This paper analyzes the status of Pakistan’s agriculture in the world and quantifies the potential of improving productivity and quality of value chain at its different nodes. A great potential of expansion in the value chain of large number of agricultural commodities produced in Pakistan are observed. Just bringing the average crop yield levels at par to the world average yield can generate over US$11 billion additional revenues to the producers. Despite lower yield, majority of commodities have lower prices compared to the world average prices at the farmgate.
This paper provides a snapshot of the agriculture-nutrition nexus in the region, outlines the pathways through which agriculture can influence nutrition outcomes, elaborates on the objectives of the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research consortium within this context, and highlights the core findings of the six papers that form the body of this Special Issue. The paper ends with five key lessons that have emerged from this research, during this decade
In this paper, is explained how previous waves of innovation in South Asian agricultural and food systems have combined to create the present situation, and we suggest how alternative kinds of innovation may enable South Asian countries to escape from the triple burden of malnutrition.
Being the ultimate beneficiary of ecosystem services provided by on-farm agricultural biodiversity, the participation of farmers in its sustainable utilization and conservation is crucial. How much aware they are with the significance and conservation of agricultural biodiversity in order to improve their crop yield remains unclear, especially from the developing courtiers. Pollination is one of such ecosystem services, enormously contributed by the wild bees.
Increasing on-farm production diversity and improving markets are recognized as ways to improve the dietary diversity of smallholders. Using instrumental variable methods to account for endogeneity, this paper studies the interplay of production diversity, markets and diets in the context of seasonality in Afghanistan. Accordingly to the authors improved crop diversity over the year is positively associated with dietary diversity in the regular season, but not in the lean season.
Despite recent improvements in the national average, stunting levels in Afghanistan exceed 70% in some Provinces. Agriculture serves as the main source of livelihood for over half of the population and has the potential to be a strong driver of a reduction in under-nutrition. This article reports research conducted through interviews with stakeholders in agriculture and nutrition in the capital, Kabul, and four provinces of Afghanistan, to gain a better understanding of the institutional and political factors surrounding policy making and the nutrition-sensitivity of agriculture.
The primary aim of this research was to examine the factors influencing behavioral intention of farmers to use ICTs for agricultural risk management. The past research reveals that many researchers had tried to determine factors affecting behavioural intentions of the respondents and TPB has been applied as technology acceptance model in various contexts. However, predicting behavioral intentions to use ICTs for agricultural risk management has not been evaluated from the actual field. Therefore, the data were collected from 360 farmers through multistage cluster sampling technique.