Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Development processes, economic growth and agricultural modernization affect women and men in different ways and have not been gender neutral. Women are highly involved in agriculture, but their contribution tends to be undervalued and overseen. Sustainable agricultural innovations may include trade-offs and negative side-effects for women and men, or different social groups, depending on the intervention type and local context. Promising solutions are often technology-focused and not necessarily developed with consideration of gender and social disparity aspects. This paper presents cases of gender and social equity trade-offs related to the promotion and diffusion of improved technologies for agricultural development.The analysis is followed by a discussion of opportunities and pathways for mitigating potential trade-offs.

This chapter presents an analytic framework to identify agricultural innovations that are sustainable and suitable for the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the population. The framework contains a set of tools to collect and evaluate information on appropriate innovations based on relevant criteria. It considers the dimensions of environmental resilience, economic viability, and social sustainability, as well as technical sustainability considering important properties of the innovation itself. Information on already available agricultural innovations was collected in ten countries in South and Southeast Asia, as well as from the national and international agricultural research communities. A composite sustainability indicator was constructed to compare the collected innovations and radar charts were computed to visualize their performance in each sustainability criterion.

Land degradation affects about one-third of global terrestrial area and is having negative impacts on the incomes and food security of agricultural populations. The problem is also acute in the irrigated, rainfed and rangeland areas of Central Asia. There are numerous sustainable land management (SLM) technologies and practices which can help in addressing land degradation. However, many of these technologies have not been adopted at larger scales. The key underlying factors incentivizing SLM adoptions in Central Asia are found to be better access to markets, credit and extension, and secure land tenure. The adoption of SLM technologies can lead to improvements in income among agricultural households, especially the poor. However, SLM technologies alone cannot address land degradation in the region. SLM-friendly policies and institutions are essential.

Growing demand for increasingly diverse biomass-based products will transform African agriculture from a food-supplying to a biomass-supplying sector, including non-food agricultural produce, like feed, energy and industrial raw materials. As a result, agriculture will become the core part of a biomass-based economy, which has the potential not only to produce renewable biological resources but to convert this biomass into products for various uses. The emerging bioeconomy will intensify the interlinkages between biomass production, processing and trading. To depict these increasingly complex systems, adapted analytic approaches are needed. With the perspective of the “biomass-based value web” approach, a multi-dimensional methodology can be used to understand the interrelation between several value chains as a flexible, efficient and sustainable production, processing, trading and consumption system.

This chapter presents results of analyses of survey-based data on the rate of adoption of modern stress-tolerant rice varieties by the beneficiary farmers of the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and compares that with non-CSISA rice farmers who cultivated the CSISA-promoted rice varieties. The study reveals that the adoption of such varieties has been very low. Just 27 % of the farmers in the CSISA beneficiary survey and 9 % of non-CSISA rice farmers grew at least one of the CSISA-promoted rice varieties. Though our survey did not specifically ask the farmers for reasons for non-adoption, education plays a key role in new rice technology adoption and diffusion. Moreover, the role of complementary technologies should not be overlooked when analyzing the adoption of new/modern technologies.

Following the marginality approach developed at ZEF, we identified five underperforming sub-districts in Bangladesh, where poverty and other socio-economic dimensions of marginality are widespread, but agricultural potential is also high. Results from extensive quantitative and qualitative surveys suggest that development strategies in these areas should focus on three pathways: agricultural intensification, income diversification and agricultural diversification based on options available for the smallholders in the localities. Cereal-based technology under agricultural innovations could be part of the solution, but should be integrated into other income diversification and agricultural diversification strategies. Intensive crop systems, hybrid seeds, water management technologies, non-crop farming, non-farming enterprises are suggested as potential technology innovations for the study areas.

Rice and fish are an important source of food and nutrition security, income, and livelihood options for many people in Bangladesh. Integrated rice-fish farming systems are a potential option which respond to scarce land and water resources but their potential has not been fully explored in the country. Thus, this study assesses the ex-ante socio-economic competitive potential of this technology, as well as the crucial factors for its widespread adoption and diffusion. To assess the true performance of an activity, we take into account its upstream and downstream actors who are directly or indirectly related to that activity. The overall quantitative results from gross margin, partial budgeting and gendered employment analyses show positive benefits due to the introduction of rice-fish technology instead of rice monoculture in Bangladesh.

This chapter looks at potential technologies for marginal districts in two of the most backward states in India – Bihar and Odisha. Based on technological performance, we identified the marginal districts for four principal crops, i.e. rice, wheat, maize and pulses, and assessed the potential of the technologies in terms of their agro-ecological suitability, as well as the complementary inputs required for success. Using a primary survey, we gauge the real opportunities and constraints for technology adoption directly from the farmers, including their aspirations about crop choices and the technologies that exist to grow them. Maize and pulses turn out to be crops that farmers currently aspire to get into. Also, data distinctly reveals, in some cases, the disconnect between perceived potential of the technology among experts and the valuation of the same by likely adopters.

This chapter explores which community-based technologies have the greatest potential for reducing poverty and vulnerability among many smallholder farmers in Ghana. To this end, the stochastic dominance test was applied to rank outcomes from the different technologies used by the smallholder farmers in the study area. To show the effect of the technology on smallholder farmers’ income, propensity score matching was used to test for differences in income of technology adopters and non-adopters. Based on the findings of the study, we conclude that the dominant technologies that have the potential to reduce smallholder farmers’ level of poverty and marginality are: inorganic fertilizers for Afigya-Kwabre; zero tillage for Amansie-West; storage facilities for Atebubu-Amantin; marketing facilities for Kintampo South; improved varieties for Gonja East; and pesticides for the Tolon Districts.

Ethiopian agriculture is characterized by low productivity which has contributed to the persistence of food insecurity and poverty in the country. Reports indicate that several yield-increasing technologies are available but have not yet been adequately utilized. This chapter assesses the potential impact of yield-increasing crop technologies on productivity and poverty based on the data collected from two districts in Ethiopia. We focus on the use of improved seeds, together with appropriate agronomic packages such as chemical fertilizers and row planting technique. Results suggest that the resulting monetary gains would be enough to lift the “better-off” poor households out of poverty, but they would not be enough to lift up the ultra-poor out of poverty, implying that other livelihood strategies are desirable for improving the well-being of the latter.