THE CASE FOR COLLECTIVE ACTION IN SMALLHOLDER MARKETING Issues concerning farmers with small land holdings figure prominently in global discussions about poverty reduction, as the majority of the world’s poor belong to such households. Most of these households are linked to the market in one way or another. Thus, the opportunity for smallholders to raise their incomes from agricultural producti...

World agriculture will undergo far-reaching economic and physical change in the coming 50 years. Population increase, urbanization and income growth will drive the demand for food while high energy prices, stress on natural resources, and climate change may act to constrain supply. To feed the world’s growing population – projected to exceed 9 billion in 2050 (UN, 2009) – it will be necessary t...

Bangladesh is a densely populated agricultural country with an acute shortage of dairy milk. There are about 24.5 million cattle in Bangladesh, of which about 10 million are breeding cows. They provide mainly milk, meat, draught power, transport, and hide (an important export item). Dairying is practiced in Bangladesh as a part of local crop livestock farming systems, typically involving one or...

This paper develops a soil conservation model that is relevant to smallholder farmers who applylittle or no fertilizer. Empirical results drawn from northern Tanzania imply that, ignoringfertility mining problem in model specification leads to overestimation of profits for farms thatapply little or no fertilizer. The model also shows that, the impact of output price on soilc...

There are a number of situations in which it would be useful to be able to make at least first order approximations of the predicted economic, environmental, and societal impacts of policy or technology options in areas outside those where explicit experimental data exists. In section 2, we forecasted the utility of several levels of intensity of smallholder dairy operations at varying levels o...

Methods: In a random sample of 288 smallholder pig farms in Western Kenya, pigs were weighed (kg) and their lengths and girths were measured (cm). Prediction models were generated using 75% of the data and validated using the remaining 25%. Weight was regressed on length and girth using mixed model analysis after controlling for village as a random effect. Models were developed for pigs categor...

This paper reviews the key constraints limiting the practice of CA in tropical rainfed agroecologies. It examines evidence from research, and from widespread indigenous practice, that indicates that successful CA systems for tropical smallholders would benefit substantially from the integration of trees. It argues that Conservation Agriculture with Trees (CAWT) addresses a number of the critica...

Countering TB prodrug resistance The arsenal of antibiotics for treating tuberculosis (TB) contains many prodrugs, such as ethionamide, which need activation by normal metabolism to release their toxic effects. Ethionamide is potentiated by small molecules. Blondiaux et al. screened for more potent analogs and identified a lead compound called SMARt-420. This small molecule inactivates a TetR-l...

Introduction Kenya has one of the most successful dairy industries in sub-Saharan Africa based on some 3 million cattle of mostly high grade Bos taurus dairy breeds and a relatively advanced milk marketing infrastructure. The main breeds for dairy production are Friesian, Guernsey, Ayrshire and their crosses with the local East African Zebu (EAZ). The EAZ population is estimated at about 10 mil...