Relevant publications
Farming change: growing more food with a changing resource base
This publication combines three inter-related papers on Caribbean agriculture on growing food crops without soil, securing ecosystems services of forest cover and combating invasive alien species. The first paper presents the types of soils, their suitability to food production, the soil fertility and degradation, the latest advancement in soilless technologies and some enabling policy options. The second paper describes the types, functions and services of forested ecosystems in the Caribbean (timber and non-timber use, provision of water supply, soil protection, and the problem of hillside deforestation for agriculture). The third paper covers the issue of biodiversity destruction, including the impacts on economically important crop and animal species for food production, by focussing on the invasive alien species threat. (IICA, CARDI, CTA, 2012)
22/05/2013
Opportunities and limitations for functional agrobiodiversity (FAB) in the European context
Reforms in EU policy facilitate the implementation of FAB concepts in agriculture but Impediments to the adoption of FAB approaches still exist, mainly: no ready-to-use management practices and lack of data on the effectiveness of FAB measures.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901112002523(via ELN-FAB Newsletter, April 2013)
22/05/2013
‘Agricultural Research for Development in Papua New Guinea’
Co-edited by Dr. Andy Hall, this book presents a collection of papers on an agricultural capacity building programme in Papua New Guinea. It fleshes out the conceptual bones of Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D), a practice which aims to directly link investments in research with tangible development outcomes. Topics discussed include: organisational needs assessment, facilitating AR4D, capacity building at NARI, agricultural innovation grant scheme, research-policy linkages.http://www.merit.unu.edu/permalink.php?id=855(UNU-MERIT, 18/2/2013)
22/05/2013
Agriculture for development: new paradigm and options for success
The role of agriculture as an instrument for industrialisation had been rigorously conceptualized in the 1960s and 1970s under the classical paradigm of development economics. After many implementation failures under import substitution industrialisation policies and protracted neglect of agriculture under the policies of the Washington Consensus that followed the debt crisis, agriculture has gradually returned in the development agenda, especially with the food crisis. Alain de Janvry, UC Berkeley, argues in this article that a new paradigm has started to emerge as to how to use agriculture for development, pursuing a broadened development agenda. He explores the specifications of this paradigm and discusses conditions for successful implementation.http://are.berkeley.edu/~esadoulet/papers/De%20Janvry%20Elmhirst%20lecture.pdf(International Association of Agricultural Economists, 2010)
22/05/2013
2012 Global Food Policy Report
The 2012 Global Food Policy Report, IFPRI’s flagship report, provides perspectives of the major policy developments that Africa undertook in 2012 to improve food security and resilience as well as recommendation on how Africa’s youth can make transformative impact on the economic development of the continent.The African Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS, facilitated by IFPRI) has compiled a summary of the key African food policy developments detailed in the report. Among others, the serious commitment to build resilience to crisis made in West Africa are laudable, so is the signature of a CAADP compact by thirty African nations.http://blog.resakss.org/2013/03/28/what-are-the-key-african-food-policy-developments-in-2012/(ReSAKSS and IFPRI, 28/3/2013)
22/05/2013
Diversifying Food and Diets: Using Agricultural Biodiversity to Improve Nutrition and Health
This book published by Bioversity International explores the current state of knowledge on the role of agricultural biodiversity in improving diets, nutrition and food security. It considers current strategies for improving nutrition and identifies key research gaps that need to be addressed to promote the use of agricultural biodiversity. Twelve case studies from around the globe show diversity at work and provide examples for scaling up approaches. The book provides a set of lessons learned and a basis to help practitioners carry out similar efforts in other regional contexts. Chapters and case studies will be available for download at the end of 2013.http://www.bioversityinternational.org/index.php?id=7461http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781849714570/(Bioversity, 25/3/2013)
22/05/2013
A review of existing regulatory systems for GM food products labelling
The labelling of GM foods is a key issue in the ongoing debate over the risks and benefits of food crops produced using biotechnology. This Legal and Policy Brief of the African Biosafety Network of Expertise (ABNE, African Union/NEPAD) reviews the labelling requirements of genetically modified (GM) food products for developing countries and developed countries including: South Africa, Kenya, European Union and USA. This brief clarifies the major dichotomy that separates countries with voluntary labelling guidelines from those with mandatory labelling requirements. (AU/NEPAD ABNE, 2013)
10/04/2013
The challenge to produce more food and energy with less pollution
