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TAFSSA webinar session 12: Who does what within the household?
No full textThis is part of TAFSSA’s 2024 webinar series to highlight the research findings based on a comprehensive sub-national agrifood systems assessment conducted in early 2023 in rural areas of five districts across Bangladesh, India and Nepal.Neha KumarEsha SarswatTimothy J. KrupnikUma KoiralaAvinash KishorePumima MenonMarie-Christine Monnier1:02:2
Behavior change drives better seeds and higher yields in Tanzania
No full textFlorian NdyamukamaJulieth ShombeSesilia MwashiuyaTabia SabasabaAdelina AlimwendaZainab MajubwaTheresia MwaisumbiZainabu HusseinStanslaus SinsungweMatrida NkonoJoseph GhambiHappy Sikalengo12:5
Situation report on Nepal’s agrifood systems: July 2024
No full textIn June 2024, the national wage rate index and remittance inflows to Nepal increased, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) declined, improving the purchasing power of lower-income households. The lower CPI was partly due to falling prices for ghee and edible oil, making nutritious options more affordable for both rural and urban households. However, increased prices for cereals, certain fruits, vegetables eggs, fish, and meat have negatively affected these households. Additionally, rising petroleum prices have increased production costs for farmers, potentially leading to higher food prices in the future. The Nepal Living Standard Survey IV (2022-23) reveals significant shifts in Nepal's agricultural practices, highlighting a decline in the number of agriculture households and average land holding, changes in crop cultivation, and a reduction in livestock farming. A significant gender wage gap persists in Nepal's agricultural sector, with women earning less than men, particularly in Banke district, while Bardia and Dang districts show gender parity in the Feed the Future (FtF) Zone of Influence (ZoI). This highlights ongoing gender inequality and the urgent need for initiatives to promote equity and improve the livelihoods of female agricultural workers.11 page
Private service provision contributes to widespread innovation adoption among smallholder farmers: Laser land levelling technology in northwestern India
No full textThis study investigates key institutional factors promoting the adoption of laser land levelling (LLL), a technology that has gained wide popularity among farmers in northwestern India despite being indivisible. The main objective is to evaluate the role of service providers, offering LLL on a rental basis to farmers, for technology dissemination among smallholders with fragmented plots. Plot-level data from 1,661 households across 84 villages in Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh in India were collected and used to analyse farmers’ LLL technology perceptions and adoption decisions. Regression models were developed to estimate the role of local service provision for LLL adoption while controlling for farm, household, and other contextual variables. The analysis pays particular attention to the heterogeneous effects of service provision on farmers with different farm and plot sizes. The data and estimates reveal that local access to a larger number of service providers is associated with higher rates of LLL adoption among farmers. The effect of service providers on adoption varies by farm and plot size: it is larger on smaller farms/plots. The findings suggest that a conducive institutional environment that accommodates the specific needs of different farm sizes can speed up innovation adoption. This finding makes a case for re-evaluating traditional agricultural technology scaling models to include individual service provision for broader and more inclusive adoption.3
Chapter 7. The way forward: recommendations for further actions
No full textIn 2014, the African Union (AU) Summit in Malabo set the ambitious goal to halve post-harvest losses by 2025. However, the challenges and complexities of achieving this target have now been realized. With only one year remaining until this deadline, it is evident that post-harvest loss(PHL) remains a pressing issue in Africa, demanding immediate attention and innovative strategies. This publication details the continual challenges that hinder the reduction of post-harvest losses. A critical barrier is the limited access to improved technologies, hindering the adoption of more efficient and modern practices in various stages of the agricultural value chain. In addition, the non-adherence to a comprehensive value chain approach also contributes to the fragmented efforts in addressing post-harvest losses, necessitating a more holistic and interconnected strategy. Furthermore, institutional challenges exacerbate the issue, with many countries lacking clear and robust strategies to confront post-harvest losses effectively. This institutional gap underscores the need for coordinated efforts involving governments, the private sector and civil society to establish and implement comprehensive policies to mitigate losses across the food system. As the AU Malabo summit’s deadline approaches, the persistence of these challenges emphasizes the urgency for renewed commitment and innovative solutions. There is a call for a collaborative approach that engages stakeholders at local, national, and global levels. This involves not only acknowledging the multifaceted nature of post-harvest losses but also actively seeking innovative solutions that address the root causes whilst promoting sustainable food security for the African continent. This publication has shown that despite the ongoing efforts to reduce PHL, it remains a significant challenge for many smallholder farmers in Africa. Several gaps that contribute to increases in post-harvest losses among farmers, especially smallholders, have been identified and recommendations that contribute to the reduction of PHL have been demonstrated and showcased.93-9
