Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Assessing the profitability and feasibility of climate-smart agriculture investment in Southern Malawi
This working paper analyses the financial cost and benefit of adopting two different bundles of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, which are tailored for the diverse conditions that prevail in southern Malawi. The results show the integration of CSA practices, including soil conservation, agroforestry, and livestock diversification, into conventional maize-legume and maize monocrop systems is profitable for farmers. Moreover, the profitability of these systems increases under extreme weather conditions that occur with increasing frequency in the region. However, the upfront costs and cost variability associated with the adoption of these CSA scenarios is high relative to conventional practices. In addition, while the Net Present Value is positive for the CSA scenarios, the monetary returns are small and are spread over a long investment period. These factors act as significant barriers to adopting CSA practices. Supporting farmers through climate financing or other mechanisms to make long-term private investment in CSA, based on the public benefits these investments generate for the environment, is critical for achieving widespread adoption.
Practitioner’s guidebook and toolkit for agricultural policy reform: The P.M.C.A. approach to strategic policy engagement
This guidebook, and associated tools, is designed to help agricultural policy practitioners improve the effectiveness of their engagement with policy systems in developing countries. It provides practitioners with conceptual tools and practical strategies designed to improve the quality of policy practitioners’ efforts to influence complex agricultural policy systems. It develops a strategic approach to policy engagement termed the P.M.C.A. approach, and provides concrete applications and examples of this approach to help users apply the approach to their own policy domains of interest.
Progress towards sustainable agriculture – Drivers of change
The Progress towards Sustainable Agriculture initiative (PROSA) is a framework that seeks to complement ongoing efforts on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and particularly indicator 2.4.1, to support country-level assessments using data already available at the national level. Making agriculture more sustainable – productive, environmentally friendly, resilient and profitable is fundamental, as agriculture remains the main source of livelihood for the majority of the world’s poor and hungry. The pathway towards sustainable agriculture must ensure increasing output, but also make more efficient use of increasingly scarce global resources, be resilient to and help mitigate climat...
Adapting to high temperatures: evidence on the impacts of sustainable agricultural practices in Uganda
Rising temperatures due to climate change pose a significant threat to agricultural systems and the livelihoods of farmers across the globe. Identifying farm management strategies that reduce sensitivity to high temperatures is, therefore, critical for moderating the adverse effects of climate change. In this paper, we use spatially granular climate data merged with four waves of household survey data in Uganda to examine empirically the relationships between high temperatures, agricultural production outcomes, and the adoption (including its duration) of three sustainable agricultural practices (organic fertilizer adoption, banana-coffee intercropping and cereal-legume intercropping). We do...
Climate Smart Agriculture
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO license. The book uses an economic lens to identify the main features of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), its likely impact, and the challenges associated with its implementation. Drawing upon theory and concepts from agricultural development, institutional, and resource economics, this book expands and formalizes the conceptual foundations of CSA. Focusing on the adaptation/resilience dimension of CSA, the text embraces a mixture of conceptual analyses, including theory, empirical and policy analysis, and case studies, to look at adaptation and resilience through three possible avenues: ex-ante reduction of vulnerability, increasing adapt...
The challenge of making climate adaptation profitable for farmers – Evidence from Sri Lanka’s rice sector
Increased incidences of drought and water scarcity due to climate change is an important challenge facing Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector. Identifying farm practices that can reduce its adverse impacts on agricultural production and farmers’ livelihoods is a key policy objective in Sri Lanka. This paper makes use of household survey data collected in Anurādhapura District to evaluate the impacts of 11 drought adaptation practices adopted by farmers in the district. The impacts of the practices are estimated simultaneously along two dimensions: 1) impact on sensitivity to water stress (measured in terms of the probability of experiencing crop loss due to wilting) and 2) impact on househo...
Agricultural Transformation in a Global History Perspective
This book uses a global history approach in order to reach a greater understanding of the agricultural transformation process, using a wide number of comparisons over time and space. The book seeks to identify key factors for agricultural transformation, through the use of micro level case studies, and to assess their importance in a global perspective.
Smallholder adaptive responses to seasonal weather forecasts
Does receiving information on potential adverse weather conditions induce adaptive responses by smallholders? Do market institutions ease constraints to adaptation of these practices? This report examines these questions using a unique panel dataset of Zambian smallholder households collected before and after 2015/16 El Niño Southern Oscillation event. The analysis finds that farmers receiving drought-related seasonal forecasts are more likely to integrate drought tolerant crops into their cropping systems and to acquire improved maize seed varieties. These farmers, on average, are found to apply double the quantity of improved maize seeds than farmers residing in the same zones but not rec...
Harvesting trees to harvest cash crops: The role of internal migrants in forest land conversion in Uganda
In this work, we merge socio-economic data with data on deforestation to explore the interrelationship between rural migration, the development of commercial agricultural sector, and forest cover loss. Specifically we test the role of cash crop producers and inter-district migrants on the tree loss in the parish of residence, while controlling for several other household-level and parish-level contributing factors of deforestation, including population density, proximity to markets and protected areas. Also, we investigate the agricultural channel, specifically producing cash crops, as one major channel through which inter-district migration affects deforestation. Our analysis aims to support the identification of policy strategies to reduce the adverse impacts of agricultural commercialization initiatives on Uganda’s critical natural resources; and identify policy options that maximize migrant’s benefits on recipient areas while minimizing downside risks of migration related to over-exploitation of resources and deforestation.
How do extreme weather events affect livestock herders’ welfare? Evidence from Kyrgyzstan
This paper examines the impact of the harsh 2012 winter on livestock herding households in Kyrgyzstan and identifies policy options to increase household resilience to such shocks. While existing studies mostly focus on rainfall shocks in tropical or dry climate areas, this analysis examines the exceptionally harsh winter that hit Kyrgyzstan in 2012, which resulted in the death of 25 000 animals. Using a unique household panel survey, merged with observed temperature data, the analysis finds that, on average, the negative effects of the winter shock on household welfare are significant and persistent over time, leading to a 5 percent and a 8 percent decrease in households’ food consumption...
