Poor Kenyan farmers in rain-fed, risky environments are reluctant to adopt new technologies with potential production gain because of enormous downside risks.

Risk implications of farm technology adoption vary by technology type. If properly implemented, the safety net program and the weather insurance programs currently piloted in some parts of Ethiopia are actions that could hedge against downside risk.

"The contribution of sustainable agriculture and land management to sustainable development" - This brief discusses the potential for sustainable agriculture to contribute towards sustainable development with a particular focus on developing countries. It briefly describes different sustainable agricultural practices and the extent of their adoption, identifies constraints to their further adoption, and presents some actions and policy options that could accelerate the widespread adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.

In developing countries, production and consumption risks play a critical role in the choice and use of production inputs and adoption of new farm technologies. The authors investigated impacts of chemical fertilizer and soil and water conservation technologies adoption on production risks, using a moment-based approach and two years of cross-sectional data.

Production risks, gender, security of land tenure and regional factors are critical in adoption of farm technologies

This study identifies the major methods used by farmers to adapt to climate change in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia, the factors that affect their choice of method, and the barriers to adaptation.

Organic agriculture (OA) is a concrete and promising strategy for adaptation to climate change and variability for rural communities has additional potential as a mitigation strategy.

OA is a sustainable livelihood strategy with decades of use in several climate zones and widely variable local conditions. Its financial requirements for adaptation or mitigation are low. Further research is needed on yields from OA and its mitigation and sequestration potential. Other critical aspects to consider are information provision and institutional structures.

In this paper, we study the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia in order to see how it has affected households’ investment and disinvestment in productive assets. The PSNP is the largest currently operating social protection program in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa, and its impacts and effectiveness are therefore important both in their own right and because they have implications for similar but smaller programs elsewhere.

Poor farmers need sustainable agriculture that relies on renewable local resources, such as conservation tillage and compost. This study looked at factors influencing decisions to adopt these two practices, using multinomial logit analysis of plot and household characteristics.

The authors investigated the impact of soil and water conservation (SWC) investment on farm productivity in Kenya. They focused on plots with and without SWC, testing whether increased SWC is beneficial for yield and affects input levels, input returns, and crop characteristics.