Microloans make farming profitable for Kenyan smallholders
This article was originally published on SciDev.Net This article is supported by the CASA programme. For 40-year-old Beatrice Mulwale, a smallholder farmer from western Kenya, poor yields and low income had been par for the course for most of her farming life.
More than advice: farmers say paid-for extension must provide a “bundle of services”
Agricultural advisory services are a critical factor to promoting agricultural development, and investments in extension services are potentially important tools for improving agricultural productivity and increasing farmers’ incomes, two desirable outcomes of food security and poverty reduction articulated in MDGs and SDGs.
Farmers helping farmers to solve crop problems in Nepal
A farmer has to organize a thousand things before getting the final returns from the crop they planted. Choosing the right season and variety of crop, managing the labour forces during the critical crop periods, water management or waiting for rainfall, crop nutrient management, harvesting the crops, managing the post-harvest losses, and then finally selling…
Test your plant health knowledge
>> Latest quiz just added Plantwise plant doctors are at the heart of our plant clinic network providing advice and information to farmers, logging their data for the Plantwise Knowledge Bank, and always adapting to new outbreaks and technologies. Think you’ve got what it takes to be a plant doctor? Take our online plant health…
Plantwise and Syngenta Foundation India train rural youth to be agri-entrepreneurs
In August this year, Plantwise signed a partnership statement with Syngenta Foundation India (SFI) to collaborate on their flagship programme, Agri-Entrepreneur Enterprise. Under the programme, mentors who support agri-entrepreneurs – known as AEs – in achieving a sustainable enterprise form a fundamental part in capacity building. Plantwise and SFI collaborated on training the mentors who…
Improving water storage capacity in low-quality soils in sub-Saharan Africa
A recent study published by an international team of researchers has demonstrated how the use of novel water storage technology can improve soil conditions and promote crop production in low-quality sandy soil areas.
Update: New Pest & Disease Records (12 November 2019)
We’ve selected a few of the latest new geographic, host and species records for plant pests and diseases from CAB Abstracts. Records this month include reports on a species of aphid new to the Netherlands, the first records of Diaporthe gulyae, D. phaseolorum and D. eres in Russia and reports of a new defoliator species, Nematus…
Submit your plant health, agriculture or bioscience papers!
As many of our readers may be aware, the United Nations have declared 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health. CABI is pleased to announce that to promote a global conversation about plant health and the future of sustainable agriculture, we are organising a conference in collaboration with Koppert Biological Systems and Wageningen University…
Personalised plant health advice from sowing to harvesting at plant clinics in India
It has been proven that access to extension services is one of the key pathways to enhancing technology uptake, promoting innovations, and improving production among smallholder farmers. These studies have pointed out the very high rates of return (13-500%) of extension as an economically viable way to increase productivity and income. In fact, the same…
Soil microbiome linked to disease resistance in crops
A recent study has unearthed the mystery of how plant disease resistance is linked to the soil microbiome. This new area of research will open up new possibilities for a more sustainable food production system and help combat global food security threats.