Review Paper on ‘Garden Kits’ in Africa

Review Paper on ‘Garden Kits’ in Africa PDF Author: Douglas J. Merrey
Publisher: IWMI
ISBN: 9290908122
Category : Water conservation
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the available knowledge and lessons learned from past experiences in promoting kitchen or home gardens for food production, with a special emphasis on water management. The benefits of home gardens for better family nutrition, health status of children and mothers, and as an entry point for empowering women have been documented in some studies. However, there is very little specific evidence to confirm these benefits. The paper also reviews some of the water management practices and garden technologies used in home and market gardens. It recommends building on current home gardening practices, starting with diagnostic appraisals of actual gardening practices, and moving on to participatory action research focused on evaluating promising water management technologies and testing implementation of strategies that empower women.

Review Paper on ‘Garden Kits’ in Africa

Review Paper on ‘Garden Kits’ in Africa PDF Author: Douglas J. Merrey
Publisher: IWMI
ISBN: 9290908122
Category : Water conservation
Languages : en
Pages : 64

Get Book Here

Book Description
The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the available knowledge and lessons learned from past experiences in promoting kitchen or home gardens for food production, with a special emphasis on water management. The benefits of home gardens for better family nutrition, health status of children and mothers, and as an entry point for empowering women have been documented in some studies. However, there is very little specific evidence to confirm these benefits. The paper also reviews some of the water management practices and garden technologies used in home and market gardens. It recommends building on current home gardening practices, starting with diagnostic appraisals of actual gardening practices, and moving on to participatory action research focused on evaluating promising water management technologies and testing implementation of strategies that empower women.

Baseline review and ecosystem services assessment of the Tana River Basin, Kenya

Baseline review and ecosystem services assessment of the Tana River Basin, Kenya PDF Author: Baker, Tracy
Publisher: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
ISBN: 9290908300
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
The ‘WISE-UP to climate’ project aims to demonstrate the value of natural infrastructure as a ‘nature-based solution’ for climate change adaptation and sustainable development. Within the Tana River Basin, both natural and built infrastructure provide livelihood benefits for people. Understanding the interrelationships between the two types of infrastructure is a prerequisite for sustainable water resources development and management. This is particularly true as pressures on water resources intensify and the impacts of climate change increase. This report provides an overview of the biophysical characteristics, ecosystem services and links to livelihoods within the basin.

Review of Hydro-economic Models to Address River Basin Management Problems: Structure, Applications and Research Gaps

Review of Hydro-economic Models to Address River Basin Management Problems: Structure, Applications and Research Gaps PDF Author: Maksud Bekchanov
Publisher: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
ISBN: 9290908262
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description


Women and small-scale irrigation: A review of the factors influencing gendered patterns of participation and benefits

Women and small-scale irrigation: A review of the factors influencing gendered patterns of participation and benefits PDF Author: Bryan, Elizabeth
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
Small-scale irrigation is expanding rapidly in parts of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, offering smallholder farmers an opportunity to improve their livelihoods, diets, and resilience to climate change among other benefits. Growing research focuses on the potential for small-scale irrigation to offer a pathway for women’s empowerment, yet the factors conditioning the relationship between small-scale irrigation and women’s empowerment are not well understood. The evidence tends to be scattered across context-specific case studies that focus on targeted outcomes, without distinguishing between technology types, scales, or approaches to irrigation systems or technologies. This paper synthesizes the issues related to gender and small-scale irrigation using a conceptual framework that highlights the linkages between elements of women’s empowerment and small-scale irrigation. Because gendered dynamics with small-scale irrigation play out differently depending on the scale of irrigation and the technologies used, this paper applies the framework to examine case studies across a typology of small-scale irrigation systems. The case studies cover a range of farming and livelihood systems in which women’s roles and gender relations vary, highlighting the importance of the opportunity structure or context in which irrigation takes place. This paper then draws lessons on the various ways in which small-scale irrigation, gender relations, and women’s empowerment interact and highlights areas where research gaps remain.

Characteristics of Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture in West Africa

Characteristics of Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture in West Africa PDF Author: Imogen Bellwood-Howard
Publisher: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
ISBN: 9290908211
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
The report summarizes key results from surveys carried out on urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) in Tamale (Ghana) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) in 2013. The aim was to provide a broad overview of the state of UPA in the study cities and a basis for future research endeavors. The randomized sampling approach used aerial photography to identify 10 sites in different categories of farm in each city. Farmers provided information on their cropping and livestock-rearing activities. There were similarities between the cities, but the differences in the expression of UPA in Tamale and Ouagadougou were more intriguing, as in farm sizes, crops grown and livestock ownership. Farmers were particularly concerned about diminishing access to land in Tamale, where sales by chiefs to private investors were accelerating. In Ouagadougou, formal reallocation of land to homeowners by the state had similarly decreased available farmland. Water availability was a universal concern, and the quality of water used for irrigation was potentially more questionable in Ouagadougou than in Tamale. The results point to the need for further work on uncontaminated, perennial water sources and soil fertility management, alongside focuses on commercialization of animal production, and the legal, political and institutional context of UPA in different West African cities.

