Rainfall variability is becoming more profound in East Africa. Smallholders relying on rainfed agriculture are particularly affected and need to adapt their farming systems accordingly. This study examined the measures small-scale farmers use to, or cope with rainfall rated perceived effectiveness. It also explored limitations adoption of sources learning measures. Questionnaire-based interview...

Since its introduction in India, Bt ( Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton technology has been the object of controversial scholarly and non-academic debate. The recent return pink bollworm Pectinophora gossypiella) pests several Indian states provided cause for concern about widespread resistances Lepidopteran towards endotoxins produced plants as well severe setbacks regard to farmers’ livelihood s...

This paper examines social and economic issues pertaining to the micro-irrigation technology based livelihoods of smallholders in villages of Nepal and India. The paper therefore aims to help in policy making by bringing in the ignored micro perspectives. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to generate data on livelihoods of respondents. The paper concludes that in order to a...

Global policy, policy makers and government representatives in the OECD countries routinely ignore potential role to be played by carbon sequestration from crop waste biochar made poor smallholders developing world. This paper argues that this is a mistake makes case for design, development distribution of low-cost, low-tech making equipment world’s poorest farmers living on small farms possess...

We begin by briefly considering the characteristics of smallholder farming and the way that service delivery lies at the heart of the small farm debate. A key issue here are the difficulties that smallholders face in accessing coordinated services for more intensive production and market access, and the way that these differ between staple food crop production, traditional cash crop production,...

Smallholder farmers across rural landscapes remain trapped in a vicious cycle of endemic poverty where interconnected challenges limit their ability to improve livelihoods. Our study smallholder farmers’ relationships with suppliers and several stakeholders the Tanzanian agro-input supply chain offers an extended perspective on persistence broadens discussion future sustainable food production ...

With an example from Rwanda, we ask how the State's policy strategy and attempts to construct "ideal agricultural subjects" resonate with actual changes experienced by farmers themselves. We present three different empirical examples show that a) when opportunities transformation initially arise, only wealthiest can capture them, even then government is seen as main beneficiary; b) some priorit...

Abstract In this study, we test the hypothesis that small-scale testing can reduce risk and uncertainty of trying new technologies. We conducted a field experiment, in cluster randomised control trial setting, to examine whether availability divisible packages seeds influences smallholder farmers’ decisions try wheat variety. Our results show adoption newly introduced variety was higher village...