Search Results (17)

This study investigates the production and economic feasibility of biochar for smallholder and family farms in Central Amazonia, with potential implications for other tropical regions. The costs of construction of a prototype mobile kiln and biochar production were evaluated, using small-sized biomass from acai (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) agro-industrial residues as feedstock. The biochar produced was characterised in terms of its liming capacity (calcium carbonate equivalence, CaCO_3eq), nutrient content via organic fertilisation methods, and ash analysis by ICP-OES. Field trials with cowpea assessed economic outcomes, as well scenarios of fractional biochar application and cost comparison between biochar production in the prototype kiln and a traditional earth-brick kiln. The prototype kiln showed production costs of USD 0.87–2.06 kg⁻¹, whereas traditional kiln significantly reduced costs (USD 0.03–0.08 kg⁻¹). Biochar application alone increased cowpea revenue by 34%, while combining biochar and lime raised cowpea revenues by up to 84.6%. Owing to high input costs and the low value of the crop, the control treatment generated greater net revenue compared to treatments using lime alone. Moreover, biochar produced in traditional kilns provided a 94% increase in net revenue compared to liming. The estimated externalities indicated that carbon credits represented the most significant potential source of income (USD 2217 ha⁻¹). Finally, fractional biochar application in ten years can retain over 97% of soil carbon content, demonstrating potential for sustainable agriculture and carbon sequestration and a potential further motivation for farmers if integrated into carbon markets. Public policies and technological adaptations are essential for facilitating biochar adoption by small-scale tropical farmers. Full article

This study investigates the influence of agricultural mechanization on maize productivity in Tanzania’s Ruvuma region, a major maize-producing area vital to national food security. It addresses gaps in understanding the cumulative effects of mechanization across the maize production cycle and identifies region-specific barriers to adoption among smallholder farmers. Focusing on five key stages—land preparation, planting, plant protection, harvesting, and drying—this research evaluated mechanization uptake at each stage and its relationship with yield disparities. Statistical analyses using Python libraries included regression modeling, ANOVA, and hypothesis testing to quantify mechanization–yield relationships, controlling for farm size and socioeconomic factors, revealing a strong positive correlation between mechanization and maize yields (r = 0.86; p < 0.01). Mechanized land preparation, planting, and plant protection significantly boosted productivity (β = 0.75–0.35; p < 0.001). However, harvesting and drying mechanization showed negligible impacts (p > 0.05), likely due to limited adoption by smallholders combined with statistical constraints arising from the small sample size of large-scale farms (n = 20). Large-scale farms achieved 45% higher yields than smallholders (2.9 vs. 2.0 tons/acre; p < 0.001), reflecting systemic inequities in access. These inequities are underscored by the barriers faced by smallholders, who constitute 70% of farmers yet encounter challenges, including high equipment costs, limited credit access, and insufficient technical knowledge. This study advances innovation diffusion theory by demonstrating how inequitable resource access perpetuates low mechanization uptake in smallholder systems. It underscores the need for context-specific, equity-focused interventions. These include cooperative mechanization models for high-impact stages (land preparation and planting); farmer training programs; and policy measures such as targeted subsidies for harvesting equipment and expanded rural credit systems. Public–private partnerships could democratize mechanization access, bridging yield gaps and enhancing food security. These findings advocate for strategies prioritizing smallholder inclusion to sustainably improve Tanzania’s maize productivity. Full article

The study of carbon stocks in organic compounds within terrestrial ecosystems allows us to create a pool of potential carbon farming projects. At present, it is essential to assess the economic viability of natural-based solutions in order to develop strategies to encourage small and medium enterprises (SME) and governments to address climate change through specific measures. This article is devoted to the study of the economic efficiency of afforestation projects. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the economic efficiency of the project and, based on NPV sensitivity analysis, to identify the factors affecting economic efficiency. This will make it possible to formulate directions for stimulating the development of afforestation projects using tools to improve their economic efficiency. Based on data on the number of carbon credits issued, their price, and the costs and other revenue associated with the implementation of the afforestation project, a sensitivity analysis of economic efficiency was conducted, highlighting the most significant factors. Given that different tree species are characterized by variable seedling values, planting costs, and sequestration potentials, an afforestation project with the most carbon efficient tree species was selected as a pilot project. Black alder exhibits the most optimal proportion between the volume of carbon units released and the cost of planting trees. A sensitivity analysis of the project’s net present value was conducted in order to ascertain the factors that have the most significant impact on the project’s economic efficiency. These include the discount rate based on the cost of capital and the cost of tree planting. As a result, this article makes recommendations for improving the economic efficiency of afforestation projects for SME. The government’s role in enhancing the economic efficiency of such initiatives entails reducing the cost of capital through a reduction in the key rate or the provision of subsidies for the interest rate on bank credits. An alternative approach involves the granting of subsidies for the cost of tree planting, since the effects can be seen as a series of public goods, such as the creation of recreational areas and increased biodiversity of the ecosystem. Full article

