At FARMAF’s international policy workshop, held from 14–15 April 2015 in Lusaka, Zambia, the keynote address was delivered by Zambia’s Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, the Honourable Given Lubinda. The Minister began his speech by highlighting Zambia’s position as the “future grain basket for Southern and Eastern Africa regions”, acknowledging the country’s agricultural successes whilst remaining mindful of the challenges that still exist in the sector.
He drew attention to Africa’s largely untapped resources, and the continent’s “capacity to produce enough surplus food to feed the rest of the world”. His rallying cry to all African nations was to take up this challenge through public-private partnerships.
FARMAF held an international policy workshop from 14–15 April 2015 in Lusaka, Zambia. Over 100 participants shared best practices and discussed the development of sustainable farm risk management systems for African farmers, especially smallholder farmers.
Tools such as agricultural insurance and advanced marketing systems can help manage a range of farm risks, provide protection against severe negative shocks and optimise productivity. However, smallholders typically have limited access to these tools.
Nous étions choqués d'apprendre le décès soudain du président de la République de Zambie – Mr. Michael Sata. Au nom de l'équipe de FARMAF, nous tenons à exprimer nos sincères condoléances à la Commission, à la gestion et aux membres de l'Union National des agriculteurs en Zambie (ZNFU) qui se rejoignent à la famille du défunt et l'ensemble de la nation de la Zambie en deuil de sa mort. Nous prions que le peuple de Zambie sera consolé et aussi que la transition politique sera pacifique.
Le Président Michael Chilufya Sata fut élu président de la Zambie en Septembre 2011 en tant que leader du Front Patriotique. Il est mort à l'âge de 77 ans.
Blowing the seeds of innovationMany policy makers, business partners and researchers often think about innovations related to sustainable agriculture as the natural outcome of best practices and that scaling can be easily done once it becomes the responsibility of some manager or engineer. However, work done by researchers from Wageningen UR found that the scaling of innovations has tended to be an unpredictable, complex process, depending on the interactions between the 'DNA' of the innovation and the context within which it is taking place.
Click here to access the full brief "Blowing the seeds of innovation. How scaling unfolds in innovation processes toward food security and sustainable agriculture".
Researchers of LEI Wageningen UR, Wageningen University and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research have found that the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) replaces social capital of traders. Their findings will be published in the December issue ofFood Policy.
The study by Gerdien Meijerink, Prof Erwin Bulte and Dawit Alemu explores whether the creation of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) and its formal monitoring and enforcement institutions has affected social capital and trust in the Ethiopian segment of the sesame value chain. Consistent with a simple theoretical marketing model, the panel data suggest this is indeed the case.