BACKGROUND Adequate feeding is essential to realizing the potential of small ruminants to alleviate poverty among smallholder farmers. This study was conducted in two villages in the Ejura-Sekyedumase District of Ghana and was motivated by farmers' non-adoption of modern feed technologies, but more importantly by the need to understand the small ruminant feed system considering farmers' differe...

The delivery of veterinary services in most of sub-Saharan Africa has undergone substantial changes, with the private sector gaining increasing recognition as an alternative to state provision. Given this policy shift, the authors argue that a better understanding of the behaviour and decision-making processes of small-scale farmers in animal health management is urgently required, to guide pol...

The basic requirements for small scale cropping machines are, they should be suitable for small farms, simple in design and technology and versatile for use in different farm operations. A manually operated template row planter was designed and developed to improve planting efficiency and reduce drudgery involved in manual planting method. Seed planting is also possible for different size of se...

The extent and consequences of deforestation and related environmental degradation in the developing world have become the subject of considerable debate and concern. There is disagreement about how rapidly tree-covered land near the equator is being cleared or otherwise disturbed. Likewise, tropical deforestation's impacts have proven difficult to identify and to evaluate. By contrast, the con...

abstractthe challenges of agroforestry systems’ adoption by farmers in the north central zone of nigeria, was carried out to address the following objectives; find out the perception of farmers on agroforestry technologies, identify the adoption level and ascertain why farmers discontinue agroforestry adoption.. data were collected from 722 agroforestry farmers out of 782 sets of questionnaire ...

We develop a landscape stewardship classification which distinguishes between farmers' understanding of landscape stewardship, their landscape values, and land management actions. Forty semi-structured interviews were conducted with small-holder (<5 acres), medium-holders (5-100 acres), and large-holders (>100 acres) in South-West Devon, UK. Thematic analysis revealed four types of stewardship ...

The discovery of transgenic products in maize (Zea mays) landraces planted by small-scale Mexican farmers (Quist and Chapela, 2001, 2002; Christou, 2002; Editorial Note, 2002) raised questions about how the commercial introduction of transgenic maize varieties might affect the traditional agricultural systems of small-scale farmers. A key concern is whether their introduction will have a delete...

Very little is known about the use of antibiotics on small dairy farms in lower/middle-income countries. The use of these drugs can have profound impacts on animal health, farmer income and public health. A survey of 156 farmers was conducted in Cajamarca, a major dairy-producing center in the highlands of Peru characterized by small farms (<15 cows) to assess patterns and determinants of antib...

Smallholding in the cocoa sector has been seen as a hindrance to production and productivity growth due to the ageing of the cocoa farmers, limited access to credit, low level of education and low adoptability of innovations. In order to curb this, policy makers have resorted to implementing policy instruments that encourage the extension of small rural farms into larger farms, thereby undermin...