Climate change-induced floods and droughts pose significant threats to rice farm development in Indonesia, particularly in regions reliant on pump-based irrigation systems. The urgency of this study lies in the increasing vulnerability of rice production to extreme weather events, necessitating institutional adaptations to enhance irrigation sustainability and financial risk sharing. This study examines the role of irrigation institutions in supporting sustainable rice farming in Wajo District, Indonesia. Using a case study approach, qualitative data were collected from four irrigation service provider (ISP) units across three subdistricts through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The analysis focuses on institutional mechanisms, including irrigation payment structures, input credit systems, and cost-sharing arrangements. The findings reveal that institutional frameworks are crucial in mitigating financial risks by promoting adaptive payment schemes and equitable cost-sharing mechanisms. Farmers’ access to critical agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers and pesticides, is enhanced through collaborative financing models, ensuring resilience against climate-induced production risks. However, variations in institutional support led to disparities in irrigation fees, credit access, and financial sustainability across study sites. This study underscores the need for risk-based irrigation pricing models and public–private partnerships to invest in climate-resilient infrastructure, such as water storage facilities and sustainable irrigation systems. In conclusion, it is important to remember that each of us, including agricultural policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders, plays a crucial role in implementing these solutions. By strengthening institutional governance, promoting flexible financial mechanisms, and integrating climate-adaptive pricing models, we can all contribute to enhancing the long-term sustainability of rice farming in Indonesia. Full article

Brazil is the second largest beef producer and a leading exporter, contributing to some 3000 t CWE in global markets (27.7% of market share). The sector has experienced substantial development, but yields remain far below potential, and there are growing concerns regarding land use change and greenhouse gas emissions. The need for sustainable technologies, such as sound pasture management and integrated farming systems, is evident, but adoption may be low amongst farmers unable to keep up with technological advances. This article describes the historical developments of Brazilian beef farming towards sustainability and discusses possible socioenvironmental outcomes. We combined an extensive literature review, public data, and our own insights as senior researchers to achieve that. The trajectory shown here evidenced the technological intensification of Brazilian beef farming, with strong support of public policies for decarbonizing agriculture. Nonetheless, the pace of this transition may affect small to medium farmers with limited access to information, technologies, and credit. Our recommendations involve a broad program of technical assistance and training on sustainable technologies, including financial and digital literacy. A novel approach to financing farmers is suggested to support a sustainable and inclusive transition in beef farming in Brazil. Full article

Market access has a deep impact on farmers’ decisions, influencing their choice of crops and technology adoption. Crop diversification depends on the availability of markets to trade the agricultural portfolio. This study explored how market access impacted the level of diversification in 5565 Brazilian municipalities from 2013 to 2021. We developed a regression model considering how variables related to market access and commercialization (storage, roads, distribution centers, commercialization credit, among others) affected a local (municipality level) diversification index. After environmental variables were controlled, the results indicated that most of the market access variables have a significant impact on diversification. We also used map analysis to analyze the regional patterns of specialization in Brazilian agriculture, concluding that logistics and commercialization infrastructure have strong influence on the level of diversification in Brazil, a major agricultural powerhouse in the world. The results indicate that market access variables affect diversification and should be considered by policy makers aiming to increase sustainability in agriculture and livestock. Full article

Yam production, processing, distribution, and marketing processes are underpinned by socio-cultural beliefs shaped by ritual practices and indigenous wisdom. We used semi-structured interviews, public meetings, keen observation, local informants, and a review of secondary materials to assess local indigenous understanding of interconnected perspectives of yam farming processes, socio-cultural perspectives, and livelihood practices in communities in southern Nigeria. Our findings revealed that over 90% of farmers depend on experiences of adjusting to seasonal challenges, storage practices, and fertility enhancement. Cultural beliefs and spiritual practices pervade farmers’ social attitudes to improving farming operations. Almost 70% of yam producers are aged 60 years and above and depend on crude tools and traditional methods of land management and production process, even though the modern and innovative farming methods and practices are limited. Farmers respond to the poor public support system of extension services by informal networking and local associational relationships with diverse schemes to support and encourage members. Government and organizations should take advantage of these informal structures to empower farmers through micro-credits, education, information, training, supervision, and mechanization. Different groups of actors organized into formal social structures like cooperatives will take advantage of bulk buying, selling, transportation, access fundings, information, education, and training from public and non-governmental institutions. The study findings have demonstrated that the socio-economic structure of the Obudu community has developed extensively on account of decades of yam production and processing, supporting chains of a livelihood network, entrepreneurship, and relationships of mutual cooperation and co-existence. Full article

The sustenance of marginal and small farm households is a pertinent question given that their number is on the rise in South-Asia. The study aims to assess their present socio-economic profile and the challenges faced in order to draw a roadmap of development for these underprivileged households. The study pertains to Indian Punjab and data from the Situation Assessment Survey of the 70th Round of NSSO are used. The concepts of economic surplus, occupational diversity, farm productivity and vertical and horizontal inequalities are used to achieve the objectives. This study reveals that marginal farm households faced food insecurity as they failed to meet consumption expenditure from the income earned. In fact, small farm households are left with an annual economic surplus of Rs 8890 per capita only, after meeting consumption needs. Income is unevenly distributed among farm households with a Gini coefficient of 0.48. The majority of the marginal and small farm households fall in lower-income quintiles and are occupationally more diversified than their larger counterparts. Horizontal inequalities are lower between the farm-size categories (0.14) than within farm-size categories (0.27). The Gini coefficient within each farm-size category is the highest among marginal farm households (0.50), followed by small farm households (0.45), highlighting their economic stress and tug-of-war survival. Further, the farm households belonging to socially lower castes falls only in the marginal farm-size category and represent the lowest income. Development must be sustainable and inclusive, hence, policies to develop marginal farmers’ centric farming systems and high value crops such as potato, cotton, sugarcane and oilseeds, providing high yielding livestock breeds, value addition through farmer-producer organizations, non-farm employment through MGNREGA, provision of institutional credit at subsidised rate of interest and quality health and education facilities in the public sector are recommended to uplift the affected households. Full article

A research gap in the scientific literature has arisen concerning the challenge faced by actors who formulate public policies on the compatibility between economic activities and sustainable development in the Amazon. The main question that guided this study was whether the organizations of the social and solidarity economy (SSE), in the form of family farming cooperatives and associations, are sufficiently consolidated in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. To achieve the intended objective, the authors used the ArcGIS Pro 10.8 software with an exploratory analysis of spatial data (AEDE). Specifically, the mapping clusters tool was used to present and discuss the distribution of establishments and enterprises in a municipality. The database was the “2017 Agricultural Census” from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the most recent official government data available. Establishments and enterprises of family farming in the 772 municipalities of the Legal Amazon with credit access in a period between August 2017 and February 2019 were selected for analysis. We confirmed the hypothesis that SSE projects are essential to achieve sustainability in the Amazon. In addition, this study suggests that this model can be an essential alternative to support public policies for the sustainable development of the biome. Full article

In recent years, the changing climate has become a major global concern, and it poses a higher threat to the agricultural sector around the world. Consequently, this study examines the impact of changing climate and technological progress on soybean yield in the 13 major provinces of China, and considers the role of agricultural credit, farming size, public investment, and power of agricultural machinery from 2000 to 2020. Fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) are applied to assess the long-run effect, while Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s (2012) causality test is used to explore the short-run causalities among the studied variables. The results revealed that an increase in the annual mean temperature negatively and significantly affects soybean yield, while precipitation expressively helps augment soybean yield. Furthermore, technological factors such as chemical fertilizers accelerate soybean yield significantly, whereas pesticides negatively influence soybean yield. In addition, farming size, public investment, and power of agricultural machinery contribute remarkably to soybean yield. The causality results endorse that chemical fertilizers, pesticides used, agricultural credit, public investment, and power of agricultural machinery have bidirectional causality links with soybean yield. This study suggests several fruitful policy implications for sustainable soybean production in China. Full article

Agricultural cooperatives are producer-owned and controlled organizations to improve farmers’ livelihoods by correcting market failure. They support collective activities where individual incentives are insufficient to produce public goods. The government of Nepal has been investing economic resources in this sector, prioritizing cooperatives as part of a strategy for poverty reduction. This study examines poor farmers’ access to agricultural cooperatives and the impact of membership on farm and total household income, based on a household survey of 572 households and key informant interviews of 37 cooperative managers. The ethnicity of the family and the neighborhood, smallholder land size, distance to an agricultural cooperative, distance to the nearest local market, and distance to a motorable road are key determinants that influence cooperative membership. The analysis of the effects of cooperative membership is based on propensity score matching, controlling for a large array of household and community characteristics. The estimates imply that cooperative membership may significantly affect family net crop income, but the overall effects on total family income are modest. Agricultural cooperatives appear to be focused on financial services such as savings and credit activities but are less concerned with agricultural production, and cooperatives engage in almost no marketing activities. Full article

Understanding the evidence-based factors that influence the adoption of organic farming yields benefits in terms of managing said adoption effectively. We searched relevant articles published in databases including Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Google. The inclusion criteria were as follows: original article; published in journals, proceedings, or dissertations; full article publication; published between 1999 and 2021; focusing on assessing the adoption of organic farming or conversion to organic farming; published in English; included data analyzed via correlation coefficient analysis, regression analysis, or discriminant analysis. Out of the 50 articles identified, 33 studies described findings associated with farmer and household factors, 32 described psychobehavioral and psychosocial factors, 36 assessed farming factors, and 33 analyzed supportive factors. The literature provides evidence that relevant factors include the following: (1) farmer and household factors (i.e., gender, off-farm income, and level of education); (2) psycho-behavioral and psychosocial factors (i.e., positive attitude, normative and moral obligations); (3) farming factors (i.e., organic farm experience, production cost, and farm ownership); (4) supportive factors (i.e., training, support of technology, organic farmer neighbors, information acquisition, membership of association, and extension contacts). To promote the adoption of organic farming, extension agents play a vital role in the provision of information via training and the encouragement of conventional farmers to shift towards organic agriculture. The target groups that have the greatest potential for the adoption of organic farming are young farmers, females, individuals who have ownership of their farm, those with a high level of education, and farmers with off-farm income. Farm associations also play a vital role in the sharing of experience and in increasing bargaining power. Support by the government in terms of resources, credit, markets, and subsidy is also relevant in motivating organic farming adoption. Therefore, three sectors, extension agents, farm associations, and the government, are key drivers for the sustainable adoption of organic farming. Full article

The scourge of poverty, including its correlates, has been witnessing an incremental sequence over the years in Nigeria despite the natural endowment of the country. Efforts by various stakeholders to address this problem have not yielded tangible results. Using cross-sectional data collected in 2015 on 775 cassava farmers spread across four geographical zones, this study estimates multidimensional poverty of cassava producers in Nigeria. This is to determine the factors responsible for poverty increase and contribution(s) of these factors to poverty. The study found that about 74% of the respondents were multidimensionally poor. Assets and public/housing utility were the main contributors to aggregate multidimensional poverty index (MPI), while education and health contributed most to povertyreduction. The results also showed major contributing indicators to MPI to be formal employment, school enrolment, years of schooling, frequency of hospital visits, and household assets’ ownership. The South-eastzone of Nigeria had the highest adjusted headcount of poverty among cassava producers. The estimated coefficient of age, farming experience, years of schooling, household size, and access to informal credit were significant determinants of poverty in the study area. In conclusion, the results suggest that although Nigeria is a federation of more than 30 states that continue to rely on nation-wide policy initiatives of the central government, policies on cassava aiming to lift millions of people out of poverty should instead vary according to the peculiar poverty dimensions of each federation unit. We suggest reform in the agriculture sector that will emphasize facilitation and access to incentives (credits, training, extension, cooperate system, etc.) by younger farmers to engage in modern cassava farming, thereby, enhancing the chances of rural cassava growers to move out of poverty. Full article

Climate change and environmental degradation are major threats to sustainable agricultural development in Southern Africa. Thus, the concept of sustainable intensification (SI) has become an important topic among researchers and policymakers in the region over the last three decades. SI involves getting more output from less input using practices such as agroforestry, organic fertilizer, sustainable water management, among others. A comprehensive review of the literature on adoption of SI in the region identified nine relevant drivers of adoption of SI among (smallholder) farmers. These drivers include (i) age, (ii) size of arable land, (iii) education, (iv) extension services, (v) gender, (vi) household size, (vii) income, (viii) membership in a farming organization and (ix) access to credit. We present the results of a meta-analysis of 21 papers on the impact of these determinants on SI adoption among (smallholder) farmers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) using random-effects estimation techniques for the true effect size. While our results suggest that variables such as extension services, education, age, and household size may influence the adoption of SI in SADC, factors such as access to credit are also of great importance. Decision-makers should, therefore, concentrate efforts on these factors in promoting SI across the SADC. This includes increasing the efficiency of public extension service, as well as the involvement of the private sector in extension services. Furthermore, both public and private agriculture financing models should consider sustainability indicators in their assessment process. Full article

Semi-arid regions have historically suffered from low water availability. In addition, the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events credited to global climate change has made it increasingly clear that among the challenges faced by society water resource management is extremely necessary. In this context, desalination based on renewable energy resources integrated with production systems that make use of the waste resulting from this process becomes a socio-environmentally indicated alternative to expand existing supply strategies and sustainable water use in isolated locations, and/or areas distant from large urban centers, thus addressing local potential and reducing environmental impacts. This study assesses the use of Photovoltaic Solar Power Plants (PSPPs), as well as of residues generated in a Brackish Water Reverse Osmosis System (BWRO), in productive units linked to fish and family farming. This is as an alternative way to reduce water vulnerability in the Brazilian semi-arid area (BS), adhering to climate change adaptation measures in the light of Brazilian public policies through the Freshwater Program (Programa Água Doce—PAD), which aims to promote access to good quality water to approximately 500 thousand people in the Brazilian semi-arid region. Full article