Rice is the daily staple food of 3.5 billion people in the world. Vietnam, providing around 16% of the world’s milled rice exports, is the fifth-largest rice producer. Despite the role of rice in Vietnam’s economy, food security, and local livelihoods, rice farmers in Mekong Delta, Vietnam are now amongst the most vulnerable groups affected by the negative impacts of climate change and will be unstainable rice production. Using the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP), consists of 12 sustainability impact indicators, linked to SDGs, as the best practices case to help rice farmers produce sustainable rice production. This study provides empirical evidence on the benefits of SRP adoption and explore factors affecting SRP uptake. Surveys and FGDs were applied to collect data from 243 rice-farmers in Dong Thap province. T-test and logistic regression were applied to analyse data. Results show that farmers have positively experienced SRP adoption and farmers achieved benefits from SRP adoption such as reduced input cost and increased income. Regression showed that socioeconomic, cognitive, and farm techniques factors strongly affected farmers’ adoption of SRP. Therefore, to scale up farmers’ SRP adoption training and technical assistance, socioeconomic constraints (e.g. water use) are required. Policymakers, planners, and private actors, particularly farmers’ behaviour need to consider the factors that affecting them adopting SRP. Finally, this study highlights the potential of SRP to promote environmentally sustainable rice production and improve farmers’ resilience to climate change.
Tag: agricultural practices
Farmer perceptions of fungal spoilage and mycotoxin contamination in East and West Africa
This study investigates farmers’ perceptions, awareness, and management practices related to fungal spoilage and mycotoxin contamination in smallholder farming systems across six countries in East and West Africa: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Based on a survey of 531 farmers, the research examines the extent of post-harvest losses, knowledge of food safety risks, and the adoption of grain storage technologies. Nearly half of the respondents reported losses caused by mould contamination, with higher prevalence observed in East Africa than in West Africa. Although most farmers avoided consuming visibly mouldy grains, a substantial proportion continued to do so, and the majority were unaware of the health risks associated with moulds and mycotoxins. Knowledge gaps were widespread, particularly regarding mycotoxins and safe grain moisture levels for storage. While storage technologies such as hermetic bags, hessian bags, and polypropylene sacks were commonly used, many farmers perceived them as only moderately effective. Statistical analyses revealed significant regional differences, with East African farmers generally demonstrating greater awareness of mycotoxin risks and safer storage practices. Gender, age, and access to technical information were important determinants of awareness, with women, older farmers, and those receiving technical support exhibiting higher knowledge levels. The findings highlight the need for targeted training, improved extension services, and wider dissemination of effective post-harvest technologies to reduce food losses, protect health, and strengthen food security across African smallholder farming systems.
A bottom-up approach to estimating emissions from food systems: Using Biennial Transparency Reports for fine- grained, country-level estimations
Estimating greenhouse gas emissions from food systems remains a major challenge due to the lack of harmonized, sector-specific data that capture their cross-cutting nature. Food systems span all economic sectors along which national GHG inventories are usually structured: energy, industry, agriculture, land use and waste. However, national inventories are not fine-grained enough to disaggregate the share of food in those emissions, obscuring their full contribution and hindering integrated mitigation planning. Reliable, up-to-date country-level data are scarce, and global databases rely heavily on top-down estimates and outdated assumptions.
To address this gap, we introduce a model estimating food system emissions (FSE) in Common Reporting Tables (CRT). The FSE-CRT model is a straightforward, transparent and bottom-up approach that draws exclusively on official national data, as reported by countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through their Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) and CRTs. It offers a credible alternative to global datasets that is grounded in nationally generated data that countries can control and validate (data sovereignty), and aligned with their priorities for food security and self-determined reporting.
Based on the first 83 CRTs available as of mid-2025, the FSE-CRT model estimates FSE at 10.6 GtCO₂eq, matching the FAOSTAT estimate of 10.3 GtCO₂eq for the same 83 countries. When extrapolated to all countries, this corresponds to 16.8 GtCO₂eq, very close to the global estimate of 17 GtCO₂eq reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC: Babiker et al. 2022). The FSE-CRT model thus provides a realistic and replicable framework to validate and refine global FSE estimates, while enabling consistent, country- driven assessments for policy and planning.
Environmental factors are an important part of farmers’ assessments of the value of agroecology
The need for transformation of food and agriculture systems to be aligned with sustainable development goals is widely acknowledged. Evidence from many parts of the world shows that agroecology, which considers the social and environmental performance of agricultural systems along with economic aspects, is helping farmers transition to sustainable agricultural systems. However, there are demands from national, regional and international food and agriculture planners and funders for evidence that agroecology can work at scale. Providing that evidence requires understanding how farmers use environmental factors when selecting agricultural practices, which is poorly documented. This study contributes to filling this gap by reporting how environmental factors are important in farmers’ decisions related to adopting agroecological practices. Qualitative and quantitative data from 239 key informants, a survey of 5025 farms, 85 focus group discussions with farmers and five participatory cross-benefit analyses in eleven case studies across eight African countries were used. We show that farmers use information on and perceptions of a wide range of environmental variables and processes when assessing the usefulness of agroecological practices. In most cases, farmers cited environmental factors more frequently than economic reasons for choosing to use agroecological practices. Most of the environmental factors articulated by farmers were components of the local or farm environment that were connected to their livelihood, including aspects of soils, water, microclimate, pests and diseases, other animals, and vegetation. Intrinsic and relational environmental values such as conservation of biodiversity, long-term maintenance of land quality and aesthetics were also important. These findings show first that providing data on environmental roles of agroecology will always be challenging because of the breadth of factors that are important. Secondly, viability or usefulness of an agroecological practice is not a characteristic of the practice alone, but also of the context in which it is used. Third, impact analyses of agroecological interventions cannot be confined to consideration of a few globally comparative indicators but need to include the context specific environmental factors that farmers care about.
