Institutional reforms and agricultural policy process: lessons from Democratic Republic of Congo

Attaining food security for all requires well-functioning institutions and policy process that are effective in designing and implementing food and agricultural policies and programs. This paper assesses early stages of the decentralization and institutional reforms in the policymaking processes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It develops a conceptual framework and adopts an innovative mapping tool to identify capacity and incentive challenges impeding the effective design and implementation of food and agricultural policy and institutional reform processes. We found that decentralized platforms for policy dialogues have the potential to improve civil society participation in local-level and national-level policy and planning processes. However, their success depends on organizational and human capacity strengthening, financial sustainability, effective participation of the civil society, and demonstrated impact of their participation

Lattice Thermal Conductivity of Quartz at High Pressure and Temperature from the Boltzmann Transport Equation

The thermal conductivities along the basal and hexagonal directions of α-quartz silica, the low-temperature form of crystalline SiO2, are predicted from the solution of the Boltzmann transport equation combined with the van Beest, Kramer, and van Santen potential for the temperature up to 900 K and the pressure as high as 4 GPa. The thermal conductivities at atmospheric pressure, which show a negative and nonlinear dependence on temperature, are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data. The influence of pressure on thermal conductivity is positive and linear. The pressure (P) and temperature (T) dependences of the thermal conductivity (λ) in basal and hexagonal directions are fitted to a function of the form λ = (b + cP) Ta. The thermal conductivity, influenced by temperature and pressure, is analyzed based on phonon properties, including spectral thermal conductivity, dispersion relation, phonon density of states, phonon lifetime, and phonon probability density distribution function

TH3.3: Beyond crops: Towards gender equality in forestry, fisheries, aquaculture, and livestock development

The fisheries, aquaculture, forestry, and livestock sectors are critical for sustaining rural livelihoods and achieving global food and nutrition security. Yet each of these sectors embeds important gender and other social inequalities, hindering people who rely on these livelihood systems from achieving their full potential. In this background paper for the Report on The Status of Rural Women in Agri-food Systems: 10 Years after the SOFA 2010-11, we review the literature to examine gender gaps in relation to each sector, their implications for achieving multiple food system outcomes, what has worked to reduce inequalities, and the potential these sectors hold for advancing gender equality as an outcome in itself. We demonstrate that, despite specificities across sectors, similar gender barriers limit the benefits women receive from fisheries, aquaculture, forestry, and livestock. These constraints, which occur at multiple levels, include: the invisibility and undervaluation of rural women's labor and their disproportionately heavy labor burdens, limited and precarious control over resources, norms that hinder women's voice and influence in decision-making and governance, and exclusionary institutions such as resource-user groups and extension and data systems. Drawing on Njuki et al.'s (2021) Gendered Food Systems framework, we demonstrate that, to achieve transformative change in food systems, changes in each sector are required in women's agency, access to and control over resources, gender norms, and policies and governance. Such changes can improve dietary outcomes, gender equality and women's empowerment, economic and livelihood outcomes, and environmental outcomes. To conclude, we argue that closing gender gaps across sectors requires multipronged strategies that simultaneously engage these four change pathways to lift structural barriers to inequality

Adoption of rice cultivation technologies and its effect on technical efficiency in Sagnarigu District of Ghana

This study examined the adoption of rice cultivation technologies on farmers’ technical efficiency in Sagnarigu District. The stochastic frontier model was used to estimate the determinants of output and technical inefficiency while propensity score matching was also used to analyse the average treatment effect (ATE) and the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). A total of 120 respondents comprising 60 adopters and 60 non-adopters were randomly selected from six communities in the District and interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires. Farm size, fertilizer, weedicides and household labour had positive and significant effect on rice output. Farmers who adopted the rice cultivation techniques were less technically inefficient than those who did not adopt. The ATT was 0.121 which implies that farmers who adopted the rice technologies increased their technical efficiency by about 12% and this was significant at 10% for the PSM with similar results obtained for the nearest neighbour matching. The ATE value of 0.102 which was also statistically significant at 10% means that farmers on the whole increased their technical efficiency by 10.2%. Moreover, the mean technical efficiency estimates for adopters and non-adopters were about 58% and 48% respectively under regression adjustment and inverse-probability weights. The existence of a technical efficiency gap of 10% between adopters and non-adopters of rice technologies emphasized the significant effect of technology adoption on farmer’s technical efficiency. The study recommends that more rice farmers should be encouraged to adopt the rice production technologies in order to improve their technical efficiency levels