Overreliance on a few main crops, as well as poor soil health, reduce yields, hinder achievement of food security and nutrition objectives, and increase agricultural vulnerability to climate change. To address this, the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS), launched by the United States in partnership with FAO and...

Organic agriculture is practised in 188 countries, and more than 96 million hectares of agricultural land are managed organically by at least 4.5 million farmers. Global sales of organic food and drink reached almost 135 billion euros in 2022. The 25th edition of "The World of Organic Agriculture", published by the...

Climate-Smart Cocoa (CSC), a strategic offshoot of the wider Climate-Smart Agriculture, is gaining ground in Ghana, a cocoa export-dependent country. CSC is imperative, given the rapidly declining forests, prolonged periods of drought, pest and disease infestations, and fluctuating cocoa yields attributed to climate variability and change. Although many interventions are...

The natural forest in southwest Ethiopia is progressively modified to coffee agroforest. To this effect forest composition and diversity is simplified to local preferred coffee shade trees. Woody plant species that are less managed require the conservation priority in coffee agroforest. The study aims at assessing diversity of plant species, investigating...

Developing policies to foster inclusive rural transformation processes requires better evidence on how climate change is affecting the livelihoods and economic behaviours of vulnerable rural people, including women, youths and people living in poverty. In particular, there is little comparative, multi-country and multi-region evidence to understand how exposure to weather...

The Women’s Empowerment Livestock Index (WELI) is tailored for areas where livestock farming is prominent, aiming to assess the impact of livestock interventions on women's empowerment. By identifying effective interventions, the index seeks to improve empowerment opportunities for women in the sector, thereby enhancing household livelihoods, nutrition, and gender equity....

El programa Mesoamérica sin Hambre AMEXCID-FAO ha concentrado importantes esfuerzos en apoyar al Gobierno dominicano en el desarrollo y la validación de herramientas metodológicas e instrumentos de planificación y coordinación que contribuyan al fortalecimiento de las capacidades institucionales para atender las necesidades de la agricultura familiar y la formulación e...

Women's empowerment is essential for achieving agricultural development goals like increasing productivity among smallholders, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2.3 and 5. Agricultural collectives, including producer groups and farmer producer organizations (FPOs), offer promising avenues for empowering women and improving smallholder incomes. Research on this approach is growing, highlighting...

La mise au point d’une méthode automatique d’estimation des surfaces irriguées par les petits exploitants agricoles en Afrique aux abords des cours d’eau, à partir d’outils libres et de données satellitaires gratuites, reste un défi majeur à cause de la diversité des cultures qui y sont pratiquées, de l’étroitesse des...

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is negotiating a new climate finance goal, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), to set future climate finance scales and ambitions. This is vital as the previous goal set in 2009 will expire in 2024. Integrating gender equality into climate finance...

En Afrique de l’Ouest, face à la croissance rapide des villes et à une demande accrue de la part des consommateurs urbains et ruraux, les systèmes alimentaires fondés sur l’agriculture familiale renforcent déjà dans nombre d’endroits la capacité d’un pays ou d’une région à nourrir ses populations par la production...

Many countries have integrated agroforestry into their sustain-able development policies, particularly in Southeast Asia. In Timor-Leste, the national strategy to promote agroforestry has adopted a modern, technique-oriented approach focused on crop rotation, intercropping and agro-silvo-pasture. In so doing, it has largely overlooked the pre-existence, diversity and perfor-mance of traditional agroforestry...

Over the last three decades organic food and farming has been growing year by year across the EU and continues doing so. The EU’s organic market is very dynamic with growth rates varying between countries. Policies can positively impact this growth – both production and consumption. In 2022, the EU’s total...

Over the past two decades, the Mekong region has experienced significant transformation of its agricultural sector from subsistence farming to export crops driven by the expansion of agricultural land and of irrigation, plus intensification thanks to mechanization and the use of chemical inputs. In the context of agrarian transition, maintaining...

Access Agriculture is proud to announce the release of its new book “Young changemakers,” which offers a rich diversity of perspectives and insights from real-life experiences of 42 inspiring teams of youths in Africa and India who are blazing a trail as private extension and advisory service providers promoting agroecology...

Food waste could be made into useful compost, instead of mixing it with plastic and other inorganic trash, as my wife Ana recently explained on a panel discussion on Radio Cepra in Cochabamba. She was invited by a local NGO, Alerta Verde (Green Alert), along with two agronomists who encourage...

The United Nations Decade of Family Farming 2019-28 (UNDFF) aims at promoting integrated actions and cross-sectoral policies to advance family farming. It recognizes Rural Communication Services as key factors and assets to be developed and promoted as part of family farming and sustainable food systems.This two-page flyer offers access to...

Highlights: • Young changemakers revolutionise scaling agroecology using video. • CCDB honours Access Agriculture with plaque in appreciation of partnership. • 96 new videos added in March. • Editor's choice of video - Converting chicken waste into fertilizer• Entrepreneurs for Rural Access (ERAs) at work in Cameroon. • Trash to treasure....

Over a ten-year period, we, together with colleagues, have used qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore the dominant narratives and ‘conventional wisdom’ about young people and agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Throughout, we have sought to carefully consider the conceptualisations embedded in these narratives, their empirical foundations, and their implications...

Groundwater development is key to accelerating agricultural growth and to achieving food security in a climate crisis. However, the rapid increase in groundwater exploitation over the past four decades has resulted in depletion and degradation, particularly in regions already facing acute water scarcity, with potential irreversible impacts for food security...