The government of Rwanda is promoting agricultural intensification focused on the production of a small number of targeted commodities as a central strategy to pursue the joint policy goals of economic growth, food security and livelihood development. The dominant approach to increase the productive capacity of the land, crops and animal resources has been through large-scale land consolidation, soil fertility management, and the intensive use of biotechnology and external inputs.
Even prior to COVID, there was a considerable push for food system transformation to achieve better nutrition and health as well as environmental and climate change outcomes. Recent years have seen a large number of high visibility and influential publications on food system transformation. Literature is emerging questioning the utility and scope of these analyses, particularly in terms of trade-offs among multiple objectives.
The co-creation and sharing of knowledge among different types of actors with complementary expertise is known as the Multi-Actor Approach (MAA). This paper presents how Horizon2020 Thematic-Networks (TNs) deal with the MAA and put forward best practices during the different project phases, based on the results of a desktop study, interviews, surveys and expert workshops. The study shows that not all types of actors are equally involved in TN consortia and participatory activities, meaning TNs might be not sufficiently demand-driven and the uptake of the results is not optimal.
L’une des avancées les plus importantes dans le domaine de l’observation de la terre est la découverte des indices spectraux, ils ont notamment prouvé leur efficacité dans la caractérisation des surfaces agricoles, mais ils sont généralement définis de manière empirique. Cette étude basée sur l’intelligence artificielle et le traitement du signal, propose une méthode pour trouver un indice optimal. Et porte sur l’analyse d’images issues d’une caméra multi-spectrale, utilisée dans un contexte agricole pour l’acquisition en champ proche de végétation.
Le projet RIVAGE veut favoriser l’adoption de pratiques alternatives pour gérer les impacts de la pollution diffuse dans le bassin versant de la rivière Pérou en Guadeloupe. Son objectif est de produire et partager les connaissances sur les processus, les impacts et les pratiques innovantes avec les acteurs du territoire. Pour faciliter la prise en compte des résultats, le projet a créé une « école-acteurs ». L’école-acteurs est un espace d’échanges autour des thématiques liées à la pollution diffuse agricole.
Women play important roles at different nodes of both agricultural and off-farm value chains, but in many countries their contributions are either underestimated or limited by prevailing societal norms or gender-specific barriers. We use primary data collected in Asia (Bangladesh, Philippines) and Africa (Benin, Malawi) to examine the relationships between women’s empowerment, gender equality, and participation in a variety of local agricultural value chains that comprise the food system.
L’herbe pâturée est l’aliment qui coûte le moins cher dans une ration et la bonne gestion de l’herbe passe entre autre par une connaissance des quantités disponibles. Afin de simplifier et d’automatiser ces mesures d’herbe, et ainsi contribuer au maintien voire au développement du pâturage, le projet HERDECT s’est attaché à construire des méthodes d’estimation de la biomasse des prairies à partir d’outils de télédétection (d’acquisition à distance) et à en estimer la faisabilité opérationnelle.
This paper reviews the empirical literature on the determinants of farmer adoption of sustainable intensification technologies in maize agri-food systems of the Global South. The attributes of the technology and the dissemination institutions interact with farm/farmer-specific variables, leading to heterogeneous impacts, making the prediction of technology adoption challenging.
This paper assesses the relationships between women’s dietary diversity and various indicators of agricultural biodiversity in farms of the Hauts-Bassins, a cotton-growing region in rural western Burkina Faso. A sample of 579 farms representative of the region was surveyed at three different periods of the year. Using a qualitative 24-h dietary recall, we computed a women’s dietary diversity score (WDDS-10) based on ten food groups.
This scoping review synthesizes the literature on government agricultural policy and production in order to 1) present a typology of policies used to influence agricultural production, 2) to provide a preliminary overview of the ways that impact is assessed in this literature, and 3) to bring this literature into conversation with the literature on food and tobacco supply.