Cairo, Egypt – The 2018 annual meeting of scientists and leadership from ICARDA and Egypt’s ARC, short for Agricultural Research Center, was an opportunity to take stock of the results that have been achieved in the past three years thanks to the partnership. It was also a chance to renew...

Charles Nyanjul describes the comparative advantages of forest and farm producer organizations that make them so well placed to fight hunger, poverty and climate change. Citing from the experience of the Farm and Forestry Smallholder Producers Association of Kenya, he cites how members are encouraged to grow fruit trees as...

Control over seeds allows control over the entire food chain. Access to peasant seeds, the collective rights to use, produce, preserve, exchange and sell them, as well as the autonomy of peasant seed systems, are major issues for peasant organizations and civil society activists for peasant agroecology and people’s food...

An Africa Workshop focused on creating awareness about the SSF Guidelines, lobbying for their implementation, and aligning them with national fisheries policies

In 2009, livestock farmer Clément Guillaud from the Isère region in France saw his meat prices drop. Knowing he could no longer live on his current income, he knew he had to rethink his supply chain in an innovative way. He wanted to increase profit and reduce costs without compromising...

In small and remote villages in South Asia, our rich agricultural crop/breed diversity and associated knowledge is slowly getting wiped out and is being replaced by a handful of `high yielding’ and `improved’ crops/breeds. Rampant use of chemicals has led to the death of soil and is poisoning our food...

The aim of this study is to estimate the influence of climate factors on the technical efficiency of Hungarian arable farms. The technical efficiency of farms is affected by several factors such as the technology used, the relative factor abundance, the institutional reforms with the input and output market environment,...

Another international CSA network has evolved in the South Pacific to serve and develop a growing food movement. The Community Supported Agriculture Network Australia and New Zealand (CSAAUSNZ) is an advocacy group dedicated to highlighting, growing and supporting CSAs in Australia and New Zealand....

Ukraine, due to its geographical closeness to the European Union and its recently signed Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area agreement, has committed to aligning its food safety and quality systems with EU standards. The needed changes in legal requirements and in Ukraine’s official food safety control system bring with them...

At the request of the RUMRA (Rural, Mountainous and Remote Areas) intergroup, the European Parliament adopted on 3rd October 2018 a resolution on addressing the specific needs of rural, mountainous and remote areas. The motion calls for coordination of EU policies to ensure the development of rural territories in order to...

Cyclone Ockhi, which caused large-scale destruction in southern India, should open the eyes of officialdom to both the landward and seaward dimensions of cyclones

The 2018 Global Report on Food Crises provides the latest estimates of severe hunger in the world. An estimated 124 million people in 51 countries are currently facing Crisis food insecurity or worse (the equivalent of IPC/CH Phase 3 or above). Conflict and insecurity continued to be the primary drivers...

Given the global relevance of Integrated Food-Energy Systems (IFES), FAO has developed the IFES Analytical Framework; which gives guidance on how to select and assess indicators of IFES sustainability. The Analytical Framework (AF) includes a set of criteria, indicators and measures to help screen IFES projects. The first part of...

Degradation of rangelands is a major global concern, but land degradation processes in the rangelands are poorly understood. This lack of understanding has contributed to poorly-informed interventions and policies that have sometimes exacerbated degradation. Rangeland can become degraded due to crop cultivation, over-exploitation of livestock, over-extraction of woody biomass, and...

The Roundup includes recent publications, films added to our Documentation centre, meetings coming up, websites  which are important to small-scale fisheries, flashback of editorial from old issues of samudra report related to the theme  and Endquote from the world of literature related to fisheries.     

Agronomic practices and management decisions can have a significant impact on the type and number of weeds on a farm. Understanding this relationship can help organic producers manage weeds through avoidance, and various cultural management practices. The most important steps of non-chemical weed management are prevention, diagnosis, and a number of...

More than three years since the endorsement of the SSF Guidelines in June 2014, it is important to recall that these Guidelines, the first internationally recognised instrument for the small-scale fisheries sector, expressly call upon all stakeholders to adopt strategies to promote gender mainstreaming in the fisheries. It is important...

Agricultural mechanization hire enterprises, commonly known as hire services, are service businesses that provide human, animal and mechanical-driven power technologies and equipment services. Much has been documented over the decades about such services at the farm level, but little has been documented on the role that hire services can have...

The objective of the assessment is to analyse the agricultural and rural sector of Botswana from a gender perspective at the macro (policy), meso (institutional) and micro (community and household) levels in order to identify gender inequalities in access to critical productive resources, assets, services and opportunities. In particular, the...

The main objective of this study is to compare the efficiencies of organic and conventional farms in Poland. As shown by the conducted analysis, acting in compliance with the essential production principles, organic farms practiced extensive farming which resulted in reduced efficiency of productive inputs. The efficiency of land and...