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.

Conventional approaches to agricultural extension based on top–down technology transfer and information dissemination models are inadequate to help smallholder farmers tackle increasingly complex agroclimatic adversities. Innovative service delivery alternatives, such as field schools, exist but are mostly implemented in isolationistic silos with little effort to integrate them for cost reduction and greater technical effectiveness.

Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) proposes environmental policies developed around action-based conservation measures supported by agri-environment schemes (AES). High Nature Value (HNV) farming represents a combination of low-intensity and mosaic practices mostly developed in agricultural marginalized rural areas which sustain rich biodiversity. Being threatened by intensification and abandonment, such farming practices were supported in the last CAP periods by targeted AES.

Providing economic opportunities for youth in agriculture is essential to securing the future of agriculture in Africa, addressing poverty, unemployment, and inequality. However, barriers limit youth participation in agriculture and the broader food system. This scoping review aimed to investigate the opportunities and challenges for youth in participating in agriculture and the food system in Africa. This review conducted a scoping review using the PRISMA guideline. Published studies were retrieved from online databases (Web of Science, Cab Direct, and Science Direct) for 2009 to 2019.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the ability of soil physical characteristics (i.e., texture and moisture conditions) to better understand the breeding conditions of desert locust (DL). Though soil moisture and texture are well-known and necessary environmental conditions for DL breeding, in this study, we highlight the ability of model-derived soil moisture estimates to contribute towards broader desert locust monitoring activities.

Indicator-based tools are widely used for the assessment of farm sustainability, but analysts still face methodological and conceptual issues, including data availability, the complexity of the concept of sustainability and the heterogeneity of agricultural systems. This study contributes to this debate through the illustration of a procedure for farm sustainability assessment focussed on the case study of the South Milan Agricultural Park, Italy. The application is based on a set of environmental, social and economic indicators retrieved from the literature review.

The process of adopting innovation, especially with regard to precision farming (PF), is inherently complex and social, and influenced by producers, change agents, social norms and organizational pressure. An empirical analysis was conducted among Italian farmers to measure the drivers and clarify “bottlenecks” in the adoption of agricultural innovation. The purpose of this study was to analyze the socio-structural and complexity factors that affect the probability to adopt innovations and the determinants that drive an individual’s decisions.

In recent decades, the confluence of different global and domestic drivers has led to progressive and unpredictable changes in the functioning and structure of agri-food markets worldwide.

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.

Smallholder farmers in East Africa need information and knowledge on appropriate climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, technologies, and institutional innovations in order to effectively adapt to changing climatic conditions and cope with climate variability. This paper assesses farmer adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices and innovation after being exposed to Farms of the Future Approach (FotF). First; we explore and assess the various CSA technologies and practices; including institutional innovations farmers are adopting.