After many years of neglect, there is a renewed interest in agricultural mechanization in Africa. Since government initiatives to promote mechanization, e.g., by importing and subsidizing tractors, are confronted with major governance challenges, private-sector initiatives offer a promising...

Indian agriculture is dominated by smallholders. With an average holding size of just 1.08 hectares (ha) (in 2015-16), and 86 percent of holdings being of less than 2 ha in size, Indian agriculture transformed the country from functioning 'ship-to-mouth' during the mid-1960s to being a net...

This paper analyzes the current uptake of small-scale irrigation (SSI1), its profitability, and the constraints to its broader adoption in the Sahel using literature and survey data from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Senegal. Unlike most of the literature on irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa...

Carbon farming, particularly soil carbon climate strategies, has emerged as a popular tool in addressing climate change and variability in worldwide agriculture. Yet, there is a paucity of evidence on its application, and even more so, limited evidence exists on the welfare impacts in developing...

Competition for land is a key challenge for decarbonized energy transitions. Open-space solar energy farms are gaining in importance but have large land requirements and displace agricultural production. Agrivoltaics offers a compromise, integrating solar panels into existing farming operations....

Healthy land ecosystems are essential to sustainable development, including food security and improved livelihoods. Yet, their key services have usually been taken for granted and their true value underrated, leading to land degradation becoming a critical global problem. This pattern of...

Land degradation is a global problem affecting negatively the livelihoods and food security of billions of people, especially farmers and pastoralists in the developing countries. Eradicating extreme poverty without adequately addressing land degradation is highly unlikely. Given the importance...

This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of the specially designed packages of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions with 'student brigades' (student teams tasked with maintaining hygiene in school) on household WASH behavior and practices in both a household and farm...

Productivity of rangelands in Kenya is affected by increasing crop farming especially in more fertile range areas. Among the key factors driving the encroachment of crops on rangelands are the changing opportunities brought about by markets. We hypothesize that the existing market inefficiencies...

We investigated the impacts of piped water on water quality, sanitation, hygiene and health outcomes in marginalized rural households of north-western Bangladesh using a quasi-experimental analysis. A government organization - the Barindra Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) - established...