Multiple uses of small reservoirs in crop-livestock agro-ecosystems of the Volta River Basin with an emphasis on livestock management

Multiple uses of small reservoirs in crop-livestock agro-ecosystems of the Volta River Basin with an emphasis on livestock management PDF Author: Ayantunde, A. A.
Publisher: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
ISBN: 9290908459
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description


An Assessment of Integrated Watershed Management in Ethiopia

An Assessment of Integrated Watershed Management in Ethiopia PDF Author: Gebregziabher, Gebrehaweria
Publisher: International Water Management Institute (IWMI).
ISBN: 9290908440
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Sustainable participatory watershed management is an approach promoted by the Ethiopian government to restore natural resources and agricultural productivity across the country. This comparative study between six watershed programs shows that this approach increases farmers’ food security and incomes (around 50% on average), as well as their resilience to drought and other climate shocks. However, the study also confirms that the nature and scale of impact can vary significantly between watershed programs. The success of watershed management depends on multiple factors from the hydrological profile of the watershed to the local social and economic environment. Tailoring watershed interventions to the local context, associating conservation and livelihoods activities, and providing further financial and technical support to watershed committees are among the recommendations of this paper.

Drip Irrigation for Agriculture

Drip Irrigation for Agriculture PDF Author: Jean-Philippe Venot
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134989822
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Initially associated with hi-tech irrigated agriculture, drip irrigation is now being used by a much wider range of farmers in emerging and developing countries. This book documents the enthusiasm, spread and use of drip irrigation systems by smallholders but also some disappointments and disillusion faced in the global South. It explores and explains under which conditions it works, for whom and with what effects. The book deals with drip irrigation 'behind the scenes', showcasing what largely remain 'untold stories'. Most research on drip irrigation use plot-level studies to demonstrate the technology’s ability to save water or improve efficiencies and use a narrow and rather prescriptive engineering or economic language. They tend to be grounded in a firm belief in the technology and focus on the identification of ways to improve or better realize its potential. The technology also figures prominently in poverty alleviation or agricultural modernization narratives, figuring as a tool to help smallholders become more innovative, entrepreneurial and business minded. Instead of focusing on its potential, this book looks at drip irrigation-in-use, making sense of what it does from the perspectives of the farmers who use it, and of the development workers and agencies, policymakers, private companies, local craftsmen, engineers, extension agents or researchers who engage with it for a diversity of reasons and to realize a multiplicity of objectives. While anchored in a sound engineering understanding of the design and operating principles of the technology, the book extends the analysis beyond engineering and hydraulics to understand drip irrigation as a sociotechnical phenomenon that not only changes the way water is supplied to crops but also transforms agricultural farming systems and even how society is organized. The book provides field evidence from a diversity of interdisciplinary case studies in sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America, and South Asia, thus revealing some of the untold stories of drip irrigation.

Consumer Perceptions of Fruit and Vegetable Quality

Consumer Perceptions of Fruit and Vegetable Quality PDF Author: Keraita, B.
Publisher: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
ISBN: 929090822X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
With increasing change of traditional diets, and the emergence of new supply and marketing chains, urban food consumers in low-income countries are faced with multiple food safety challenges, among which microbial contamination and pesticides are key concerns for fruits and vegetables sold on urban markets in West Africa. Although consumers have a genuine interest in healthy food, and are willing to pay premiums, their interpretation of food quality and risks deviates from scientific health risk assessments and does not translate into recommended risk mitigation behavior. To safeguard public health, alternative measures are needed to support consumers’ risk awareness and decision making. The review looked at common and less-common options to trigger and support behavioral change, including safety labeling (certification), corporate social responsibility models, incentive systems and social marketing of safe practices, to address potential food safety risks from farming in urban and peri-urban areas. Overall, it appears that regulatory measures for risk management, including certifications, will be – for now – less effective in the West African setup due to low educational levels in view of chemical and microbial risk, diverse and often informal food chains, poor safety supporting infrastructure and weak institutional capacities for compliance monitoring.

Potential Use of Solar Energy and Emerging Technologies in Micro Irrigation

Potential Use of Solar Energy and Emerging Technologies in Micro Irrigation PDF Author: Megh R. Goyal
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1771883650
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
This new book, the fourth volume in the Innovations and Challenges in Micro Irrigation book series, examines the potential of solar energy and other emerging energy technologies in micro irrigation to create sustainable energy sources. The authors discuss a variety of innovative micro irrigation system designs, with a special focus on solar energy and photovoltaic (PV) energy.