El Marco de Evaluación de Sistemas de Manejo de Recursos Naturales Incorporando Indicadores de Sustentabilidad (MESMIS) se utilizó para evaluar comparativamente la sustentabilidad de dos unidades de producción de cacao en el municipio de Comalcalco, Tabasco durante 2006. El método de estudio de casos se empleó mediante la combinación de enfoques cuantitativos y cualitativos de investigación, e incorporando métodos y herramientas participativas.
The farmer-inventors mostly use tacit knowledge and practical skills to create their inventions with the objective of increasing efficiency as a means to improving family farm viability. Farmer-inventors with entrepreneurial intentions were less inclined to share their ideas freely and described financial and temporal constraints in commercialising their inventions. The Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) concept was used to frame an analysis of farmer-inventors’ interactions with innovation support organisations from the perspective of the farmers themselves.
This report is a summary of the several activities pursued within the Program of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation (PARI) to contribute to sustainable agricultural growth, food and nutrition security in Africa and India. The Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Tropics and Subtropics worked in the identification of technological innovations and further intervention in the dairy value chain, offering a potential solution for cooling milk from the earliest stage of milk production and
Se utilizaron diferentes técnicas de diagnóstico con el objetivo de evaluar los elementos del sistema de ciencia e innovación de la rama porcina. Se realizó un análisis documental y se aplicaron encuestas y entrevistas a investigadores, técnicos, especialistas y directivos vinculados directamente al sistema. Se realizó un taller de expertos donde se identificaron las debilidades, amenazas, fortalezas y oportunidades del sistema a partir de las encuestas y entrevistas realizadas.
The study first identified fully efficient farmers and then estimated technical efficiency of inefficient farmers, identifying their determinants by applying a Zero Inefficiency Stochastic Frontier Model (ZISFM) on a sample of 300 rice farmers from central-northern Thailand. Next, the study developed scenarios of potential production increase and resource conservation if technical inefficiency was eliminated. Results revealed that 13% of the sampled farmers were fully efficient, thereby justifying the use of our approach.
Although agricultural value chain resilience is a crucial component to food security and sustainable food systems in developing countries, it has received little attention. This paper synthesizes knowledge from the social-ecological systems (SES), supply chain management, and value chain development literature to make three contributions to this research gap. First, it is conceptualized the agricultural value chain resilience and relate it to overall food system resilience.
In this study the farmers were first asked to answer two sets of statements related to views on climate change and experiences on changes so far in their own farm or nearby locations.
Low and slow adoption of improved agricultural technologies among smallholders often frustrate technology development and promotion efforts in the developing world. That is especially true for technologies requiring high initial investment. This study investigates how increasing farmers' awareness and exposure to new agricultural technologies through the creation of systematic linkages in the research-to-development continuum affect adoption. The double hurdle and duration analysis models were applied to a sample of 820 smallholder households producing wheat and barley in Syria.
This research delves into the implementation of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) among seven types of independent smallholders in Rokan Hulu regency, Riau province. The research area consisted of a relative established agricultural area on mineral soils and a relative frontier, mostly on peat. Smallholder types ranged from small local farmers to large farmers who usually reside in urban areas far from their plantation and regard oil palm cultivation as an investment opportunity.
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.