This report draws attention to the multiple benefits and threats of human nutrient use. It highlights how nitrogen and phosphorus fertilisers are estimated to feed half the human population, and how they will remain critical in the future, especially given increasing population and potential bioenergy needs. Yet high nutrient use has created a web of pollution affecting the environment and human health, while insufficient access to nutrients has led to soil degradation, causing food insecurity and exacerbating the loss of natural ecosystems. This report shows how these problems cross all global change challenges, threatening water, air and soil quality, climate balance, stratospheric ozone and biodiversity. (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology [PDF], 2013)
10/04/2013
Water management for global food security
This book is a compilation of academic papers by world experts in the field of water and food security. Each paper focuses on a particular world region to provide an analysis of succesful innovations in sustainable water management practices for the agricultural sector there. Discussed are broad topics such as climate change adaptation, national and international programmes, innovations in irrigation, food security in tropical drylands, etc. Contributors are also detailling a number of successful practices, typically: green water reuse, micro-management of water, maximising plant water-uptake and tackling hydro-climatic deficiencies. The papers include conmprehensive data (tables, diagrams and maps) and references on the different themes discussed. (McGill University Institute for Global Food Security (PDF), 2011)
10/04/2013
Multiple ways of supporting the conservation and use of traditional crop varieties
Devra Jarvis of Bioversity International and colleagues, reviews and discusses how studies on (i) on-farm diversity assessment; (ii) access to diversity and information; (iii) extent of use of available materials and information; and (iv) benefits obtained by the farmer or farming community from their use of local crop diversity, are necessary to identify the different ways of supporting farmers and farming communities in the maintenance of traditional varieties and crop genetic diversity within their production systems. Throughout this paper, two key themes are emphasized. First, any description or analysis within the four main areas (assessment, access, use and benefit) can, and most probably will, lead to a number of different actions. Second, the decision to implement a particular action, and therefore its success, will depend on farmers and the farming community having the knowledge and leadership capacity to evaluate the benefits that this action will have for them. This in turn emphasizes the importance of activities (whether by local, national and international organisations and agencies) of strengthening local institutions so as to enable farmers to take a greater role in the management of their resources.(Bioversity International, 10/12/2012)
8/02/2013
Policies to shape agricultural investments and markets in favour of small-scale farmers
This report by Oxfam and IIED identifies key policy levers at a national level that can tip commercial investments in favour of either small- or large-scale farming. It shows how policy levers influence market governance to constrain or to support the fair sharing of risk and reward between small-scale producers and the rest of the market. This report develops a framework to examine the role of policy at three levels: at the level of agricultural policy basics (Agriculture within wider development policies; Infrastructure and institutions; Cross-cutting gender laws and policies; Voice and participation); at the level of directly shaping investments (Investment policies; Control over land and natural resources; Conditions for investor access to land and natural resources; Contract farming and supply chain relationships); and at the level of market governance (Support for producer organisations; Diversity of market outlets; Market co-ordination; Competition policy; Quotas and market preferences; Public policies for private standards; Trade policy). The report also examines policy elements that can specifically contribute to gender-equitable results. Case studies, conducted in Guatemala, Nigeria, Tanzania and the Philippines, supported the research.(Oxfam and IIED, 6/12/2012)
8/02/2013
Towards Marine Ecosystem-based Management in the Wider Caribbean
An approach that encompasses the human and natural dimensions of ecosystems is one that the Wider Caribbean Region knows it must adopt and implement, in order to ensure the sustainable use of the region's shared marine resources. This volume contributes towards that vision, bringing together the collective knowledge and experience of scholars and practitioners within the Caribbean region to begin the process of assembling a road map towards marine ecosystem-based management (EBM) for the region. It also serves a broader purpose of providing stakeholders and policy actors in each of the world's sixty-four Large Marine Ecosystems, with a comparative example of the challenges and information needs required to implement principled ocean governance generally and marine EBM in particular, at multiple levels. Additionally, the volume serves to supplement the training of graduate level students in the marine sciences by enhancing interdisciplinary understanding of challenges in implementing marine EBM.
