This document includes features of conservation agriculture, conservation tillage, conservation tillage equipment including the -hand operated jab planter- and features of cover crops. All those practices are labour saving technologies.

This manual contains guidelines on how to better use hoes, and how to improve them.

This text includes features of hand seeders and planters including jab planters to plant in rows.

The status and characteristics of the 302 smallholder irrigation schemes found in South Africa are discussed and knowledge on South African smallholder irrigation schemes generated by the Water Research Commission (WRC) over a period of nearly 20 years is reviewed. Themes covered include planning, design and technology; plot-holders and their...

The objective of this publication is to offer a reference material for extensionists, professors, agronomy students, technicians in general, and for farmers themselves. Through information that is up-to-date and richly illustrated, it strives to facilitate the adoption and diffusion of No-Tillage, the use of green manures, and the practice of...

This technology describes step by step how to install a top bar hive. It provides an overview of the advantages and use of different baits. Furthermore, it gives clear instructions on how to hang hives in trees and to install them on stands and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of...

Identifying an adequate site for an apiary is the first step to successful installation and colonization of a bee hive. This brief entry gives valuable advice on what to take into consideration when choosing a site for a bee hive.This technology is part of a series on hive management derived...

This entry discusses different methods of bee hive colonization. It explains how a baited and installed hive can be self-colonized by a bee swarm. For cases where self-colonization is unsuccessful, it outlines three different methods to capture a swarm: two alternative ways of catching a swarm (with a bag/box or...

A beekeeper with a colonized hive must remember that the success in keeping bees depends on the exercise of his knowledge of colony organization. This entry focuses on practices to examine and control the colony. The first part gives detailed advice on how to inspect a hive and its colony...

In the Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) region organic agriculture could play a catalyst role in green economy transformation by re-vitalizing the farm and food sector and creating employment that provides better returns on per unit of  labor input all along the value chain. It could increase income...

A beekeeper with a colonized hive must remember that the success in keeping bees depends on the exercise of his knowledge of colony organization. Three practices of colony management are discussed in greater detail in this entry. The first part gives a step-by-step description of how to divide a very...

Honeybees that nest in the open produce far less honey than those confined in enclosures. There are good reasons for this. Colonies in the open are exposed to predators and therefore have to employ numerous workers as guards to fight intruders. They have to consume large quantities of honey, which...

Climate change scenarios predict negative impacts on agriculture in the southern Mediterranean regions. Preparedness for increasingly frequent droughts requires a good knowledge on how chronic water shortages may affect production and cropping systems. This work investigates recent variations in agricultural production and in cropping practices in Tunisia as induced by...

In the course of becoming a new EU member state, Croatian pig production systems are being modernized in order to ensure product quality and competitiveness according to European standards. This process involves the modernization and intensification of larger pig farms and the termination of small pig farms. Small‐scale farming, especially...

In this issue of BAOBAB, we focus on the importance of indigenous knowledge as a key for sustainable agriculture. This knowledge has the potential to play an important role in conserving natural resources, finding food alternatives and reducing the use of chemicals in production of materials. In this issue partnerships...

This issue of Baobab focuses on access to water for sustainable agriculture and livelihoods, its management and policies, or lack of them, which can regulate its effective and efficient use. In a region that highly relies on rainfall for food production, a lot needs to be done in agricultural water...

Human activities have helped to speed up the process of desertification in Burkina Faso. In order to curb this scourge and its disastrous consequences, the NGO “TERRE VERTE” has, since 1989, carried out a rural development project referred to as bocage perimeter, (“Wegoubri” in the Mooré language). This new concept...

Bees are the most important pollinators in Europe. We studied bee assemblages on 7 pairs of extensively and intensively grazed sites in three lowland grassland types in Hungary. No chemicals were applied on the grasslands. The bees were collected using sweep net surveys and 1 m wide transect surveys in...

This report was submitted to SNV Zimbabwe in December 2007, revised in 2009, and documents the experiences of twenty-five companies contracting smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe to produce cotton, tobacco, paprika, sugar cane, vegetables, sorghum and various seed and legume crops in a hyperinflationary environment. The only company contracting farmers to...

This is a story about how FAO assisted groups of farmers in five farming communities in the moist savannah zone of South Western Burkina Faso to enhance their crop-livestock systems through Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices, including crop diversification, using an innovative farmer discovery process, to bring about agricultural intensification and...