Value chains are structured in ways that are unfavourable to smallholder farmers who often struggle to access finance, inputs and markets. An IIED webinar discussed how smallholders in East Africa can use technology to overcome those challenges and negotiate with buyers and input and finance providers from a position of...

Agroecology Newsletter of September 2020

This report responds to heightened concerns over rising levels of farmer-herder conflict across a wide band of semi-arid Africa. We assess the quantitative evidence behind this general impression and review the explanations in the scientific literature, in the light of known issues with long-standing attitudes towards pastoralism and mobile populations....

The RPOA-SSF is a political commitment setting forth an ambitious roadmap for the ten years from 2018-2028. It prescribes concrete and coherent measures to address challenges and reinforce opportunities for small-scale fisheries, including by giving fishers a voice in the decisions that affect their livelihoods, by safeguarding environmentally sustainable fishing...

A small scale farmer shows us how she manages to grow crops in a dry area. She harvests rain water which she uses for irrigating the crops. This has helped her to adapt to the effects of climate change. To learn more about our work on promoting organic agriculture, please...

The queen bee is the sole reproductive female in the honey bee colony. That’s why the queen is very important to the colony due to her main task of laying eggs. If the queen's ability to lay eggs is disturbed, a new queen is needed for the colony. This technology...

In 2009, the Laos government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation entered into a bilateral agreement for the implementation of "The Agro-Biodiversity Initiative (TABI)" in upland Laos. The initiative sought to conserve, enhance, manage, and sustainably utilize the biological diversity found in upland farming landscapes to improve the...

Asia-Pacific’s smallholder family farmers produce most of the world’s food, yet they are facing a disproportionate impact on their livelihoods and food security due to the present coronavirus pandemic, a collaboration of FAO and advocacy groups warned today. The COVID-19 impact on the region’s rural communities, and particularly those in developing...

In recent years, along with the growing recognition of the rural gender gap in financial access as a key constraint to rural development, research has focused increasingly more towards analysing in depth the financial habits and patterns followed by women in rural areas, in order to produce observations and insights...

In Salah est une des oasis du sud-est de l’Algérie. Capitale de la région du Tidikelt, elle était historiquement le district le plus important du Touat. La production de dattes y était très diversifiée. En effet, la région était considérée comme l’un des marchés commerciaux les plus importants, notamment pour...

In 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The Summit will launch bold new actions to deliver progress on all 17 SDGs, each of which relies to some degree on...

The honeybee suffers from diseases. In many parts of the world, research is underway for means of combating or preventing them. However the African bee industry is in its infant stage and not much research has been carried out on bee diseases in Africa. It is believed that some of...

Most fish farmers believe that a fish is a wild animal. They think that once put in pond water, it will survive naturally without adding any food supplement. This has resulted in pond fish taking a long period to reach a reasonable size. Most farmers add manure like cow dung and...

La producción agroecológica empieza a tener certificaciones que son gratuitas y que por eso no encarecen las producciones. Cuál es la diferencia con la certificación orgánica, y cómo se llegó a una victoria histórica del movimiento agroecológico que contó con apoyo e investigación de INTA y Senasa, tomando experiencias de...

Healthy animals are the basis of successful, profitable, and sustainable livestock production. Especially in the case of poultry, the help of veterinary laboratories is essential to protect the health of flocks. Still, several laboratories in Europe and Central Asia are using outdated and unreliable technologies, as modern and preferred diagnostic methods...

Previo al Día Internacional de la Mujer, presentamos algunas de las innumerables historias de mujeres inspiradores que trabajan en las organizaciones certificadas Comercio Justo – Fairtrade y en sus comunidades. Hoy, conozca a Wendy Rodríguez, quien, luego de huir de lo que era un ambiente violento, marcado por las drogas...

The Farm to Fork Strategy is at the heart of the Green Deal. It addresses comprehensively the challenges of sustainable food systems and recognises the inextricable links between healthy people, healthy societies and a healthy planet. The strategy is also central to the Commission’s agenda to achieve the United Nations’...

Este documento, elaborado en el marco del Proyecto "Caracterización de gestiones económicas de sistemas de producción agropecuarios de pequeña y mediana escala " y del "Centro de Información de Actividades Porcinas CIAP", presenta estimaciones sobre comportamientos de resultados económicos de modelos productivos y tiene como propósito aportar información que favorezca...

The practice of using bees to pollinate fruit crops is as new as the beekeeping industry in most parts of tropical Africa, although the practice has started in a few places in northern and southern Africa. This technology describes how farmers could utilize bees for pollination for their advantages via...

Root starch production is a long-established industry that has seen little development in recent years. In developing countries it has been estimated that five million tonnes of starch are produced annually in developing countries, half of which is produced from cassava representing a major market for small-scale root crop growers....