The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying responses to mitigate this global health crisis have resulted in substantial disruptions to demand, production, distribution and labor in fisheries, aquaculture and food systems. These disruptions have severely impacted women processors and traders, who play a critical role in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors and associated food systems in sub-Saharan Africa. And yet, COVID related data and responses have tended to be gender-blind or overly representative of men’s experiences and needs in the sector.
In order to address food insecurity, the New Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A) promotes tighterintegration of African smallholder farmers, especially women, into formal markets via value chains to improve farmers’ input access and to encourage the sale of crop surpluses. This commentary offers a theoretical and practical critique of the GR4A model, drawing on early findings from a five-year study of value chain initiatives in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mozambique.
Fairtrade certification has recently gained in importance for various export crops produced in developing countries. One of Fairtrade's main objectives is to improve the social conditions of smallholder farmers. Previous research showed that Fairtrade has positive effects on farmers' sales prices and incomes in many situations. However, more detailed analysis of the effects on food security and other dimensions of household living standard is rare.
It is often assumed that voluntary sustainability standards – such as Fairtrade – could not only improve the socioeconomic wellbeing of smallholder farmers in developing countries but could also help to reduce negative health and environmental impacts of agricultural production. The empirical evidence is thin, as most previous studies on the impact of sustainability standards only focused on economic indicators, such as prices, yields, and incomes.
The aim of this report is to provide a detailed review of documented social learning processes for climate changeand natural resource managementas described in peer-reviewed literature. Particular focus is on identifying (1) lessons and principles, (2) tools and approaches, (3) evaluation of social learning, as well as (4) concrete examples of impacts that social learning has contributed to.
The working paper presents a new toolkit for the implementation of a participatory vulnerability assessment (PVA) in rural localities, by introducing the methodology, as well as the findings, from a pilot study in Sokoine (Zepisa, Hombolo Ward) in Tanzania. It is based on a participatory methodological approach and follows a multidimensional conceptualisation of social vulnerability to climate change.
This study assessed intermediate results of an investment intended to support climate change adaptation and resilience-building among farmers’ cooperatives in Rwanda. The assessment was based on a purposive sampling survey of farmers’ perspectives conducted in sites in 10 programme intervention districts of the country’s 30 districts.
This working paper represents work‐in‐progress of the CBFC project (Community‐based Fish Culture in Seasonal Floodplains and Irrigation Systems), a research project supported by the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), with the aim of increasing productivity of seasonally occurring water bodies through aquaculture.The project has been implemented in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Mali and Vietnam, where technical and institutional options for community based aquaculture have been tested. The project began in 2005 and was completed in March 2010.
This brief provides an overview of the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system of the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) and describes how the M&E system is designed to support the program to achieve its goals. The AAS program aims to improve the lives of 22 million people dependent upon aquatic agricultural systems by 2024 through research in development.
Based on eleven case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this report describes farmer-led research findings and their dissemination, and analyzes available evidence on the impact of farmer-led approaches to agricultural research and development on rural livelihoods, local capacity to innovate and adapt, and influence on governmental institutions of agricultural research and development.