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"Advisory services"
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Promoting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural technologies among maize farmers in Ghana: using digital advisory services
Although policy and advisory communities have promoted the use of digital advisory services (DAS) to stimulate technology adoption among smallholder farmers, little is known about whether DAS use encourages farmers to adopt climate-smart agricultural (CSA) technologies. This study addresses the gap by estimating data collected from 3197 maize-producing households in rural Ghana and considering three CSA technologies: row planting, zero tillage, and drought-tolerant seeds. A recursive bivariate probit model is utilized to mitigate selection bias issues. The results show that DAS use significantly increases the probabilities of adopting row planting, zero tillage, and drought-tolerant seeds by 12.4%, 4.2%, and 4.6%, respectively. Maize farmers’ decisions to use DAS are influenced by their age, gender, education, family size, asset value, distance to farm, perceived incidence of pest and disease, perceived drought stress, and membership in farmer-based organizations (FBO). Furthermore, the disaggregated analysis reveals that DAS use has a larger impact on the row planting adoption of female farmers than males.
Journal Article
Agrometeorological advisory services in Bangladesh for sustainable agriculture development: An overview
Agromet Advisory Services (AAS) is a program run by the Agro-meteorological Information Systems Development Project (AMISDP) under Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Ministry of Agriculture, Bangladesh to address the issues related to climate change and variability impact on food security and sustainable agricultural output and other issues. By maximizing the benefits of favorable weather and reducing the negative effects of unfavorable weather, AASs provide farmers with a unique type of input in the form of advisories that can significantly improve agricultural productivity. This might significantly alter Bangladesh's situation with regard to food security and the reduction of poverty. AMISDP, DAE, provides agro-meteorological services that are a step toward supporting weather-based crop and livestock management plans and operations aimed at improving crop production in a sustainable way. The current article provides an overview of the project and discusses the various actions and initiatives that fall under these services, as well as the ways in which farmers and the environment may benefit from the use of weather and climate information.
Journal Article
Agro-advisory services for increasing production, profit under climate change scenario in old alluvial zone of West Bengal
Aim: To increase the net income of farmers by reducing losses caused by extreme weather events and reducing the cost of cultivation using weather advisory and to popular the Agro-advisory service at the block level. Methodology: Data was collected from the selected farmers by interview schedule, and the Weather forecast data was obtained from the Regional Meteorological Centre Kolkata, India Meteorological Department, Alipore biweekly i.e., every Tuesday and Friday. Results: The results showed that the farmers who followed the weather based advisory were able to reduce the cultivation cost like irrigation cost, fertilizer cost, plant protection chemicals etc., than non-users of advisory in Rice and Brinjal crops. Farmers saved Rs. 1940 and Rs. 2444 per ha for rice cultivation and saved Rs. 6685 and Rs. 6688 per ha for brinjal cultivation in a single season by following advisories. Interpretation: The studies showed that the application of advisory bulletin based on realized and forecasting of weather parameter is a useful tool for increasing the production and profit. The farming community who are utilizing the agro-advisory bulletin for agricultural practices, reduce the cost cultivation and increase the yield as well as profit. Key words: Agro-advisory services, Climate change, Economic benefit, Weather forcast
Journal Article
Do Agricultural Advisory Services in Europe Have the Capacity to Support the Transition to Healthy Soils?
The need to provide appropriate information, technical advice and facilitation to support farmers in transitioning towards healthy soils is increasingly clear, and the role of the Agricultural Advisory Services (AAS) in this is critical. However, the transformation of AAS (plurality, commercialisation, fragmentation, decentralisation) brings new challenges for delivering advice to support soil health management. This paper asks: To what extent do agricultural advisory services have the capacity to support the transition to healthy soils across Europe? Using the ‘best fit’ framework, analytical characteristics of the AAS relevant to the research question (governance structures, management, organisational and individual capacities) were identified. Analysis of 18 semi-structured expert interviews across 6 case study countries in Europe, selected to represent a range of contexts, was undertaken. Capacities to provide soil health management (SHM) advice are constrained by funding arrangements, limited adviser training and professional development, adviser motivations and professional cultures, all determined by institutional conditions. This has resulted in a narrowing down of access and content of soil advice and a reduced capacity to support the transition in farming to healthy soils. The extent to which emerging policy and market drivers incentivise enhanced capacities in AAS is an important area for future research.
Journal Article
Development of a mobile application for Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) farming and evaluation of its efficiency in technology communication and feedback
Shrimp farming is a technology-driven and risk-intensive food production system. Shrimp farms are remotely located and farmers need customized farm advisories, which the conventional extension systems are not able to provide. To provide technology advisories to the stakeholders, an android mobile application, CIBA ShrimpApp, was developed in 2018, based on the information and format requirements of the shrimp farmers using Java language as front end and the data bases were created as back end through Structured Query Language (MySQL). The app contains eight modules, viz. better management practices of shrimp farming, quantification of inputs, on-farm disease diagnosis, on-farm risk assessment, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in shrimp farming, regulations, advisories and updates and posting queries which were integrated as a mobile application. The app has more than 27,500 cumulative downloads and has a rating of 4.5 out of 5.0. The application was found to have improved the knowledge level of end users to the tune of 20–37%. The Google firebase application data showed that 98.4% of users of CIBA ShrimpApp were free from errors and crashes. An evaluation study conducted among sample regular users indicated that the app aided in farm decision-making and its design functionality and extension service function were perceived to be efficient. Considering the all-pervading mobile phone connectivity and affordability, smart phone-based mobile applications and data analytics can play a significant role in shrimp farm advisory services and its sustainability.
