Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Traditional extension does not always provide the most useful information to farmers You don’t say. Anyway, that’s the first finding of a review of “nearly 50 randomised evaluations on the constraints to the productivity and profitability of smallholder farming” carried out over the past eight years by the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) with support …
We were kind of sorry this morning, taking a glance at the IFPRI website this morning, to see our worst fears about the collapse of agricultural extension systems confirmed. Of course it’s a cheap shot, but what’s the point of owning and operating a global web publishing empire if you can’t take the odd cheap …
Impact investing in biodiversity conservation with bonds: An analysis of financial and environmental risk. Need to show ’em the money, and that ain’t easy. The benefits and trade-offs of agricultural diversity for food security in low- and middle-income countries: A review of existing knowledge and evidence. Agrobiodiversity is positively connected with food security in two …
Coffee rust is doing a number on livelihoods in Central America. Wheat blast could do the same in South America. ILRI DG on smallholder livestock producers: one-third don’t have the conditions in which to be viable, one-third can go either way and one–third can be successful. I suppose all of them are going to need …
Extension services are absolutely essential to take research results and transform them into practical advice that farmers can make use of. Without decent extension workers, all the shiny new science in the world has very little hope of making any difference to the lives of ordinary people working in agriculture. And yet, as we’ve often …