News - A new training manual launched today provides practical guidance for agricultural mechanization entrepreneurs in rural areas, where family farmers commonly lack capital to invest in the farm power required to increase food production especially in Africa.  The five-module training manual targeted at farm mechanization service providers, including youth and women, was developed by researchers and experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).  It sets out a syllabus which trainers can tailor to local environments to equip entrepreneurs with essential business skills and knowledge to promote appropriate mechanization farmers...

News - More and more farmers in some of the poorest areas of southern and central Kenya are working their land and selling their produce as a group, based on agreements with buyers. This way of farming gives poor farmers more negotiating and market power, and helps them better plan what and how much to grow. They also have a clear idea of their produce’s price and best time to sell it. Since 2015, some 15,000 farmers have been joining forces to form groups and practice collective marketing. Each group has 15-30 farmers, and a few farmers’ groups constitute a community-based organization (CBO), which...

News - Agriculture plays a pivotal role in the lives of most Kenyans with close to 70 percent of the population – mainly women – relying on it. Yet Kenya’s agricultural potential has been low with productivity reported to be on a gradual decline, affecting families, particularly in the rural areas. Arid and semi-arid areas make up 80 percent of Kenya’s territory, yet their agricultural potential has not been fully utilised.  FAO and the European Union are supporting small-scale women farmers to grow more food and earn more from their crops by adopting conservation agriculture (CA), and linking the farmers to the markets. Conservation agriculture: what is it...

News - Munggah aq Amaq Genap, a 58-year-old farmer from Sekaroh Village in Indonesia, looks serious but content. He has the build of someone who has been a farmer for all his life. Amaq planted corn once a year. If there was rain, his harvest was good. If there wasn’t, his harvest was poor. But with the changes in climate, he was finding that he could hardly grow enough maize to meet his family’s needs. In the last years, climate change has been affecting when the rains come and how much there is. Temperature norms are changing, sea levels are rising and extreme...

News - The Second Africa Congress on Conservation Agriculture will be held on 9-12 October 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa.   The aim of 2ACCA is to bring together expert knowledge, information, and insights from practitioners from across different sectors and interests groups at all levels of agriculture development in the public, private and civil sectors. This diversity of knowledge and stakeholders is essential: to enable the desired multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral development of CA as a core production component of climate-smart agriculture; and for the sustained mobilization of policy, institutional and community support to accelerate the widespread adoption and management of CA as a core element...