Journal Article
Artificial Intelligence in FinTech: Understanding Stakeholders Perception on Innovation, Disruption, and Transformation in Finance
The recent increase of robo-advisory services (RAs) in various financial domains has caused a threatening alarm to the traditional fund and wealth management industry. There has been a remarkable growth in RAs' assets under management (AUM) due to their ability to provide better expected return by being competitive on pricing, transparency, and services. The research paper is designed to explore the various experts in the financial industry (which includes VP and AVPs of investment bank, managers and senior executive at bank, IT professionals and executives, and FinTech entrepreneurs and CEOs) and perceive the digital disruption that is going to affect the traditional financial services industry. Secondly, it is to explore the various strategies that are being adopted by the financial service providers to withstand competition from the disruption caused by FinTech challengers. Moreover, the purpose of this research paper is also to understand the extent and effect of the disruption as well as the strategies adopted by financial industry players to face these disruptions from FinTech.
Journal Article
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and extension advisory service (EAS) stakeholders' prioritisation: a case study of Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, India
Several climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions are promoted by public, private and civil societies in India. However, there is a considerable variation among them. Therefore, to understand the different CSA interventions supported and prioritised by the public and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as their impacts at the farmer level, a case study was undertaken in Anantapur district, as it is highly vulnerable to climate change risks due to the increase in temperature, delayed monsoon, erratic rainfall and frequent occurrence of droughts. A case study research method was followed to assess the CSA interventions promoted by Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Department of Agriculture, Accion and Adarsha. The findings showed that KVK has focused its extension advisory services on the promotion of field crop (e.g. groundnut)-based CSA. The extension services of NGO-Accion were aimed at promoting horticulture, and Adarsha was prioritised promoting millet-based CSA interventions. Whereas the CSA priority of the department of agriculture was driven by the prevailing zero-budget natural farming project. However, interventions of KVK and NGOs were implemented on a limited scale. Therefore, the recommendations that emerged from the study will help the stakeholders to ensure convergence and foster synergy in implementing CSA interventions at scale. Some challenges faced during the research study were difficulties in the identification of the right stakeholders who were promoting CSA, also their technologies and services related to CSA. However, after a thorough discussion with the extension officers of Anantapur district, the stakeholders were identified and their CSA interventions were ascertained through focus group discussions and secondary data reviewed from magazines and other publications. Furthermore, the present study focused only on the CSA interventions promoted by two public sectors and two NGOs, and there is a wider scope for identifying more stakeholders, e.g. private sector, FPOs and entrepreneurs, and assessing their extent of involvement in the promotion of CSA and prioritisation.
Journal Article
Farmers' exposure to communication media in receiving agriculture extension and rural advisory services for farm sustainability
Introduction Effective communication among agricultural stakeholders is the part and parcel of sustainable agricultural development. The study investigated farmers' exposure to communication media in receiving agriculture extension and rural advisory services (AERAS) for strengthening sustainable agricultural development. Materials and Methods The blended method research was conducted in Bangladesh employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches with 390 selected respondents utilizing structured questionnaire during 2022–2023. Statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 29, along with appropriate scales and scoring techniques were utilized to analyse the data. Results Findings indicated that most (94.6%) of the respondents get low to medium exposure to communication media, but majority (75.4%) of them were interested in contacting extension and advisory services without payment (73.6%). A significant portion (70.3%) of the participants perceived that, services delivered by extension officers facilitate farm sustainability. It was also found that respondents were mostly exposed to personal media ( x ̄$\\mathop{x}\\limits^{\\unicode{x00304}}$ = 377.4) whereas less exposed to mass media ( x ̄$\\mathop{x}\\limits^{\\unicode{x00304}}$ = 177.8) for desired services. Moreover, knowledge, proximity to office, access to extension services, organizational participation, innovativeness, training exposure were identified as influential factors increasing the extent of communication exposure. Conclusion The results can assist concern departments as well as policymakers to update the curriculum, principles, or module for incorporating effective communication at farm level and modifying the diffusion of innovation systems for farm sustainability.
Journal Article
A Step toward Water Use Sustainability: Implementing a Business Model Canvas for Irrigation Advisory Services
Some major future global challenges are linked to more efficient use of water for irrigation to respond to the growing water scarcity coupled with the increasing food demand. Although irrigation advisory services (IASs) are considered effective instruments to increase water use efficiency in agriculture, their diffusion remains limited. This is due to several constraints mainly linked to their low accessibility and high costs. To overcome the bottlenecks associated with IASs’ adoption, this paper proposes a business model (BM) as a tool for scaling up IASs within a business perspective, with the aim of encouraging the diffusion of this technology while enhancing the associated environmental and social benefits. Drawn from the experience of the OPERA project, we structured the business model taking advantage of the opinion of relevant stakeholders and IASs’ potential users to identify specific limitations and understand their needs. It turned out that farmers are willing to adopt IASs but require that the service is easily accessible, with high-quality information that are delivered at an affordable cost. Indeed, here a BM with an innovative way to produce and deliver value is proposed. The value proposition is built upon key features namely, integration, customization, accessibility, and sustainability that reflect users’ needs and preferences. Our BM also provides a detailed revenues strategy that guarantees the financial sustainability of IASs. To design and represent our BM, the “Business Model Canvas ©” has been adopted. We concluded that an innovative and well-structured BM has the potential to leave the IASs profitable and capable to ensure environmental and social sustainability.
Journal Article