Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is an important grain legume for food and cash of the smallholder farmers worldwide. However, the total potential benefits to be derived from the common bean as a source of food and income, its complementarities with non-legume food crops, and significance to the environment are underexploited. Intensification of common bean could provide approaches that offer new techniques to better manage and monitor globally complex systems of sustainable food production.

Le présent rapport constitue un diagnostic du secteur minier artisanal dans l’ouest de la République de Centrafrique (RCA) et présente les enjeux de l’exploitation, du commerce et de l’exportation de l’or et des diamants. D’avril à juillet 2019, l’International Peace Information Service (IPIS), en partenariat avec les autorités locales, a réalisé une cartographie des sites miniers artisanaux dans l’ouest de la RCA.  Au total, 322 sites ont été visité dans 7 préfectures.

For aquaculture to continue along its current growth trajectory and contribute towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, value chains must become more inclusive. Smallholders and other local value chain actors are often constrained by circumstances and market failures in the global aquaculture industry. Integrating these actors into aquaculture value chains through inclusive business models (IBMs) is often touted as a solution to sustainable and ethical trade and business that can generate development outcomes.

Credit constraint is considered by many as one of the key barriers to adoption of modern agricultural technologies, such as chemical fertilizer, improved seeds, and irrigation technologies, among smallholders. Past research and much policy discourse associates agricultural credit constraints with supply-side factors, such as limited access to credit sources or high costs of borrowing. However, demand-side factors, such as risk-aversion and financial illiteracy among borrowers, as well as high transaction costs, can also play important roles in credit-rationing for smallholders.

The programme “Linking agrobiodiversity value cahins, climate adaptation and nutrition: Empowering the poor to manage risk” funded by IFAD and the European Union from 2015 to 2018 aims to strenghten the capacities of farmers to manage risks associated with climate change, poor nutrition status, and economic disempowerment through agrobiodiversity-based solutions.

Smallholder farmers mostly depend on agriculture for their sustenance yet the sector is threatened by changing climate. It is essential for smallholders to adapt to reduce their vulnerability. Estimating the economic effectiveness of climate adaptation practices would enhance planning and actions among stakeholders and consequently impact policy. This study conducted an ex-ante in-depth empirical analysis of the costs and benefits of implementing five climate adaptation strategies identified among smallholder horticultural farmers in Ghana.

Smallholder farmers grow a major share of the food consumed around
the world and preserve rich, biodiverse landscapes.1
But despite their
fundamental importance, many small farmers lead lives of deepening
vulnerability – caught between subsistence strategies threatened by
ecological degradation and commercial food systems that devalue them
as cheap labour. Alternative agricultural models are urgently needed.
One long-running movement still shows major untapped potential: that

To increase productivity and profitability, while limiting nutrient losses and related GHG-emissions, African smallholders need more tailored fertilizer advice. Yet, such advice critically hinges upon – largely lacking – field-level management data, as management is key to efficient fertilizer use. The Maize- Nutrient-Manager (MNM) mobile phone application enables collection of such data at scale, and directly converts this data into actionable advice for the farmer.

Despite increasing popularity of farmer-led irrigation in Ethiopia, little is known about socio-economics of farmers who receive public support in accelerating its expansion. We investigate this question by combining spatial land suitability for groundwater- and solar irrigation with pre-existing socioeconomic data. We find that if public support in farmer-led irrigation expansion were to be provided to farmers who own land areas that are also spatially highly suitable for irrigation, high-value crop cultivators and wealthier farmers would most likely benefit from such investments.

Increased adoption of improved agricultural technologies is considered an essential step to address global poverty and hunger, and agronomic trials suggest intensification in developing countries could result in large yield gains. Yet the promise of new technologies does not always carry over from trials to real-life conditions, and diffusion of many technologies remains limited.

The global palm oil value chain has grown in complexity; stakeholder relationships and linkages are increasingly shaped by new public and private standards that aim to ameliorate social and environmental costs while harnessing economic gains. Regulatory initiatives in the emerging policy regime complex struggle to resolve sector‐wide structural performance issues: pervasive land conflicts, yield differences between companies and smallholders, and carbon emissions arising from deforestation and peatland conversion.

Government intervention and local level coordination of large-scale investment decisions are important components required for positive impacts on food security, nutrition and livelihoods of host communities. This policy brief reviews two case studies which illustrate the effects of foreign investment partnerships on local host communities and makes recommendations for improving government intervention at the provincial level