This Pre-Analysis Plan is for a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) for recently formed youth business groups in Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Resource-poor rural youth are given a business opportunity by being allocated a rehabilitated land area where they can establish a joint business. They are organized as a primary cooperative and self-organize with a board of five members including a leader and a vice leader. The overall objective of the project is to identify factors that enhance the performance and sustainability of formal youth groups as a business and livelihood option.

Smallholder farmers in the mid-hills of Nepal are facing an acute labor shortage due to out-migration which, in general, has affected the capacity to achieve timely crop establishment, harvest, and inter-cultural operations. These effects are more visible in the case of labor-intensive crops such as rice and promoting higher levels of rural mechanization has emerged as the primary policy response option. Nevertheless, quantitative evidence for the ability of mechanization to offset the adverse effects of shortages increasing labor prices in these systems is largely absent.

As a response to the environmentally and socially destructive practices of post-war mechanization and intensification, the concept of sustainable agriculture has become prominent in research, policy, and practice. Sustainable agriculture aims to balance the economic, environmental, and social aspects of farming, creating a resilient farming system in the long-term. Over the last few decades, various concepts have been used in research and policy to encourage the adoption of sustainable practices.

In parts of the northern hemisphere, many pollinator species are in decline, with potential adverse implications for pollination and the ecosystem service of food production. It is therefore important to understand how habitats primarily orientated towards food production can be managed in an efficient way to enhance pollinator populations for current and future food security. In Europe, agri-environment schemes are a well-established method for promoting nature conservation on farmland.

Agriculture in many industrialized countries is subject to a wide range of policy interventions that seek to achieve ambitious climate, energy and environment-related objectives. Increasing support for the generation of climate-friendly, renewable energy in agriculture, however, may lead to potential conflicts with agri-environmental policies aimed at land use extensification and landscape preservation.

This paper offers solutions to some of the challenges around maintaining productive agricultural land close to cities in countries facing a decline in urban populations. In such circumstances, some farmers have been observed to convert their land into real estate and leave farming before land prices decline, therefore decreasing the area of agricultural land close to large cities. In contrast, many suburban farmers in developed countries remain in farming even when land prices decline and suburbs shrink.

In developing countries, cities are rapidly expanding and urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) has an important role in feeding these growing urban populations; however such agriculture also carries public health risks such as zoonotic disease transmission. It is important to assess the role of UPA in food security and public health risks to make evidence-based decisions on policies. Describing and mapping the peri-urban interface (PUI) are the essential first steps for such an assessment.

Employing a linkage between a biophysical and an economic model, this study estimates the economic impact of soil erosion by water on the world economy. The global biophysical model estimates soil erosion rates, which are converted into land productivity losses and subsequently inserted into a global market simulation model. The headline result is that soil erosion by water is estimated to incur a global annual cost of eight billion US dollars to global GDP.

National parks and other forms of protection ensure the natural values in the European Union. However, a significant part of protected areas is under agricultural cultivation, and the two sectors have been kind of opponents to each other for a long time. In the last 50 years, because of various socio-economic changes, the European and Hungarian agricultural policies had opposing concepts and goals, even related to protected areas.

This article explores the role of local particularism in relation to the global interest in urban agriculture (UA). A growing movement is advocating UA, but future prospects are limited by variability, unclear expectations, vague responsibilities and leadership in the UA movement. We wonder whether the poor understanding of UA governance is associated with a public discourse and academic literature that too easily adopt the generic and universally claimed benefits.

Climate change increases the vulnerability of agricultural sector due to the increasing threat from pest attacks. Mitigation of a threat that results from climate change requires adaptation strategies. This study investigates farmers’ willingness to participate in the process of climate change adaptation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; particularly in facing the increasing risk of pest attacks. Using a logistic regression model, we tested the impacts of social capital on farmers’ willingness to participate.

As central policies for biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes in the European Union (EU), the Habitats Directive and Agri-environmental programmes (AEP) have largely failed to halt biodiversity loss. In response, the German federal state of Saxony combined the instrument of management plans with AEPs to support the implementation of the Habitat Directive. In this study, we investigate the determinants of a farmers’ decisions to adjust their farming practices.