past few decades, some countries in Asia have been more successful than others in addressing poverty and malnutrition. The key question is what policies, strategies, legislation and institutional arrangements have led to a transformed agricultural sector, effectively contributing to poverty alleviation and addressing malnutrition. The great majority of national policymakers within and outside the Asia-Pacific region are keen to understand the causes of agricultural development and transformation in successful countries in Asia.
The organization of the Nutrition Innovation Labs represents a novel model for focusing U.S.- supported research on food and nutrition issues in developing countries. Their aims are to discover how policy and program interventions can most effectively achieve large-scale improvements in maternal and child nutrition, particularly by leveraging agriculture and build human and institutional capacity for applied policy analysis, research and program implementation.
Sustainable intensification of smallholder farming is a serious option for satisfying 2050 global cereal requirements and alleviating persistent poverty. That option seems far off for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) where technology-driven productivity growth has largely failed. The article revisits this issue from a number of angles: current approaches to enlisting SSA smallholders in agricultural development; the history of the phenomenal productivity growth in the USA, The Netherlands and Green Revolution Asia; and the current framework conditions for SSA productivity growth.