This Digital Agriculture Profile for South Africa leverages the expertise of stakeholders to evaluate the current landscape of digital agriculture in the country, including key players across the value chains, the main barriers they face, and the potential to overcome those barriers through the adoption of innovative technologies.
Despite increasing sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) investments, indicators for detecting gender and intergenerational inequities in SAI costs and benefits sharing often remain overgeneralized, theoretical, or locally irrelevant. We examine the relative value of, and how to, customize standard SAI indicators to detect such inequities in specific socio-cultural contexts to enhance data collection for evidence-based decision making in fostering gender/youth inclusive SAI.
Tanzania is a major sweetpotato producer in sub-Saharan Africa. The area under sweetpotato
has been rising steadily relative to main food staples. However, the yields have stagnated at
around 4 t/ha compared with the potential yield of above 20 t/ha, partly due to limited access
to quality seeds. Most farmers in SSA recycle seed from the previous crop or source from
neighbours. This increases the probability of accumulating viruses, which may reduce the
sweetpotato yield by over 50%.
The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) organized over 10 days from 14 to 25 September 2020 its decadal conference. The fully digital event titled Forest, trees and agroforestry science for transformational change gathered more than 500 scientists from the programme and its working partners, from 69 countries across the globe, with more than 100 presentations and 40 posters.
Sweetpotato breeders have strived to breed varieties that address productivity challenges that farmers face in SSA. However, adoption rates for the new varieties are usually low. This has been attributed to the fact that such varieties rarely meet the gendered preferences of the end users in terms of preferred traits and characteristics. This study sought to identify key preferred traits and characteristics by women and men farmers in Manhica and Marracuenne districts, Mozambique.
This report was inspired by the 2019 Kigali African Food Security Leadership Dialogue (AFSLD) that called for joint action to tackle the African Food Security challenges. ECOWAS, CILSS, CORAF, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), and the World Bank provided overall leadership for the process and analysis that underpins this report. Wageningen University prepared a background paper as input to the report.
In many parts of the foothills of the OrinoquÃa region of Colombia, cattle production takes place on poorly drained soils. The region is dominated by extensive grazing systems of Brachiaira humidicola cv. Humidicola, a grass with high adaptation potential under temporal waterlogging conditions. Inadequate management practices and low soil fertility result in degradation, however, with important negative effects on pasture productivity and the quality and provision of (soil) ecosystem services–a situation that is likely to worsen in the near future due to climate change.
This brief summarizes findings of a project entitled “Food Security in Developing Countries: Gender and Spatial Interactions’†undertaken by researchers from the University of Alberta. The project uses a large cross-sectional dataset from the Integrated Modelling Platform for Mixed Animal Crop systems (IMPACT) Lite collected by Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) from 2010 to late 2012. This dataset surveyed 1,500 households located across seven countries in Africa and Asia.
Agriculture and other land-use sectors play a major role in the global response to climate change – as a large source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as a carbon sink, and as a sector vulnerable to climate extremes and variability. Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are important policy instruments under the Paris Agreement that guide national climate actions in the near to short term. While most Southern African countries have included agriculture in their current NDCs, many lack sector-specific, quantifiable commitments to drive targeted action.
Rural entrepreneurship in the developing world has long been hailed as a powerful tool for promoting the socioeconomic integration of young people and the key to avoiding rural depopulation as well as ensuring these areas remain attractive places for rural youth. However, there have been no efforts to investigate the role of collective entrepreneurship in the creation and management of new businesses in Morocco.
Drylands are a critical part of the earth system in terms of total area, socioeconomic and ecological importance. However, while drylands are known for their contribution to inter-annual atmospheric CO2 variability, they are sometimes overlooked in discussions of global carbon stocks. Here, in preparation for the November 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), we review dryland systems with emphasis on their role in current and future carbon storage, response to climate change and potential to contribute to a carbon neutral future.