Food quality and safety are receiving increasing attention in the food sector nationally and internationally. Emerging private sector regulations are increasingly perceived as market entrance barriers within this development. In this paper, we analyze quality assurance programs (QAPs) in the horticultural sector in Vietnam and their effect on access to international markets. A representative sample of registered fruit and vegetable processing firms provide the basis for our analyses. Results of different logistic regression models show that QAPs are market specific.
This paper examines reconfigurations of household economies and agrobiodiversity through the experiences and responses of rural households to local manifestations of globalisation and environmental change in the Central Valley of Tarija, Bolivia, from the 1950s to the present. Research participant narratives from seven study communities document a widely experienced regional shift from rain-fed agriculture and pastured livestock production for household consumption to market-oriented production of regionally-specialised commodities.
Water is a vital and scarce resource in agriculture and its optimal management is emerging as a key challenge. This paper presents an automated irrigation system to reduce water utilization in agriculture by combining the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and optimization tools. The automated irrigation system deploys low cost sensors to sense variables of interest such as soil moisture, pH, soil type, and weather conditions. The data is stored in Thingspeak cloud service for monitoring and data-storage.
Sur la base de 16 études de cas, nous cherchons à comprendre comment l'usage des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) transforme les dispositifs de conseil agricole au Burkina Faso. Si les outils employés et les thématiques du conseil sont diversifiés, les services demeurent récents et inaboutis. Les prestataires de conseil cherchent en effet à améliorer les outils et services, dont la durabilité n'est pas encore garantie. Ceci s'explique notamment par la complexité du travail inter-organisationnel pour développer ces services.
This paper analyzes the impact of participation in multi-stakeholder platforms (Plataformas) aimed at linking smallholder potato farmers to the market in the mountain region of Ecuador. It describes and evaluates the Plataformas’ program to determine whether it has been successful in linking farmers to higher-value markets and the effects that such connections have brought, particularly with regard to farmers’ welfare and to the environment. The analysis is run comparing a set of different and carefully constructed control groups to beneficiaries and using various specifications.
LenCD has prepared a joint statement on results and capacity development (presented in this publication), which stresses that meaningful, sustainable results are premised on proper investments in capacity development and that these results materialize at different levels and at different times, along countries’ development trajectory. To provide evidence in support of this statement, LenCD launched a call for submission of stories.
This book represents the proceedings of the FAO international technical conference dedicated to Agricultural Biotechnologies in Developing Countries (ABDC-10) that took place in Guadalajara, Mexico on 1-4 March 2010. A major objective of the conference was to take stock of the application of biotechnologies across the different food and agricultural sectors in developing countries, in order to learn from the past and to identify options for the future to face the challenges of food insecurity, climate change and natural resource degradation.
Grants for agricultural innovation are common but grant funds specifically targeted to smallholder farmers remain relatively rare. Nevertheless, they are receiving increasing recognition as a promising venue for agricultural innovation. They stimulate smallholders to experiment with improved practices, to become proactive and to engage with research and extension providers. The systematic review covered three modalities of disbursing these grants to smallholder farmers and their organisations: vouchers, competitive grants and farmer-led innovation support funds.
This case study in the development of hot pepper marketing in the Caribbean covers the period from the early 1980's to 2000. During the period several partnerships were forged among a host of public and private research institutions, export agencies, private companies and farmer groups to solve major constraints along the commodity chain.
En este documento dos modelos asociativos, cooperativa y asociaciones de productores, son examinados con la finalidad de recoger las fortalezas, debilidades, oportunidades, amenazas, factores de éxito y lecciones aprendidas que resultan del análisis de la estructura, modelo de gerencia, cadena de valor, alianzas, estrategias socioempresariales, de cuatro organizaciones agroempresariales rurales, cuya experiencia ha llamado la atención y ha sido objeto de seguimiento por parte de diferentes instituciones nacionales e internacionales promotoras del de desarrollo rural, como referente de éxito