Learning from agrarian dynamics to tailor community-led forest restoration in the Tshopo province, Democratic Republic of the Congo
The strategies and efficacy of forest restoration initiatives in Central Africa are poorly documented. To this end, we examined the usefulness of a holistic methodology (combining agricultural diagnosis with forestry measurement) to explain the results of a forest restoration project in Tshopo Province in the DRC. To do this, an initial analysis based on the agrarian diagnostic structure was carried out and linked to project monitoring data – interviews with all beneficiaries who had planted trees (n=89) and measurements in their fields (planting sites, species planted and mortality rates 12 months after planting). The study shows that the uptake and results of the forest restoration initiative can be largely explained by the diversity of farming systems. Finally, our diagnostic method offers interesting rationales for forest restoration interventions in Central Africa, in order to adapt project objectives to the local context and diversity of farming systems, and ultimately to improve project performance.
Understanding gender dimensions of agriculture and climate change in smallholder farming communities
In Uganda, Ghana and Bangladesh, participatory tools were used for a socio-economic and gender analysis of three topics: climate-smart agriculture (CSA), climate analogue approaches, and climate and weather forecasting. Policy and programme-relevant results were obtained. Smallholders are changing agricultural practices due to observations of climatic and environmental change. Women appear to be less adaptive because of financial or resource constraints, because of male domination in receiving information and extension services and because available adaptation strategies tend to create higher labour loads for women. The climate analogue approach (identifying places resembling your future climate so as to identify potential adaptations) is a promising tool for increasing farmer-to-farmer learning, where a high degree of climatic variability means that analogue villages that have successfully adopted new CSA practices exist nearby. Institutional issues related to forecast production limit their credibility and salience, particularly in terms of women’s ability to access and understand them. The participatory tools used in this study provided some insights into women’s adaptive capacity in the villages studied, but not to the depth necessary to address women’s specific vulnerabilities in CSA programmes. Further research is necessary to move the discourse related to gender and climate change beyond the conceptualization of women as a homogenously vulnerable group in CSA programmes
Assessing research impact on poverty: the importance of farmers’ perspectives
In this paper we provide evidence to show that farmers’ perspectives on poverty processes and outcomes are critical in the early stages of evaluating impact of agricultural research on poverty. We summarize lessons learned from farmer impact assessment workshops held in five African locations, covering three agro-ecological zones and five different agroforestry and livestock technologies arising from collaborative national–international agricultural research. Poverty alleviation is a process that needs to be understood before impact can be measured. Workshops such as those we describe can help researchers to identify farmers’ different ways of managing and using a technology and likely effects, unanticipated impacts, major impacts to pursue in more quantitative studies, the primary links between agricultural technology and poverty, and key conditioning factors affecting adoption and impact that can be used to stratify samples in more formal analyses. Farmer workshops inform other qualitative and quantitative impact assessment methods. We discuss the linkage of farmer-derived information with GIS-based approaches that allow more complete specification of recommendation domains and broader-scale measurement of impact.
Looking back to look ahead: insight into the effectiveness and efficiency of selected advisory approaches in the dissemination of agricultural technologies indicative of Conservation Agriculture with Trees in Machakos County, Kenya
Sub-Saharan Africa is facing a challenge of low agricultural productivity, which threatens the ability to achieve food security for the continent’s growing population. The low productivity has been attributed to a number of factors including climate variability and low soil fertility. Agricultural practices such as Evergreen Agriculture show promise in improving soil fertility and production in a sustainable way. One form of Evergreen Agriculture is Conservation Agriculture with Trees (CAWT), which combines the principles of Conservation Agriculture with tree-crop intercropping. The promotion of complex agricultural practices such as CAWT requires agricultural advisory approaches that are both effective and efficient. Effective in their ability to increase diversity of crop enterprises, productivity of staple crops and adoption of promoted relevant practices. Advisory approaches are also considered effective if they provide useful information and build social networks in the community. The approaches also need to be efficient, that is, be able to mobilize the community and provide training in a costand- time appropriate fashion.
Agricultural intensification, deforestation and the environment: assessing tradeoffs in Sumatra, Indonesia
The conditions necessary for increased productivity of agroforestry and other land uses to jointly reduce poverty and deforestation are not well understood. The global Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme was founded to provide scientific insights and workable innovations for the simultaneous pursuit of precisely these two goals: poverty reduction and rain forest conservation in the tropics. This chapter summarizes results from study sites on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, which were chosen to represent the lowland humid tropical forest zone in Asia for the global ASB project.