On-farm evaluation of integrated pest management of thrips and whiteflies in herb cuttings in Ethiopia : report to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development

Integrated Pest Management reduces the use of chemicals and therewith the impact of greenhouse horticulture on the environment. It improves working conditions and enables access of Ethiopian products on the world market. In response to such concerns the Ethiopian Horticulture Producers and Exporters Organization (EPHEA) has taken the initiative to develop a Code of Practice, of which Integrated Pest Management forms an integral part. The development of this Integrated Pest Management approach is supported through the Ethiopia-Netherlands Horticulture Partnership Programme

Integrated disease management

Integrated disease management in organic farming combines the use of various measures. The usefulness of certain measures depends on the specific crop-pathogen combination. In many crops, preventative measures can control diseases without the need of plant protection products. However, for certain disease problems, preventative measures are not sufficient. For example, organic apple production strongly depends on the multiple use plant protection products

Maize-Nutrient-Manager: A mobile phone application for field-specific, balanced nutrient management advisory

To increase productivity and profitability, while limiting nutrient losses and related GHG-emissions, African smallholders need more tailored fertilizer advice. Yet, such advice critically hinges upon – largely lacking – field-level management data, as management is key to efficient fertilizer use. The Maize- Nutrient-Manager (MNM) mobile phone application enables collection of such data at scale, and directly converts this data into actionable advice for the farmer. Focusing on field-level management data, MNM can identify those management practices that are currently imperative for enhancing smallholder farmers’ efficient use of fertilizers in their locality, thereby increasing productivity while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This document describes the background, design principles and development process of then MNM mobile phone application, as well as its pilot use in advisory practice in the Mbozi and Momba districts of Songwe region, Tanzania

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

Conservative precision agriculture: first economic and energetic assessments within the Agricare project

The integration of conservation tillage techniques with the principles of site-specific management characterising precision agriculture is an innovative feature aimed to achieve better economic and environmental sustainability, increasingly required by Community agricultural policies

Integrated and Ecological Crop Protection (I/ECP)

Manual on integrated and ecological crop protectio

Validating cultural and contextual traits of a\ud collectivistic community

Sub-Saharan African communities are classified as collectivist\ud societies. But, what exactly is meant by collectivism and to what extent\ud individuals adhere to this given the differences in their socio-economic\ud conditions? This paper is an empirical exploration of the contextual and cultural\ud traits of a rural sub-Saharan African community in order to facilitate their\ud interpretation towards technology design and adoption. Card sorting is used to\ud validate and make explicit contextual and cultural traits previously identified\ud during interviews. It is a confirmation of the collectivist nature of these cultures\ud with more details such as eagerness to confirm personal views and requirements\ud with that of the group in order to save “face”, among other traits

Manual on prototyping methodology and multifunctional crop rotation

This VEGINECO manual is one of a series of publications resulting from the VEGINECO project. VEGINECO specialises in producing tested and improved multi-objective farming methods for key farming practices – e.g. crop rotation, fertilisation and crop protection – to facilitate the integration of potentially conflicting objectives like economy and ecology. This report consists of two parts. The first part describes the prototyping methodology and how it was used in the VEGINECO project (Chapters 2 - 5). The second part describes the methodology for developing crop rotation strategies with examples of its application under different conditions in Europe (Chapter 6 - 11)

Mapping Wide Row Crops with Video Sequences Acquired from a Tractor Moving at Treatment Speed

This paper presents a mapping method for wide row crop fields. The resulting map shows the crop rows and weeds present in the inter-row spacing. Because field videos are acquired with a camera mounted on top of an agricultural vehicle, a method for image sequence stabilization was needed and consequently designed and developed. The proposed stabilization method uses the centers of some crop rows in the image sequence as features to be tracked, which compensates for the lateral movement (sway) of the camera and leaves the pitch unchanged. A region of interest is selected using the tracked features, and an inverse perspective technique transforms the selected region into a bird’s-eye view that is centered on the image and that enables map generation. The algorithm developed has been tested on several video sequences of different fields recorded at different times and under different lighting conditions, with good initial results. Indeed, lateral displacements of up to 66% of the inter-row spacing were suppressed through the stabilization process, and crop rows in the resulting maps appear straight