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Browsing by Author "Smale, M."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Agroenvironmental transformation in the Sahel: Another kind of "Green Revolution"
    Reij, C.; Tappan, G.; Smale, M. (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2009)
    Within the last thirty years in the West African Sahel, farmers have started to implement agroenvironmental practices which have allowed them to improve the soil quality and increase crop yields. Using two examples of land rehabilitation in Africa, this paper examines the technical and institutional innovations and their impacts on the ability to meet food demand for the growing population. Agroenvironmental techniques incorporate trees into the agricultural landscape, which improves water retention in the soil, increases the supply of nutrients, reduces wind erosion, and provides other marketable tree products. This large-scale effort has created income opportunities for farmers, benefited women, and increased food supply for many African families.
  • The participation of farm women in the milpa system of the Yucatán, Mexico
    Lope-Alzina, D. G. (Rome, Italy: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), 2002)
    In this article, the author studies the degree of female participation in solar (homegarden) and milpa (intercropped) production fields and associates the participation with biodiversity of varieties of maize, beans, squash, and chile cultivated on farms in rural Yucatan, Mexico. Also represented in the study is the socioeconomic qualities of female agricultural workers. Lope-Alzina chose the study area, Yaxcaba ejido, primarily because of its central location within the "maize belt," because the milpa agricultural system is still of considerable economic interest and because a large amount of research information on social and botanical issues already exists. The empirical work was based on a Spanish questionnaire and Maya interviews administered to 60 randomly selected households, or 10 percent of the population. Also included was information from two prior surveys. The research indicates that women predominantly participate in solar field production, but have little to no participation in the milpa field production. Since food stuffs such as squash, maize, and, to a lesser extent, beans are grown mainly in milpa fields, women manage and barter those seeds less than chile seeds, which are mostly cultivated in solar fields. These results suggest that the influence of women over diversity in varieties is mostly over chile and that solar fields are the principle means for women to help support their families. Chile would be an essential crop to improve the ability of women to invest in the production system.
  • A Training Guide for In Situ Conservation On-farm: Version 1
    Jarvis, D. I.; Meyer, L.; Klemick, H.; Guarino, L.; Smale, M.; Brown, A. H. D.; Sadiki, M.; Sthapit, B.; Hodgkin, T. (Rome, Italy: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, 2000)
    In situ conservation on-farm is a diverse and complex topic, and as a result any training guide cannot cover every detail of the disciplines involved. Instead, this guide is geared to give national programmes basic technical skills and tools to build institutional capacity and partnerships to implement an on-farm conservation programme. It discusses the information necessary and the practical steps for the implementation of on-farm conservation, as well as the importance of such an initiative. Equipped with the baseline information from this guide, the reader should then be able to identify and access more detailed information on specialized topics.