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From Farm to Phone to Table: A Case Study Series Explores the Impact of Digital Tools on Agriculture
Over the past decade, the use of mobile phones and other digital tools in farming has skyrocketed. Today, more than 60 percent of the population in the developing world now have at least one mobile phone. USAID aims to show that digital tools can improve cost-effectiveness and development outcomes in food security and nutrition programs. Cristina Manfre and Christopher Burns explain a USAID case study series on different approaches.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Cash, Trees, Honey and Bees: Enticing Ethiopia’s Farmers Toward Eco-Stewardship
In Ethiopia, use of herbicides as well as loss of habitat are causing a reduction in the local pollinator population, not unlike the global trend of pollinator decline that is threatening food security around the world. Julia Entwistle, a graduate student at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, details her summer internship with an organization trying to balance the interests of nature and farmers through profits.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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“Recovery lending” helps disaster-stricken African farmers get back on track
Accessing credit has long been a major hurdle for small-scale farmers in Africa, who produce some 70 percent of the continent’s food. Not only does this mean yields fall far below their full potential, but the ability of farmers to manage the increasingly frequent and severe weather shocks brought about by climate change is also greatly reduced.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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To Feed the World, Improve Photosynthesis
By reworking the basic metabolism of crops, plant scientists hope to forestall devastating food shortages.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Technology
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#SDG1: Mars leads push to lift 500 million farmers from extreme poverty
The food giant is working with Oxfam on a new collaborative research platform to tackle the endemic poverty that permeates FMCG supply chains.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Mars launches Farmer Income Lab to help eradicate smallholder poverty
The Farmer Income Lab will commission research and generate discussion to develop measurable frameworks and new business models to significantly reduce farmer poverty.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Field of View: How a Chilli Cash Crop Helps Subsistence Farmers Shape Their Future
During a three-year process designed to assess the impact of growing a chilli cash crop on small farmers living in southern Africa, it was discovered that when a family earned just $500 more of net income per year, the money materially impacted at least two categories of their basic human needs. But the most profound impact, writes Tanner Methvin, was that of self-determination.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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From Beehive Fences to Coconut Bombs: 10 Non-Chemical Pest-Control Innovations for the Global South
Farm-raiding elephants and malarial mosquitoes are among the pests that plague the Global South. But farmers there also contend with pests that are all too familiar on farms anywhere in the world: harvest-munching rats and mice, for example. Rob Goodier at Engineering for Change lists 10 non-chemical pest-control solutions designed for any place resources are constrained.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise, Technology
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