This report provides summary findings and conclusions from a set of five case studies examining the scaling up of pro-poor agricultural innovations through commercial pathways in developing countries.
The Bureau for Food Security (BFS) of USAID commissioned five country studies examining the scaling up of agricultural innovations through commercial pathways in developing countries, to understand how the Agency – including its country missions and implementing partners (IPs) – can use donor projects to achieve greater scale and long-term commercial sustainability.
Feed the Future Asia Innovative Farmers Activity (AIFA) is a regional project working to facilitate the scaling of critical agricultural technologies through regional partnership and technology transfer. The project works with a range of agricultural technology stakeholders on a regional basis (private sector, research institutions, governments, networks, etc.) to increase food security, reduce poverty, and improve environmental sustainability by facilitating agricultural innovation and technology diffusion in the Asia region.
Feed the Future Asia Innovative Farmers Activity (AIFA) is a regional project working to facilitate the scaling of critical agricultural technologies through regional partnership and technology transfer. The project works with a range of agricultural technology stakeholders on a regional basis (private sector, research institutions, governments, networks, etc.) to increase food security, reduce poverty, and improve environmental sustainability by facilitating agricultural innovation and technology diffusion in the Asia region.
The Scaling Agricultural Innovations Workshop gathered scaling experts from a range of organizations and agriculture sectors to share their experiences and ideas on the findings and lessons learned from five case studies (hybrid maize in Zambia, irrigated rice in Senegal, Purdue Improved Crop Storage bags in Kenya, agricultural machinery services in Bangladesh, and Kuroiler chickens in Uganda).
Agricultural innovation in low-income tropical countries contributes to a more effective and sustainable use of natural resources and reduces hunger and poverty through economic development in rural areas. Yet, despite numerous recent public and private initiatives to develop capacities for agricultural innovation, such initiatives are often not well aligned with national efforts to revive existing Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS).
Iran faces environmental challenges such as erosion and extreme events, namely droughts and floods. These phenomena have frequently affected the country over the past decades and temperature rise has led to a more challenging situation. Iran started to implement national and provincial policies in the 1950s to cope with these phenomena. To provide an overview of Iran’s efforts to tackle land degradation and climate change, this paper examined through literature since 2000 the stakeholders’ policies, their interventions and obstacles to the mitigation of these environmental challenges.
The creation of commercialization opportunities for smallholder farmers has taken primacy on the development agenda of many developing countries. Invariably, most of the smallholders are less productive than commercial farmers and continue to lag in commercialization. Apart from the various multifaceted challenges which smallholder farmers face, limited access to extension services stands as the underlying constraint to their sustainability.
Although the benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops have been well documented, how do farmers manage the risk of new technology in the early stages of technology adoption has received less attention. We compare the total factor productivity (TFP) of cotton to other major crops (wheat, rice, and corn) in China between 1990 and 2015, showing that the TFP growth of cotton production is significantly different from all other crops. In particular, the TFP of cotton production increased rapidly in the early 1990s then declined slightly around 2000 and rose again.
Past studies showing that barriers to farmers’ adaptation behaviors are focused on their socio-economic factors and resource availability. Meanwhile, psychological and social considerations are sparingly mentioned, especially for the related studies in developing countries. This study investigates the impact of psychological factors and social appraisal on farmers’ behavioral intention to adopt adaptation measures for the aforementioned reason, due to climate change and not to anthropogenic climate change.