Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools (JFFLS) are a simple methodology for teaching vulnerable children and young people about farming, entrepreneurial skills and how to take care of themselves. These schools follow a “living classroom” approach in which the students or children out of school observe the crops throughout the...

Interviewed onsite at The Economist Feeding the World Summit 2014, Rose Akaki tells Farming First the key challenges faced by female farmers in Uganda and offers her recommendations for improving agriculture in her country.

Smallholder agriculture in many developing countries has remained largely self-financed. However, improved productivity for attaining greater food security requires better access to institutional credit. Past efforts to extend institutional credit to smaller farmers has failed for several reasons, including subsidized operation of government-aided credit schemes. Thus, recent efforts to expand...

Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following...

Uganda’s landscape is dominated by Small scale farmers who maintain trees on-farm to satisfy their basic needs. On-farm trees contribute to reduction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in this way contribute climate change mitigation. It has been observed that some farms are not managing trees appropriately. In order...

It is important that any international investment should bring development benefits to the receiving country in terms of technology transfer, employment creation, upstream and downstream linkages and so on if these investments are to be “win-win” rather than “neo-colonialism”. These beneficial flows are not automatic: care must be taken in...

The climate of Uganda is regarded as its most valuable natural resource, and a major determinant of other natural resources, such as water, forests, and wildlife, as well as human activities based on these resources, such as agriculture and ecotourism (Republic of Uganda, MWE 2007). Together these resources provide the...

In surveys conducted by the Organisation for Rural Development (ORUDE) from 2010 - 2012, maize stood out as the second most important food and cash crop in Busoga after sweet potatoes. Due to climate change, farmers desired to have drought-tolerant seed varieties, However, lack of formalized maize seed supply systems...

Ankole Longhorn cattle can survive in extremely harsh, dry conditions such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa – which is becoming drier and hotter. In a context where herders are strongly encouraged to keep exotic and hybrid cattle, the innovative LIFE approach led Ugandan herders to revalue the Longhorns for their...

The study was initiated to understand how asset building, combined with appropriate extension services, can enable smallholder farmers to address marketing problems. Interviews were conducted in 2009 with 317 farm households in Kamuli district, Eastern Uganda, who were participants in a sustainable rural livelihoods program, led by an indigenous nongovernmental...

Agriculture is the principal economic sector in the Great Lakes region of Africa and represents a major source of income for rural populations in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. With the objective of unlocking the high potential of agriculture in this region, the project described...

Children in Karamoja, northern Uganda, are learning about farming, healthy eating and how to protect themselves from diseases, thanks to the Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools, set up by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and partners across 6 countries in the region. For young people like former...

The study evaluated factors influencing bean productivity and technical efficiency among smallholder farmers in Eastern Uganda, using a stochastic frontier model and a Tobit model. Findings showed that bean productivity was significantly influenced by plot-size, seeds and planting fertilizer; mean technical efficiency for sampled farms was 48.2%. The Tobit model...

The second of three books in IFPRI's climate change in Africa series, East African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing 10 of the countries that make up east and central Africa - Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda...

Stimulated by work pioneered in Bangladesh, the paper outlines a conceptual framework for using poultry as a tool in poverty alleviation. There is now evidence from several coun- tries that small poultry enterprises with adequate institutional support targeting the poorest rural women and their families can help them take the...

Our Conservation Farming channel is for anybody interested in the promotion of Conservation Farming and Climate Smart Agriculture and we hope you will find it useful.

The Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA) Study is a project led by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the New Partnership of Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Planning and Coordinating Agency and supported by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP). COHA is a...

Improving food security and agricultural livelihoods in Northern Uganda is an EU-funded Government of Uganda's Agricultural Livelihoods Recovery Project (ALREP) implemented by FAO in northern Uganda targeting people that have resettled in their homes after the 20 years of war. The video highlights how farmer field schools are being used...

Over the last fifty years food production per person in Africa has grown disappointingly slowly at little more than 10%. The population of Africa is growing rapidly at an average annual rate of 2.5% and is expected to almost double by 2050 to close to two billion people. Chronic hunger...

Without financial access and sufficient yearly earnings, many farmers also lose up to 50 percent of their annual potential income because they must gain quick access to cash to afford household expenses all year. In the time leading up to harvest, farmers often experience a “hungry season” in which they...