Tools for understanding the agricultural production systems and their socio-economic context in target regions for the introduction of new banana cultivars: baseline intra-household survey.

Within the framework of the IITA-led project “Improvement of banana for smallholder farmers in the Great Lakes region of Africa” (also known as the “Breeding Better Bananas” project, http://breedingbetterbananas.org), Bioversity International and partners conducted baseline research in the target regions of Luwero and Mbarara in Uganda, and Bukoba, Meru, Moshi and Rungwe in Tanzania during 2015-2016, prior to conducting on-station and on-farm evaluations of the new NARITA banana cultivars. Five tools were used to characterise the banana and agricultural production systems, and the socioeconomic context of these systems, in the target regions. The research used a mixed-methods, participatory and sex-disaggregated approach to ensure that the knowledge, experiences and opinions of as many people as possible were obtained. The understanding gained from the baseline research will: • Be fed into the banana breeding pipeline at multiple entry points to assist with breeding banana cultivars that better meet the requirements of the users. Some of these entry points are: setting of breeding targets; selection of parent material; evaluation in regional on-station and on-farm trials; participatory varietal selection taking into account the criteria (or ‘trait preferences’) that are important to multiple and different users; facilitating access to and adoption of the new cultivars by farmers and other end-users through scaling up the supply of clean planting materials and ensuring equitable distribution of these through the ‘seed’ systems. • Inform the ongoing adaptive management of the project activities to ensure fair participation and decision-making by people in the affected communities. • Provide the baseline to evaluate, in conjunction with the endline, the impact of adoption of the new cultivars on households, and individuals within, in the target regions

Exante economic impact assessment of genetically modified banana resistant to Xanthomonas wilt in the great lakes region of Africa

Published: September 28, 201

Does improved storage technology promote modern input use and food security? Evidence from a randomized trial in Uganda

We use panel data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) administered among 1200 smallholders in Uganda to evaluate input use and food security impacts of an improved maize storage technology. After two seasons, households who received the technology were 10 percentage points more likely to plant hybrid maize varieties that are more susceptible to insect pests in storage than traditional lower-yielding varieties. Treated smallholders also stored maize for a longer period, reported a substantial drop in storage losses, and were less likely to use storage chemicals than untreated cohorts. Our results indicate that policies to promote soft kernel high-yielding hybrid maize varieties in sub-Saharan Africa should consider an improvement in post-harvest storage as a complementary intervention to increase adoption of these varieties

Towards a research agenda on tracking the contribution of agricultural research to poverty reduction in Africa: the case of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

Like all public organizations concerned with research for development, IITA aims to contribute to poverty reduction goals in the developing world through improved agricultural technologies. IITA’s refreshed strategy articulates a major target of lifting 11 million people out of poverty by 2020. This paper discusses the analytical strategies for tracking the number of people lifted out of poverty through the contributions of IITA’s Research-for-Development (R4D) initiatives. The paper documents the evolution and underlying impact pathways of R4D programs carried out by IITA during the past 45 years and reviews the literature on impact evaluation of agricultural research. The paper then identifies and discusses the challenges, opportunities, and strategies which translate into a set of research agendas for tracking IITA’s contributions to poverty reduction

The role of farming experience on the adoption of agricultural technologies: evidence from smallholder farmers in Uganda

Published Online 05 February 2014This article investigates the relationship between adoption of and experience with agriculturaltechnologies. We use both non-parametric and parametric estimations on data from rural farmers in Uganda.We find an inverted-U relationship between adoption of and experience with agricultural technologies in banana,coffee and maize. This suggests that farming experience is useful in early stages of adoption of a given technologywhen farmers are still testing its potential benefits, which later determine its retention or disadoption over time.Thus, gradual advances in technology development and continuous retraining of farmers are essential forsustainable adoption of agricultural technologies for some crops

Do commercial forest plantations reduce pressure on natural forests? evidence from forest policy reforms in Uganda

This paper investigates if and howthe establishment of private commercial forest plantations in degraded forestreserves can conserve natural forests in Uganda. It uses difference-in-difference and decomposition analyses onhousehold data collected from intervention and control villages in the neighborhood of forest reserves. We findthat commercial forest plantations are weakly effective in conserving natural forests. The reduction in forest useis unevenly distributed across households depending on location and resource endowments such as farmlandand livestock. The results suggest that the conservation effectiveness can be enhanced by complementary interventionsthat change characteristics that reduce forest use, such as more education for forest users

Charcoal production and household welfare in Uganda: a quantile regression approach

First published online 10 April 2013Previous research suggests that forest-dependent households tend to be poorer than other groups, and that extreme reliance on forest resources might constitute a poverty trap. We provide an example in which a non-timber forest product – charcoal – appears to be providing a pathway out of poverty for some rural households in Uganda. Data come from households living adjacent to natural forests, some of whom engage in charcoal production. We use a semi-parametric method to identify the determinants of participation in charcoal production and a quantile regression decomposition to measure the heterogeneous effect of participation on household income. We find that younger households and those with few productive assets are more likely to engage in charcoal production. We also show that, as a result of their participation, charcoal producers are better off than non-charcoal producers in terms of income, even though they are worse off in terms of productive assets