The Revolution of Mobile Phone-Enabled Services for Agricultural Development (m-Agri Services) in Africa: The Challenges for Sustainability

The provision of information through mobile phone-enabled agricultural information services (m-Agri services) has the potential to revolutionise agriculture and significantly improve smallholder farmers’ livelihoods in Africa. Globally, the benefits of m-Agri services include facilitating farmers’ access to financial services and sourcing agricultural information about input use, practices, and market prices. There are very few published literature sources that focus on the potential benefits of m-Agri services in Africa and none of which explore their sustainability. This study, therefore, explores the evolution, provision, and sustainability of these m-Agri services in Africa. An overview of the current landscape of m-Agri services in Africa is provided and this illustrates how varied these services are in design, content, and quality. Key findings from the exploratory literature review reveal that services are highly likely to fail to achieve their intended purpose or be abandoned when implementers ignore the literacy, skills, culture, and demands of the target users. This study recommends that, to enhance the sustainability of m-Agri services, the implementers need to design the services with the users involved, carefully analyse, and understand the target environment, and design for scale and a long-term purpose. While privacy and security of users need to be ensured, the reuse or improvement of existing initiatives should be explored, and projects need to be data-driven and maintained as open source. Thus, the study concludes that policymakers can support the long-term benefit of m-Agri services by ensuring favourable policies for both users and implementers

[Community Oriented Policing (COP) Evaluation]

An in-depth review of the use of force policies and practices used by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) was conducted after the alarming rate of officer involved shootings was publicized by the Las Vegas Review Journal (RJ) in 2011. The 75 recommendations handed down to LVMPD after the review not only helped guide the agency towards procedural and reporting changes, but also paved a way for the agency to begin rebuilding trust in police within the community. This program evaluation focuses on the community engagement efforts put forth by the Bolden Area Command (BAC) community oriented policing (COP) program, from events they sponsor to youth leagues they coach, in the realm of community engagement. The evaluation will serve as a tool to determine what works with community engagement and what opportunities may come. The ultimate goal of COP programs across the United States is to improve relations between the police and the communities they serve, building trust and mutual respect. This relationship building process is imperative to effectively address underlying issues and change negative behavioral patterns not only in Las Vegas, but across the country (U.S. Department of Justice, 2017)

Measuring Shared Value: How to Unlock Value by Linking Social and Business Results

Measuring shared value allows companies to maximize opportunities for innovation, growth, and social impact at scale. This article explains the specific purpose of shared value measurement and offers a step-by-step process and pragmatic approaches to measurement with examples from leading companies

Identifying research priorities for the competitiveness of arable crops

EU agriculture and arable crops in particular are suffering from competitiveness deficits compared to other producers in the world economy. One potential strategy to cope with competitiveness challenges is to focus on research and technological innovation. The objective of this paper is to present the results of the project EUROCROP (Agricultural research for improving arable crop competitiveness – EUROCROP - http://www.eurocrop.cetiom.fr/), aimed at the identification of research priorities for arable crop competitiveness. The project adopts a definition of competitiveness based on a combination of economic competitiveness and social/environmental sustainability. Furthermore, the project utilises both a crop chain and a horizontal issue perspective, and develops research priorities through the interaction of the scientific level (expert group approach) and the stakeholder level (scenario analysis). The main result of the project is the elaboration of approximately eighty research topics. Among these, the main areas for research identified are A: Risk management and adaptation of arable farming; B: Innovation in cropping systems for high environmental and economic performances; C: Limiting the impact of arable crop cropping systems on green-house gas emissions; D: Better understanding of public concern about arable crop production and products and communication with global and local societies. The project confirms that a number of well established research topics retain their importance (e.g. yield improvement, plant protection). However, they require cautious coordination with an increasingly complex system of short term priorities.Arable crops, crop chain, competitiveness, research priorities, foresight, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Strategic Research Agenda for organic food and farming

The TP Organics Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) was finalised in December 2009. The purpose of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) is to enable research, development and knowledge transfer that will deliver relevant outcomes – results that will contribute to the improvement of the organic sector and other low external input systems. The document has been developed through a dynamic consultative process that ran from 2008 to 2009. It involved a wide range of stakeholders who enthusiastically joined the effort to define organic research priorities. From December 2008 to February; the expert groups elaborated the first draft. The consultative process involved the active participation of many different countries. Consultation involved researchers, advisors, members of inspection/certification bodies, as well as different users/beneficiaries of the research such as farmers, processors, market actors and members of civil society organisations throughout Europe and further afield in order to gather the research needs of the whole organic sector

Social Entrepreneurship and Social Transformation

This study provides a comparative analysis of seven cases of social entrepreneurship that have been widely recognized as successful. The paper suggests factors associated with successful social entrepreneurship, particularly with social entrepreneurship that leads to significant changes in the social, political and economic contexts for poor and marginalized groups. It generates hypotheses about core innovations, leadership, organization, and scaling up in successful social entrepreneurship. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the practice of social entrepreneurship, for further research, and for the continued development of support technologies and institutions that will encourage future social entrepreneurship.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 15. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Embedding Diversity: Communication and Label Concept for Underutilized Crops – Checklist for your First Evaluation

There are some very successful cases of marketing of underutilized crops in European countries. Examples are the marketing of rare varieties in Austrian and Swiss supermarkets. Other examples are market initiatives in Spain, France, or Italy, selling local produces and processed foods in specialised shops, at farmers markets, or directly at the farm. A consumer survey was conducted in 2017 in France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland during DIVERSIFOOD project in order to gain additional data on such examples; and Rossi et al. (2016)1 developed the DIVERSIFOOD Case Study Framework. Among others an objective of these studies was to identify some best-case examples for the use of a trademark, label or logo and the related communication strategies. Then a flagship approach to communicate the benefits of underutilized crops by means of a label should be developed. The studies identified many individual approaches of the various marketing initiatives, each based on slightly different secrets of success. Within the DIVERSIFOOD consortium it was concluded that there’s no sense in defining a single best-label flagship approach; instead, a concept should give an idea of the possibilities to communicate the value of agrobiodiversity to consumers. This concept is the resulting outcome. It provides a structured approach for networks an market initiatives to evaluate whether a label for underutilized crops is feasible, and wheter it is in line with theire values and aims or not, and what the premises for the communication strategy are for those underutilized crops. This concept provides a general idea about topics that should be considered. The result could be the introduction of a label or the abandonment of introducing a label. In the beginning of such an evaluation there are most likely existing underutilized crops, that is, genetic resources, such as old, locally, and newly bred underutilized varieties, as well as some products or product ideas derived from these crops. The main target groups of this concept are farmers involved in participatory breeding, seed savers, seed networks and communities, foundations, and breeders of underutilized crops, as well as partners of such genetic resources. Moreover, the concept could be interesting for initiatives and organizations that consider the integration of underutilized crops in their existing label; however there is no specific treatment of this topic in the concept. The concept should be considered as the first step in the evaluation of a new label. The treated topics might also hint on further considerations when developing a successful marketing initiative. However, the concept focuses mainly on two points: 1. Introduction of a label2, a logo, a trademark or similar and some implications 2. Communication tools and communication contents for products of underutilized crop