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Awakening Africa's Sleeping Giant' explores the feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and growth in African agriculture through the identification of products and production systems that can underpin rapid development of a competitive commercial agriculture. Based on a careful examination of the factors that contributed to the successes achieved in Brazil and Thailand, as well as comparative analysis of evidence obtained through detailed case studies of three African countries—Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zambia—the authors argue that opportunities abound for farmers in Africa to regain international competitiveness, especially in light of projected stronger world markets for agricultural commodities over the long term. This provides reasons for optimism regarding the future prospects for agriculture as a major source of inclusive growth in many parts of Africa.

An innovation system can be defined as a network of organizations, enterprises, and individuals demanding and supplying knowledge and bringing it into a social and economic use. This book's primary aim is to focus on the largely unexplored operational aspects of the innvoation systems concept and to explore its potential for agriculture.

The increasing resilience to climate change in the agricultural sector report presents local-level priorities, informed by stakeholder input, to build agricultural resilience in both countries. The objectives of this study were threefold: (1) to improve the understanding of climate change projections and impacts on rural communities and livelihoods in selected regions of Jordan and Lebanon, specifically the Jordan River Valley and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley; (2) to engage local communities, farmers, local experts, and local and national government representatives in a participatory fashion in helping craft agricultural adaptation options to climate change; and (3) to develop local and regional climate change action plans that formulate recommendations for investment strategies and strategic interventions in local agricultural systems. The climate challenges confronting development in the Middle East are particularly stark. This region, and in particular its rural people, face what might be called a \"triple threat\" from climate change. First, the Middle East is already one of the driest and most water-scarce regions of the world (World Bank 2011a) and faces severe challenges posed by high temperatures and limited water supplies. This report to assist Jordan and Lebanon in understanding the specific challenges and opportunities posed by climate change in the agricultural sector.

A common and driving assumption in agricultural research is that the introduction of research trials, new practices and innovative technologies will result in technology adoption, and will subsequently generate benefits for farmers and other stakeholders. In Lao PDR, the potential benefits of introduced technologies have not been fully realised by beneficiaries. We report on an analysis of a survey of 735 smallholder farmers in Southern Lao PDR who were questioned about factors that influenced their decisions to adopt new technologies. In this study, we have constructed measures or states of adoption which identify key elements of an adoption decision-making nexus. Analysis was conducted to statistically group explanatory factors of adoption. The key explanatory factors represented attributes of the farmer, the factors considered when undertaking production decisions and elements of the agricultural value chain that present as opportunities or constraints. We describe the combination of farmer’s personal attributes, perceptions of the value chain, and the introduction of new technologies by external actors as an “agricultural research value chain”, where agricultural research activities intervene to derive greater benefits for local farmers. A generalised linear model, via Poisson (multiple) regression analysis on the identified explanatory factors, was applied to explore how they influence adoption measures and we found several significant relationships.

This book examines how agricultural innovation arises in four African countries—Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda— through the lens of agribusiness, public policies, and specific value chains for food staples, high value products, and livestock. Determinants of innovation are not viewed individually but within the context of a complex agricultural innovation system involving many actors and interactions. The volume is based on qualitative interviews with agribusiness representatives that were designed to shed light on their experiences on public policies that either enhances or impedes innovation in Africa's agriculture sector. Following are the volume's main messages on policies, institutions and strategies that nurture innovation in the agriculture sector: 1) agribusiness innovation is in many cases driven by the need to maintain grades and standards within the value chain, not only in the case of export markets, but also in evolving domestic and urban markets and value chains; 2) that staple food sector has potential to be a source of growth, innovation and poverty reduction; 3) successes in value chain innovation and agribusiness production depend critically on the structure of the whole agricultural innovation system and are highly context specific; 4) especially successful innovation were dependent on creating synergies between market-based and knowledge-based interactions and strong linkages within and beyond the value chain; and 5) the public sector's innovation support has to extend to interactions, collective action and broader public-private partnership programs. This book will be of interest to policymakers, agribusiness leaders, farmer organizations, NGOs, and researchers.

Agricultural research and development (R&D) in the country has taken shape over years with Agricultural Universities and ICAR institutions playing a lead role. Here the subject is discussed with particular emphasis on the National Agricultural Research System (NARS). The depth of the current system as well as the structural faults of the system hindering the creation of a globally competitive R&D infrastructure have been brought out. A few suggestions based on the long experience on the measures needed to build a sounder frontline infrastructure are provided.

A critical analysis of World Bank's agricultural assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa.This study assesses the development effectiveness of World Bank assistance in addressing constraints to agricultural development in Africa over the period of fiscal 1991-2006.This region faces a variety of constraints that make its development a complex challenge.

Daily evapotranspiration (ETd) plays a key role in irrigation water management and is particularly important in drought-stricken areas, such as California and high-value crops. Remote sensing allows for the cost-effective estimation of spatial evapotranspiration (ET), and the advent of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) technology has made it possible to estimate instantaneous high-resolution ET at the plant, row, and subfield scales. sUAS estimates ET using “instantaneous” remote sensing measurements with half-hourly/hourly forcing micrometeorological data, yielding hourly fluxes in W/m2 that are then translated to a daily scale (mm/day) under two assumptions: (a) relative rates, such as the ratios of ET-to-net radiation (Rn) or ET-to-solar radiation (Rs), are assumed to be constant rather than absolute, and (b) nighttime evaporation (E) and transpiration (T) contributions are negligible. While assumption (a) may be reasonable for unstressed, full cover crops (no exposed soil), the E and T rates may significantly vary over the course of the day for partially vegetated cover conditions due to diurnal variations of soil and crop temperatures and interactions between soil and vegetation elements in agricultural environments, such as vineyards and orchards. In this study, five existing extrapolation approaches that compute the daily ET from the “instantaneous” remotely sensed sUAS ET estimates and the eddy covariance (EC) flux tower measurements were evaluated under different weather, grapevine variety, and trellis designs. Per assumption (b), the nighttime ET contribution was ignored. Each extrapolation technique (evaporative fraction (EF), solar radiation (Rs), net radiation-to-solar radiation (Rn/Rs) ratio, Gaussian (GA), and Sine) makes use of clear skies and quasi-sinusoidal diurnal variations of hourly ET and other meteorological parameters. The sUAS ET estimates and EC ET measurements were collected over multiple years and times from different vineyard sites in California as part of the USDA Agricultural Research Service Grape Remote Sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment (GRAPEX). Optical and thermal sUAS imagery data at 10 cm and 60 cm, respectively, were collected by the Utah State University AggieAir sUAS Program and used in the Two-Source Energy Balance (TSEB) model to estimate the instantaneous or hourly sUAS ET at overpass time. The hourly ET from the EC measurements was also used to validate the extrapolation techniques. Overall, the analysis using EC measurements indicates that the Rs, EF, and GA approaches presented the best goodness-of-fit statistics for a window of time between 1030 and 1330 PST (Pacific Standard Time), with the Rs approach yielding better agreement with the EC measurements. Similar results were found using TSEB and sUAS data. The 1030–1330 time window also provided the greatest agreement between the actual daily EC ET and the extrapolated TSEB daily ET, with the Rs approach again yielding better agreement with the ground measurements. The expected accuracy of the upscaled TSEB daily ET estimates across all vineyard sites in California is below 0.5 mm/day, (EC extrapolation accuracy was found to be 0.34 mm/day), making the daily scale results from TSEB reliable and suitable for day-to-day water management applications.