This book describes how farmers and rural people in the southern Caucasus maintain biodiversity and apply the ecosystem approach in their daily lives and agricultural practices. These practices contribute to their food security and livelihoods while also maintaining local genetic resources.This book does not claim to offer a definitive prescription...

In the light of the future challenges for agriculture and rural areas, what should be the objectives of the rural development policy after 2013? - To reach comparable conditions of all EU farmers starting with equalizing the level of direct payments without transfer period and level of national payments. Also taken...

Organic farming (OF) and organic food production have more than 20 years of tradition in the Czech Republic. The longest established organic farms have proven that this precisely-defined agricultural system is viable without any need for synthetic pesticides, fertilizer or other intensification methods. The main driving forces in the development...

The Danish Network Unit for Rural Development opened, with a press release from the Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries on the 10th of May 2010, a public debate in Denmark on the European Rural Development Policy after 2013. The deadline for submission of contributions to the debate was the...

Agriculture remains an important means of alleviating poverty, but shortage of finance can constrain its development. At the same time, agriculture is evolving towards a global system requiring high-quality, comptetitive products, and is organized in value chains which often exclude smallholders. Value chain financing in agriculture offers an opportunity to...

The Estonian Ministry of Agriculture (Managing Authority) started discussions on the CAP future with economic and social partners in 2009. Discussions have been organized in cooperation with Estonian Rural Network Unit. The representative organizations participating in the ERDP 2007–2013 Monitoring Committee, members of the Rural Network Cooperation Chamber and Leader...

Of help for the farm in its tending towards the openness for the general public, leisure time activities and agro-tourism was the Rural Development Programme, Axis IV Leader. At the end of 2010, the project application was submitted under the Call of the LAG Říčansko o.p.s. and passed stringent evaluation...

The members of the monitoring committee of the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland, strategy group for rural development, working group on agri-environment payments, working group on animal welfare payments and guidance group on rural network and it's working groups and the local action groups were asked to state their...

A retrospective cross-sectional study of mortality was conducted on smallholder dairy farms in 2 separate regions (Iringa and Tanga) of Tanzania during the period of January to April 1999. A total of 1789 cattle from 400 randomly sampled smallholder dairy farms (200 each from Iringa and Tanga regions) were included...

Crop production in smallholder farming systems of Zimbabwe is limited by low inherent soil fertility, particularly N and P and available soil moisture. One of the major agricultural challenges in developing countries is the development of technologies that are able to sustain soil fertility and conserve soil and moisture. The...

Producer organisations are widely heralded as leading contributors to poverty reduction and the achievement of food security. Following the withdrawal of state support as part of measures for liberalization, producer organizations in Africa have been in a process of transition, attempting to define appropriate strategies in a competitive open market...

La revista ALASRU, Análisis Latinoamericano del Medio Rural, es editada y publicada por la Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología Rural (ALASRU). Este número incluye los artículos: Hacia el VIII Congreso de ALASRU, "Acercamiento a los proyectos en disputa”. A sociologia rural na América Latina: produção de conhecimento e compromisso com a sociedade. Globalização e...

Ce document synthétise la vingtaine de contributions reçues. Elle n'engage pas les services de l'état, ni l'intégralité des membres du réseau rural. La dizaine de contributions parvenue a mobilisé une vingtaine d’acteurs principalement régionaux (3 réseaux régionaux, 2 organismes consulaires, collectivités territoriales, acteurs divers,...). La synthèse de ces contributions a...

Most Africans depend on small-scale farming systems as the primary source of their livelihoods. Yet they are marginalized and often do not produce enough to enable their families to have sufficient food to eat throughout the year. Smallholder farmers are also particularly vulnerable to climatic and economic shocks. Despite these...

Sheep farming is practiced throughout Iceland, although it is most common in sparsely settled areas. About 2,000 farmers are engaged in sheep farming. Icelandic sheep are short-tailed and belong to a breed formerly common in north western Europe, but now only to be found in very few areas of the...

In preparation for COP10 of CBD, ICSF compiled all articles from Samudra Report on MPAs and highlight the problems with top-down planning and implementation of MPAs, while drawing attention to positive examples of community-led initiatives in conservation and management. This dossier is a compilation of all articles on marine protected...

 This paper uses an innovative household level database to ask two basic questions related to the well-known issue of income underreporting in household surveys in developing countries: (a) The extent of this underreporting in practice, and (b) whether and how it varies systematically with respondent, household, income, and survey design...

Demographic trends point to more young people in the African population than ever before – approximately 70 percent of Africa’s 1 billion people is under the age of 30. Across the continent many young people are reportedly choosing not to pursue livelihoods in agriculture, especially as farmers. If this is...

The diversification of the social and productive activities is what usually happens in the Brazilian household agriculture. The agricultural production processing and the agro  industrial product insertion in the markets are manners of this diversification. This paper had as main objective to describe the relations that constitute the social networking...

A young female farmer in Lithuania benefited from EAFRD business start-up support to establish a modern, profitable farm. The support helped her to plan her business more effectively and enabled her to buy new equipment to make her farm efficient and competitive.