Sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly viewed as an important area for oil palm cultivation and expansion. Palm oil is a commodity that can help developing countries like Cameroon attain their sustainable development goals (SDGs) targets through poverty alleviation (SDG 1) and by providing revenue to smallholder farmers to buy a variety of food thereby reducing hunger. However, due to the many negative environmental and social consequences, the sector needs to be made more sustainable.

Climate shocks to agriculture are threatening food security, especially in developing countries. Poverty and malnutrition are rising rapidly. Therefore, we must urgently transform our agricultural systems to be productive, sustainable, and equitable, and to contribute fully to lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This will require a global “Agricultural Breakthrough”, defined in the Breakthrough Agenda as: “Climate-resilient, sustainable agriculture is the most attractive and widely adopted option for farmers everywhere by 2030.” How can we achieve this?

Mechanisation is back among top development policy priorities for transforming African smallholder agriculture. Yet previous and ongoing efforts ubiquitously suffer from lack of scientific information on end-user effective demand for different types of mechanical innovations to inform public investment or business development programmes. We assess smallholder farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for two-wheel tractor (2WT)-based ripping, direct seeding and transportation using a random sample of 2800 smallholder households in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

A rapid assessment of the Green Leave Vegetables (GLV) value chain in the Kiambu Living Landscape shows that huge potential exists for agroecological transition in this region. At the farm level, farmers are already applying selected agroecological principles, such as a decrease in the use of external inputs, crop and economic diversification, biodiversification, and soil management techniques, among others.

Smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana regularly face shocks, challenging the
sustainability of their farms and livelihoods. Different farm households and household
members may be differently affected and respond with different coping strategies. We
combined whole-farm modelling and farmer consultations to investigate the
vulnerability, buffer and adaptive capacity of three farm types in Northern Ghana
towards severe climate, economic and social shocks. We further assessed intrahousehold

Potato sector has a substantial role in Kenya's agriculture, contributing to food security, nutrition, and the national economy. While underscoring the sector's vast potential, this Technical Brief identifies the existing gap between current yields and achievable targets, highlighting the necessity for strategic improvements in farming practices. It accentuates the transformative impact of digital tools in the agricultural landscape, notably accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitated by the widespread use of mobile technology and internet access in the country.

Given the generally low adoption of early climate change response technologies among tree crop producers in sub-Saharan Africa, stakeholders interested in the commercialization or scaling of such technologies will require empirical evidence of their market prospects. Using a double-bounded contingent valuation approach, the study evaluated the willingness and ability of 523 Ghanaian producers to invest in solar-powered irrigation pumps (SPIPs) for cocoa irrigation. The sample was split into three segments based on farm size: resource-poor, resource-limited, and resource-rich.

The Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) through the Improving Bean Productivity and Markets in Africa (IBPMA) Project funded by the Global Affairs Canada engaged on the project to reduce poverty amongst smallholder bean farmers, especially women, by reducing food insecurity, increasing incomes, and strengthening climate-smart agriculture (CSA). This mid-term evaluation report has brought up some key findings about the progress the project made over the four-year implementation period.

The objectives of the training were as follows:

This paper explores the relationship between agriculture, dietary diversity, and market access in Nepal, testing the complex causal chains involved, and the nuanced connections between production diversity and dietary diversity among smallholder farmers. While diversifying farm production could enhance dietary diversity, the case of Nepal indicates a varied and context specific relationship. Market access emerges as a crucial factor, often exerting a more significant impact on smallholder farm households than production diversity.

The Lao People's Democratic Republic has experienced significant changes in agricultural development and commercialization over the past few decades. Approximately 80% of its population relies heavily on subsistence agriculture. These farmers have witnessed a remarkable decrease in the poverty rate, dropping from 46% to 18% between 1993 and 2019. This positive transformation can be attributed to enhanced infrastructure, enabling farmers to access markets in neighboring countries.

Sri Lanka is blessed with ideal conditions for cultivating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. The country has around 80 varieties produced in different agroecological zones. There are several government and private organizations supporting vegetable farmers and farmers are organized into formally registered organizations. However, the average consumption of fruits and vegetables in Sri Lanka is around 150 g per day and per capita consumption is approximately 112 g per day, which is 50% lower than the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations (SAARC 2017).