This paper tries to respond the question of how to make agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive. Many of the undernourished people in Africa and Asia are small-scale subsistence farmers. Diversifying production on these farms is often perceived as a promising strategy to improve dietary quality and diversity. This hypothesis is...

As the World Forestry Congress convenes in Durban, South Africa, forest producers should be embraced and inserted at the center of strategies to protect forests, and to ensure that the strategies benefit both local people and the global environment.

Intense watershed management and water harvesting in the state of Tigray, northern Ethiopia, have transformed the area beyond recognition and increased food security and enhanced resilience to floods and droughts. A new way of thinking about watershed management and the efforts of local farmers have contributed to the success of...

Due to this underlying need, FAO, in collaboration with ICRISAT, ICARDA, and CIAT, organized an expert consultation workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 2013 on Community Seed Production. The workshop’s objective was to create a roadmap and develop strategies for enhancing effective uptake and implementation of CSP in developing...

Gender inequality presents a significant barrier to increasing agricultural production and food security in Ethiopia. The lack of nationally representative sex-disaggregated data and analysis has hindered the development and implementation of evidence-based policies. This report aims to contribute to filling this gap by presenting a gender analysis of the Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency’s Agricultural...

People who rely on natural resources for their livelihoods are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and are often limited in their capacity to adapt to the changes. Vulnerability to climate change is exacerbated when individuals’ asset base is limited or insecure. Because control over assets is highly...

This One-Pager describes key findings of a four-year research project, From Protection to Production (PtoP), which analysed the impact of social cash transfer programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. The qualitative studies specifically explored impacts on household economic decision-making, the local economy and social networks. They also examined how the design and...

This paper explores the impact of climate risk on the adoption of risk decreasing practices and other input choices and evaluates their impact on subjective and objective measures of household welfare (namely net crop income and a food insecurity indicator). The analysis is conducted primarily using a novel data set...

Forests are home to 1.3 billion people, they have to cater to the multiple needs for local goods (access to income, food, clean water, wood energy, construction materials, fertile soils, medicinal and cosmetic products, and recreation) and global goods (climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, hydrological and mineral cycles). Reconciling competing...

This paper first looks “downstream” at two processes—urbanization and dietary changes—that create the demand (“pull”) for the changes in the whole food system. It then provides some illustrations of the transformation, mainly at the “midstream,” post-farmgate segments of the supply chains that are transforming—wholesale, processing, and logistics. It concludes with...

We explore the determinants of wheat output per hectare in the 2011-2013 Meher crop seasons in Ethiopia’s four major growing regions by using a panel data approach and combining national agricultural field surveys with relevant publically available GIS and remote sensing products. Despite the extremely heterogeneous agro-climatic conditions and fragmented...

Important changes to Ethiopia’s coffee sector have occurred in the last decade. The adoption of improved production, harvest, and post-harvest practices has been increasing with positive impacts on coffee productivity and incomes. Upstream marketing has improved, along with large investments in processing capacity, shown by the extended coverage of wet...

A large proportion of Ethiopians derive their livelihoods from smallholder agriculture. This has provided the impetus for the smallholder agriculture-focused policies that have guided agricultural development efforts in Ethiopia over the past two decades. In this study, we investigate the productivity of smallholder teff farmers in Ethiopia, since this is...

This report explores evidence and insights from five case studies that have made significant recent progress in addressing the challenge of insuring poor smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the developing world. In India, national index insurance programmes have reached over 30 million farmers through a mandatory link with agricultural credit...

Efforts to enhance smallholder farmers’ involvement in agricultural markets under the World Food Programme (WFP) Purchase for Progress (P4P) programme have led to a variety of nutrition-sensitive activities. In many rural communities where P4P and partners work, these context- and country-specific efforts have begun to increase farming families’ access to nutritious...

ASARECA has been praised for providing mechanisms and technical backstopping for regional centres of excellence to work together and share technologies, Innovations and Management Practices during EAAPP Phase 1.

In December 2012, the programme on “Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume cropping systems for food security in Eastern and Southern Africa” (SIMLESA) commissioned a study to compile case studies of good practices in gender mainstreaming in the areas covered by the programme. This study was a result of an action point...

Smallholder irrigated vegetable production in the Central Rift Valley region of Ethiopia is instrumental in ensuring the year-round availability of fresh vegetables in the local market in the country. However, a number of problems constrain irrigated vegetable production in the region. Therefore, asurvey was conducted with the objectives of assessing...

Between 2008 and 2013 ASARECA coordinated and provided leadership in implementing a project called “Dissemination of New Agricultural Technologies in Africa” (DONATA) across 6 countries in eastern and central Africa. The approach in DONATA was the innovation platform for technology adoption (IPTA). At the start of the project, there were...

This publication contains of information on technologies and innovation for addressing climate change and variability in Eastern and Central Africa. They were compiled from national agricultural research system (NARS) and International research centers working in the ASARECA region. The information was submitted and discussed at a regional conference on “Climate...