23/11/2012
The Paradoxes of Transparency: Science and the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management in Europe
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is the central scientific network within the massive set of bureaucracies that is responsible for Europe's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). While spending the past 25 years failing to sustain Europe's fish stocks, this management system also became adept at making the lives of its scientists miserable. Now it is being confronted by the complex challenge of an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. If this combination of a multi-national bureaucracy, hard politics, and scientific uncertainty has made it impossible to maintain many individual fish stocks, how are decisions going to be made that consider everything from sea birds to climate change? The old political saw that ‘if you can't solve a problem, make it bigger’ has never been put to a test like this! Yet ICES has begun to rise in an impressive way to the scientific challenge of providing advice for an ecosystem approach within the world's most cumbersome fisheries management system. This book (PDF) lays out the results of extensive sociological research on ICES and the decision making systems into which it feeds. ICES is finding ways to provide effective advice in the many situations where scientific advice is needed but a clear, simple answer is out of reach. In spite of the difficulties, scientists are beginning to help the various parties concerned with management to deal with facts about nature in ways that are more useful and transparent.(Douglas C. Wilson, 2009)
23/11/2012
Vegetable breeding in Africa: Constraints, complexity and contributions toward achieving food and nutritional security
Many Africans are presently confronted with nutritional insecurity as their diets are often deficient in essential vitamins and minerals owing to lack of sufficient consumption of fruit and vegetables. This results from problems of availability, affordability and lack of knowledge. There has been a substantive, long-term underinvestment in research and development of the horticultural sector in Africa with particular reference to those indigenous crops which are naturally high in nutritious vitamins and minerals. Lack of breeding effort, ineffective seed supply systems and an inadequate information, regulatory and policy framework have all contributed to the widespread occurrence of malnutrition on the continent. However, public sector research, development and policy amelioration efforts supported by a nascent private seed supply sector are now showing progress. Many new, improved, nutrient-dense indigenous and standard vegetable varieties are being released for which smallholder farmers are finding growing markets in both rural and urban settings. If such developments continue favourably for the next decade, it is expected that progress towards a reduction in poverty and malnutrition in Africa will be marked.(Food Security 4:115-127, 2012 via AVRDC)
23/11/2012
Monocropping Cultures into Ruin: The Loss of Food Varieties and Cultural Diversity
The loss of genetic diversity of thousands of plants and crops has been well documented at least since the 1970s, and has been understood as a result of epistemological and political economic conditions of the Green Revolution. The political economic arrangement of the Green Revolution, alongside a post-war focus on economies of scale and export-oriented growth, replace high-yield single varieties of crops for a diverse array of varieties that may not have the same yield, but may be able to resist pests, disease, and changing climatic conditions. Also, the harvest does not flow in all directions equally: Whereas smallholder subsistence farming uses a large variety of crops as a food source and small-scale trade, the industrial economic system requires simplified, machine harvested ship-loads of one variety of maize, for example. Diverse varieties of different crops confound the machines, whereas one variety of wheat can be harvested with one setting on a machine. However, none of this is new. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the twin concerns of lost varietals and lost cultures are bound together in the socio-political process of standardization, and to explain some areas of resistance.(Sustainability 2012, 4(11) via Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, 7/11/2012)
23/11/2012
Crop Genetic Resources as a Global Commons – Challenges in International Law and Governance
This book addresses how the collective pooling and management of shared plant genetic resources for food and agriculture can be supported through laws regulating access to genetic resources and the sharing of benefits arising from their use. Since the most important recent development in the field has been the creation of the multilateral system of access and benefit-sharing under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, many of the chapters in this book will focus on the architecture and functioning of that system. The book analyzes tensions that are threatening to undermine the potential of access and benefit-sharing laws to support the collective pooling of plant genetic resources, and identifies opportunities to address those tensions in ways that could increase the scope, utility and sustainability of the global crop commons.
