This document reports on preliminary findings from a household survey conducted in Meru County under the auspices of the Innovation for African Climate Risk Insurance (INACRI). The project aims to develop an improved crop insurance index that addresses basis risk inter alia for small scale maize farmers. The goal of the household survey was to assess farmer’s production risks, crop insurance needs and willingness to adopt crop insurance. We also assess farmer’s financial and insurance literacy as a robustness check for their preferences for insurance.

Over the past two decades, Vietnam’s GDP per capita has grown ninefold. Concurrently, its agricultural sector has transformed to a strong commercial orientation. At the same time that the share of agriculture in GDP fell from 24.5 percent to 12.6 percent, agricultural value-added grew sixfold from USD 7.5 bn to USD 46 bn (World Bank, 2022). This suggests that Vietnam could provide contemporary insights into agricultural innovation coinciding with – and possibly contributing to – economic growth. Vietnam is also a high-priority country for CGIAR research.

This paper takes a first step in filling that gap in terms of assessing whether there is evidence to support proposals about how agricultural innovation pathways should be pursued. We have looked at the recent literature that proposes principles and approaches to achieving large-scale sustainable agriculture intensification (SAI), and disaggregated these all-inclusive approaches into individual components and hypotheses. We then tested six hypotheses through case studies of innovation pathways, trajectories, scaling and other attempts at achieving large-scale SAI.

Digital tools and technologies are transforming the way we monitor and manage food systems and natural resources, but to date there is scant credible collection and analysis of evidence of their impacts on well-being, environmental sustainability, and broader goods and services. The development of information communication technology (ICT) has a crucial role to play in the timely provision of information to guide management and investment decisions by small-scale fisheries (SSF) stakeholders, from coastal fishers to government officials.

This was a cost-sharing project supported the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA). The project’s primary objectives are to: (1) strengthen the capacity of 2,000 small-scale farmers and rural women to adopt climate-smart agricultural practices; and 2) improve their access to financial products that support productive investments. By meeting these objectives, the project would improve the living condition of these farmers and rural women.

Using multi-stakeholder platforms offers a promising approach for sharing agricultural innovation, reducing transaction costs, and catalyzing development through stimulating stakeholder engagement in the innovation process to accelerate food systems transformation. Agriculture-related multi-stakeholder platforms (AMSPs) are major players to intervention strategies of agricultural development programs. However, often AMSPs have faced multiple challenges that limit and negatively impact their functions.

Primary agricultural cooperatives in Malawi, in contrast to other farmer-level organizations, have legal status and can own assets, borrow money for their operations, and sign contracts, making it easier for them to do business for the profit of their members. Conceptually, such cooperatives enable their member-farmers to achieve economies of scale for their commercial activities. By joining together in a cooperative, members can obtain commercial inputs at lower prices closer to wholesale prices than if they purchased the inputs as individuals.

Agricultural mechanization is less developed in subSaharan Africa (SSA). Even in areas where there are scale-appropriate mechanization services, their use by smallholders (especially by women farmers) is minimal due to various social and economic factors.

Big data and mobile technology are widely claimed to be global disruptive forces in agriculture that benefit small-scale farm-ers. Yet the access of small-scale farmers to this technology is poorly understood. We show that only 24–37% of farms of <1 ha in size are served by third generation (3G) or 4G services, compared to 74–80% of farms of >200 ha in size. Furthermore, croplands with severe yield gaps, climate-stressed locations and food-insecure populations have poor service coverage.

Small-scale aquaculture systems can contribute significantly to food and nutritional security, poverty alleviation, and rural development, especially in developing countries. However, the intensification of aquaculture systems often has negative environmental outcomes. The adoption of diversification practices (e.g. polyculture, pond-dike cropping (PDC)) and better management practices (BMPs) has been identified as a possible approach to intensify sustainably small-scale aquaculture production.

Livestock production is a fundamental source of income and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Latin American countries. 20 percent of the region's emissions come from agriculture, 70 percent of which comes from livestock. There are several management and technology options with enteric methane mitigation potential that have been evaluated and their scale is expected to contribute to achieving the GHG emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement.