Climate justice conference report published
The Hunger, Nutrition and Climate Justice Conference held in Dublin mid-April 2013 promised to be different. And as the conference’s newly published report shows, the meeting lived up to this expectation. The main objective of the 2-day gathering on 15 and 16 April was to lead the way in ensuring that future international policy processes [...]
Biofuels venture connects cities to farms in Mozambique
Applying agroforestry solutions to environmental, social and economic problems offers commercial opportunities in developing countries around the globe. This is what Sagun Saxena, Managing Partner of CleanStar Ventures, told the audience during the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) side event “The IFAD-ICRAF Biofuel Program.” CleanStar’s venture, CleanStar Mozambique, is working proof that it’s possible to increase [...]
Adaptation and mitigation: two lenses for sustainable agriculture
While food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation are arguably the greatest challenges faced by humanity today, that doesn’t mean they need to be tackled separately. “We see tremendous potential for climate change to be a transformative issue in agriculture, to take us where we actually needed to be anyway,” said Edwyn Grainger-Jones, Director of [...]
Ecosystem-based adaptation: a buffer for pastoralists?
Payment for ecosystem services buffers pastoralist households from fluctuating income caused by the effects of a changing climate, say Osano et al in a paper published in International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management. Depending on land use restrictions, payment for ecosystem services can also generate other synergies or trade-offs. Pastoralists have indigenous ways [...]
Rising demand for herbal medicine can drive medicinal tree cultivation
With a rising demand for herbal medicinal and increasing pressure on wild populations, on-farm cultivation makes sense, but are traders willing to source from farms? A new study published in the scientific journal, Forests Trees and Livelihoods, concludes that formalization of the market in Kenya – through better hygiene, packaging and labelling of materials – [...]
Five priority underutilised trees identified for domestication in West Java
Manglietia glauca, Parkia speciosa, Durio zibethinus, Gmelina arborea and Sandoricum koetjape have been identified as the top five underutilised species proritised for a participatory tree domestication programme for smallholders in West Java. This is according to a journal article by Narendra et al, published in Small-scale Forestry, which also states that these species are promising components [...]
There’s more in a rubber-tree agroforest than just rubber
Agroforests of rubber and other trees, which are not intensively managed, provide plentiful benefits to local people living on the margins of forests, says Elis Hayati In Jambi province, Sumatra, Indonesia, agroforests are the main sources of food, firewood and countless other benefits. They are complex systems that involve low-intensity management, allowing many [...]
Differentiated strategies key to uptake of collective action interventions in Cameroon?
Promoters of collective action initiatives need to adopt differentiated strategies to enhance its adoption by smallholder Kola farmers in Cameroon, say Gyau et al in an article published in the Journal of Agricultural Science. This is because research into producers’ perception of collective action initiatives showed that there two main groups of Kola farmers: one [...]
Agroforests protect watersheds
Agroforests can help preserve watersheds but land use must be carefully managed to avoid altering drainage areas and potentially causing environmental and human damage, says Elis Hayati A study by researchers from the World Agroforestry Centre conducted at the Bialo watershed in South Sulawesi province, Indonesia, has found that it remained ecologically healthy for [...]
Re-thinking journal impact factors as a measure of scientists’ performance
For scientists, numbers can mean everything. In agroforestry research for development, the number of farmers implementing new agroforestry technologies is important, as are the number of hectares under tree-based systems and the number of tons of product they produce or carbon dioxide they sequester. But it is the number of publications which appear in high [...]
Farmers aren’t getting the message
Government agroforestry advisory services are not getting through to farmers effectively, says Elis Nurhayati Farmers in Sulawesi, Indonesia, are not getting the advice they need about agroforestry from Government advisory services, according to a new study by Enggar Paramita, Endri Martini and James M. Roshetko of the World Agroforestry Centre, presented at the National [...]
Slideshare Presentations
- Agriculture Extension and Advisory Services under the New Normal of Climate Change June 13, 2013
- Latest Advances in Coffea Genomics June 13, 2013
- Discovering and networking research expertise at ICRAF with VIVO: A consultation June 13, 2013
- Sustainable development of alternative biofuel crops June 7, 2013
- CleanStar Mozambique: A commercial case study of sustainable food and biofuel production with smallholder farmers June 7, 2013