Agronomic pathways to increase cereal productivity in Ethiopia: Yield gap decomposition for Digital Green and Fertilizer Ethiopia use cases
No full text16 page
A facilitator’s guide for nutrition training in Bangladesh: A training of trainers module
No full textIn the context of nutrition sensitive agriculture, it's crucial to empower farmers with the right knowledge on producing crops to meet their nutritional requirements. This publication, 'A facilitator's guide for nutrition training in Bangladesh’ has been produced as a part of action research in the CGIAR Regional Integrated Initiative Transforming Agrifood Systems in South Asia (TAFSSA) that aims to deliver a coordinated program of research and engagement across the food production–to–consumption continuum to support equitable access to sustainable healthy diets, improve farmer livelihoods and resilience, and conserve land, air and groundwater resources. In our experience, not all farmers or farming communities have information on the ways in which the crops, livestock, and fish products they may produce are linked to nutrition outcomes. This training module is therefore a response to this important community-level information gap. The contents of this module have been systematically organized into six sessions, accompanied by illustrative examples of participatory teaching approaches to help the facilitators deliver the contents in an interactive way.51 page
Quantifying the adoption of conservation agriculture: Development and application of the Conservation Agriculture Appraisal Index
No full textCONTEXT: Estimates of conservation agriculture (CA) adoption vary worldwide because of a lack of a standardized methodology to quantify the simultaneous utilization of its core principles of minimum soil disturbance, permanent soil organic cover and crop diversification. Comparisons of CA adoption among farms across regions requires estimation of the farm area and cropping season where CA principles are applied. OBJECTIVE: To develop the Conservation Agriculture Appraisal Index (CAAI) as a standardized conceptual framework with defined thresholds that indicates the intensity and frequency of use of each CA core principle. CAAI was subsequently applied to quantify CA adoption on farms across four wheat (triticum aestivum) growing regions, both with and without livestock, including dryland and irrigated systems in Australia and Mexico, respectively. METHODS: CAAI is a continuous scoring system that estimates the intensity and frequency of application of the core principles and their concurrent utilization to assess the extent of CA adoption. CAAI score is the sum of the scores of each core principle, accounting for the percentage of the farm area and cropping season where CA is applied. CAAI emerged from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and farm visits that captured underlying patterns of CA use in regional-specific contexts. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: CAAI assessed annual CA adoption on 100 farms in four wheat growing regions with different environments and farming systems. The adoption of CA was higher in Australia than Mexico, where partial adoption was more prevalent, especially for summer crops. ‘No adoption’ of CA occurred when one of the core principles consistently scored zero within a year. SIGNIFICANCE: The CAAI can be used as a benchmarking research tool at the farm level to standardize units for comparisons and identify levels of CA adoption by farm area and cropping seasons between and across regions
Stepwise methods for more nuanced adoption analysis: a case study of harvest and post‑harvest mechanization in Bangladesh
No full textThe adoption of agricultural harvest and post-harvest mechanization is crucial for addressing drudgery, food losses, climate vulnerability and food security. Despite considerable efforts by government and development partners to prioritize agricultural mechanization, labour-intensive manual (post-)harvest activities continue to dominate in Bangladeshi smallholder systems. Explorations of this has been limited by simplistic binary approaches that ignore the dynamic pathways to usage outcomes. Instead, we apply non-binary analytical methods to district representative data to highlight the value in moving beyond binary adoption analysis. Results highlight that a national (post-)harvest mechanisation rate of 74% is insufficient to capture the true adoption status, given substantial disparity exists across machinery and by district. Deeper exploration of temporal and spatial differences enable the identification of key trends that warrant further in-depth explorations, while only 46% satisfaction with extension systems highlights the need to re-evaluate key information exchange mechanisms. We conclude that there is a clear need for district and machinery specific policy arrangements if Bangladesh is to achieve (post-)harvest mechanisation objectives that aim to reduce food loses and enable greater food security nationwide