Adoption of Conservation Agriculture Technologies by Smallholder Farmers in the Shamva District of Zimbabwe: A Tobit application

Conventional agricultural practices such as the use of the moldboard plough are no longer sustainable due to their extensive soil degradation effects. As a panacea, several Conservation Agriculture (CA) technologies have been promoted to improve soil structure and water conservation. However, adoption of these technologies has been resisted by smallholder farmers and identifying causes of the low adoption rates to facilitate intervention strategies remains a challenge to development practitioners. Using data from 100 farmers, this paper uses a Tobit application to assess the underlying factors important in determining farmers’ adoption of zero-tillage, crop rotation and contour ridging technologies. Empirical results suggest that adoption and use intensity of each of these technologies is affected by a set of distinct household factors. There is also evidence to show complementarities in adoption and use of these technologies, suggesting the need to tailor awareness and promotional strategies depending on the technology in question and socio-economic background of target farmers.Conservation Agriculture (CA), Conventional Farming (CF) technology, Tobit Model, Adoption, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Farm Management,

Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture: Evaluation of farmers’ awareness, use and impacts

Climate services are important in helping smallholder farmers manage climate-related risks and adapt to climate change, especially for rainfed agricultural production systems. In order to increase the resilience of farmers to the changing climate in Rwanda, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded a four-year project—Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture (RCSA) from 2016 to 2019. Through the project, climate services were disseminated directly to more than 111,000 farmers in four provinces across Rwanda through Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA), Radio Listeners Clubs (LCs) and cell phones; as well as broadcast by a radio network accessible to about 70% of the population. This report presents analyses of the project end-line survey of 1525 households, sampled across 15 of Rwanda’s 30 districts, in order to assess the influence of PICSA training and LCs on awareness, access and uptake of climate services by smallholder farmers; and their impact on household welfare (i.e., crop productivity, income, food security) on a quasi-experimental sampling design with a non-participant control sample. Analyses show that farmers use climate services to make decisions on the types of crops to grow (75%), the types of crop varieties to plant (58%), timing of planting and land preparation (75%) and when and how to prepare land (65%). Participation in PICSA and LCs, alone and in combination, is associated with a substantial increase in the proportion of farmers that report changing crop, livestock and livelihood management practices in response to weather and climate information. Relative to the control, PICSA participation increased the value of crop production by 24%, and income from crops by 30%. The combination of PICSA and LCs was associated with a 47% increase in the value of crop production, and a 56% increase in income from crops

The ontologies community of practice: a CGIAR initiative for Big Data in agrifood systems

Heterogeneous and multidisciplinary data generated by research on sustainable global agriculture and agrifood systems requires quality data labeling or annotation in order to be interoperable. As recommended by the FAIR principles, data, labels, and metadata must use controlled vocabularies and ontologies that are popular in the knowledge domain and commonly used by the community. Despite the existence of robust ontologies in the Life Sciences, there is currently no comprehensive full set of ontologies recommended for data annotation across agricultural research disciplines. In this paper, we discuss the added value of the Ontologies Community of Practice (CoP) of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture for harnessing relevant expertise in ontology development and identifying innovative solutions that support quality data annotation. The Ontologies CoP stimulates knowledge sharing among stakeholders, such as researchers, data managers, domain experts, experts in ontology design, and platform development teams

Sustainability standards, gender, and nutrition among smallholder farmers in Uganda

Sustainability standards are gaining in importance in global markets for high-value foods. While previous research has shown that participating farmers in developing countries may benefit through income gains, nutrition impacts have hardly been analysed. We use survey data from smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda – certified under Fairtrade, Organic, and UTZ – to analyse impacts on food security and dietary quality. Estimates of instrumental variable models and simultaneous equation systems show that certification increases calorie and micronutrient consumption, mainly through higher incomes and improved gender equity. In certified households, women have greater control of coffee production and monetary revenues from sales

Scaling weather and climate services for agriculture in Senegal: Evaluating systemic but overlooked effects

In the West African Sahel, climate variability and climate change pose huge challenges to food security and health, particularly for poor and marginalised population groups. Co-production of actionable climate information between scientists and users has been advocated to increase its use in adaptation to climate change. Consequently, Weather and Climate Services (WCS) co-production models have been expanding, but there have been few evaluations of their effects, and those that exist mostly focus on the end user. The empirical contribution of this paper is an evidence based evaluation of the scaling of WSC co-production models and its enabling factors. The methodological contribution is a systemic and iterative evaluation method involving multiple analytical tools. The scaling of WCS in Senegal involved at least 161 actors and resulted in five axes of transformation: 1) continuous improvement of WCS, 2) emergence and consolidation of WCS facilitators, 3) inclusion of WCS in action planning, 4) active mobilisation to sustain WCS scaling, and 5) empowerment of actors. New users and uses emerged beyond agriculture, involving the fisheries, water and energy sectors, producing changes in institutional communication strategies, operational planning, and in coordination between actors. Enabling factors for scaling included capacity strengthening, knowledge-sharing and action platforms, interaction opportunities, and financial and political support. However, reduced precision of forecasts over time is perceived. New challenges are emerging including improving delivery and finer grain information, getting the private sector involved, and building capacity and trust at a large scale, to keep pace with the increase in uses and users

Do Changing Probabilities or Payoffs in Lottery-Choice Experiments Matter? Evidence from Rural Uganda

This study compares risk attitudes of smallholder farmers elicited from two different lottery designs (i) with fixed payoffs and changing probabilities and (ii) with fixed probabilities and changing payoffs. We utilize a combination of experimental and household survey data collected from 332 randomly selected smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda. Both methods reveal high proportions of farmers who are classified as risk averse. However, comparing the different risk categories shows that the two elicitation methods yield significantly different results. Furthermore, we relatively find low inconsistency rates in the response behavior for the two methods compared to other studies in the past. Specific socio-demographic and socioeconomic characteristics also affect farmers’ risk attitudes