23/11/2012
Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy
This book encourages scientists to think differently about the use of scientific evidence in policy making. This report investigates why scientific evidence is important to policy making and argues that an extensive body of research on knowledge utilisation has not led to any widely accepted explanation of what it means to use science in public policy. For social scientists in a number of specialised fields, whether established scholars or PhD students, this book shows how to bring their expertise to bear on the study of using science to inform public policy. More generally, this report will be of special interest to scientists who want to see their research used in policy making, offering guidance on what is required beyond producing quality research, beyond translating results into more understandable terms, and beyond brokering the results through intermediaries, such as think tanks, lobbyists, and advocacy groups. For administrators and faculty in public policy programmes and schools, Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy identifies critical elements of instruction that will better equip graduates to promote the use of science in policy making. (NAP, 10/2012)
23/11/2012
Planting Now (2nd Edition): Revitalizing agriculture for reconstruction and development in Haiti
Agriculture in Haiti has suffered three decades of crisis and institutional neglect. Nevertheless, almost 60% of Haitians live in rural areas and rely on farming for their livelihoods. For that reason, agriculture must play a central role in post-earthquake reconstruction. However, the plans and programmes of the Haitian government and the international community have proven insufficient to revitalize the sector and improve conditions for small-scale farmers, and have failed to recognise the important roles of women in agriculture.The Haitian government and the main actors in agriculture should continue to prioritise agricultural development, while putting greater emphasis on long-term programmes to assist Haitians to get back on their feet and improve their living conditions with dignity.(OXFAM Policy and Practice, 15/10/2012)http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/planting-now-2nd-edition-revitalizing-agriculture-for-reconstruction-and-develo-248432
20/11/2012
Framework for an inclusive food strategy – Cooperatives: key to integration of smallholders in value chains
The hypothesis of this study is that the resolution of current and future imbalances in food supply is virtually inconceivable without tapping into the underused agricultural production potentials of existing small-scale farms in many developing and emerging economies. Written from an economic and business friendly perspective, this report by Rabobank researchers sees small farmers in developing countries and emerging economies are the key to a successful approach to the world food problem.As smallholder productivity is still very low, a large underexploited food production potential is yet to be unlocked. The establishment of farmer cooperatives would facilitates their connection to the markets and the international food chains and provides access to financial services. The authors argue that the productivity of smallholder agriculture may increase substantially through the interaction between commercial players in the food chain and farming organisations, as well as through partnerships with governments.(Rabobank Economic Research, 10/2012)News: https://www.pressroomrabobank.com/publications/food__agri/rabobank_cooperatives_small_farmers_in_developing_countries_key_to_successfully_solve_the_world_food_problem.htmlReport: http://www.perscentrumrabobank.com/pressbasket/download?m_id=579
20/11/2012
Unlocking markets to smallholders: Lessons from South Africa
This book assesses the institutional, technical and market constraints as well as opportunities for smallholders, notably emerging farmers in disadvantaged areas such as the former homelands of South Africa. Emerging farmers are previously disadvantaged black people who started or will start their business with the support of special government programmes. Public support programmes have been developed as part of the Black Economic Empowerment strategy of the South African government. These programmes aim to improve the performance of emerging farmers.This requires, first and foremost, upgrading the emerging farmers’ skills by providing access to knowledge about agricultural and entrepreneurial practices. To become or to remain good farmers they also need access to suitable agricultural land and sufficient water for irrigation and for feeding their cattle. Finally, for emerging farmers to be engaged in viable farming operations, various factors need to be in place such as marketing and service institutions to give credit for agricultural inputs and investments; input markets for farm machinery, farm implements, fertilizers and quality seeds; and accessible output markets for their end products.This book develops a policy framework and potential institutional responses to unlock the relevant markets for smallholders.PDF: http://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=fulltext&rid=14597
20/11/2012
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- April 2013 K4D Newsletter
- 6th Africa Science Week and FARA General Assembly Side Event: Programme for Finals of 3rd Africa-wide Science competitions
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