A national flour blending policy is about to be implemented in Kenya. This requires maize flour (the country’s main staple) to be blended with at least 10 percent of either one or a composite of traditional crops, such as sorghum and millet.1 The blending ratio is expected to increase gradually, with the goal of ultimately reaching 30 percent. The policy envisages achieving several goals. The first is to improve the nutritional quality of maize flour: sorghum and millet (and other candidate blending crops) have micronutrient characteristics that are absent in maize.

Evidence shows social protection can improve diets, but little is understood about how effects vary within a household or what factors determine how food is allocated across different household members. We use individual food intake data from two randomized control trials to estimate intrahousehold dietary impacts of cash or food transfers, with or without nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), in two regions of Bangladesh.

Maize is a staple food, but productivity has stagnated due to limited access to advanced farming methods and knowledge. To promote sustainable agriculture, understanding the factors affecting maize yield at the farm level is crucial. This study used panel data on maize yield and agronomic practices in Northern Ghana and Malawi from 2014 to 2020. Satellite-based environmental variables were extracted at household locations, and Random Forest modeling was used to identify factors influencing maize yield variability.

Throughout Africa, climate change is posing severe challenges to agricultural production and food security. Agricultural risks—particularly those associated with drought—are a major cause of low agricultural productivity in most African countries, including Kenya. According to the Government of Kenya, four consecutive years (2008–2011) of drought caused US$12.1 billion in losses, accounting for about 8 percent of GDP, including losses in assets and disruptions to the economy across sectors (Kenya, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries 2014).

Low- and middle-income countries worldwide share the common challenge of achieving sustainable economic development while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This challenge is complex due to the interconnectedness of economic activities, where policies targeting one industry can have ripple effects on others. Therefore, it is crucial to understand integrated GHG emissions and their relationships across industries within an economy to inform effective policy formulation.

This study focuses on the valuation of ecosystem services in Kenya and Vietnam, two countries that have received much attention from the international development community for their biodiversity significance, opportunities for scaling, climate and poverty challenges, and political will. Using The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) framework and the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), this study estimates per hectare values of ecosystem services in Kenya and Vietnam based on a systematic literature review of studies on the values of ecosystem services in both countries.

Agricultural activities in Guatemala constitute 32% of the total employment, but only one in every 10 individuals employed in these activities are women. This study examines cultural and economic barriers and opportunities for women’s participation in crop and livestock production systems. We used a qualitative approach involving focus groups with 15–20 women in eight communities in Chiquimula and Huehuetenango in 2022. The findings are consistent across locations.

Conservation agriculture (CONS A) is a sustainable agriculture system based on crop rotation with no tillage. It has various environmental advantages compared to conventional agriculture (CONV A): decreased water evaporation, erosion, and CO2 emissions. In this first study of its kind, we aim to evaluate the impact of this type of agriculture on sheep gastrointestinal parasites. Two lamb groups aged between 5 and 10 months were randomly included to graze separately on CONS A and CONV A pastures.

As the global population continues to grow, the urgency of addressing food sovereignty challenges becomes increasingly apparent. Bangladesh, being a densely populated country, encounters significant hurdles in livestock production sectors the high population density leads to a substantial demand for food, resulting in increased resource requirements. This study aimed to explore and analyse new pathways and practices to improve resource use efficiency of smallholder crop-livestock farms in northwest Bangladesh.

This paper documents the different steps followed to construct Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Balochistan for the year 2019-20. More precisely, it describes the estimation methods and the nature of the data used in developing the SAM at the subnational level. The Balochistan SAM includes 13 production activities, 4 factors of production, 4 household groups and rest of the world account, assessing linkages between production, factor income distribution, and households’ incomes and expenditures, and capturing distributional effects.

The adoption and use of climate-smart agricultural practices are critical for improving the productivity and sustainability of smallholder farming systems. However, the gendered dimensions of access to and use of climate-smart agriculture in common bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris L.) production remain unexplored among smallholder farmers in Burundi. A mixed methods research design was employed to investigate gender dynamics in common bean production among smallholder common bean farmers in the communes of Kirundo, Bwambarangwe, and Muyinga in Burundi.

Five to seven in every 10 people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are youths. They have significantly low employment rates but are unattracted to agriculture. Recently, the sector has witnessed considerable efforts by African governments to promote youth participation. While these efforts have started to bear fruits, salient gender issues remain hard to address and solve promptly.