It is established that the existing banking system is aimed primarily at lending to highly concentrated agricultural enterprises and is not adapted to the needs of small rural businesses. Therefore, the creation of an effective mechanism for lending to small and medium-sized agricultural entities through a credit cooperative system is of particular relevance. Rural credit co-operation is a parallel to banks, an alternative financial system that has begun to firmly occupy a niche in the country's credit and financial system. Its line of business is financial services for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs and villagers who cannot be serviced by banks in rural areas. It is proved that the effective activity of credit cooperation is conditioned by the creation of appropriate prerequisites. This is, first of all, voluntary establishment of credit cooperative institutions and accumulation of funds of individuals and legal entities; the purpose of the credit cooperative to ensure the mode of greatest assistance to its participants in credit, settlement, consulting, and other types of services; recognition of the variety of organizational forms of credit cooperative institutions; the direction of use of accumulated financial resources mainly for production purposes; providing financial support to the credit cooperative and legal and consulting assistance from the state. It is determined that the economic essence of credit cooperation is largely determined not by the type and nature of the participants' activity, but by the specifics of the actions and functions that they cooperate with. The involvement of unions of temporarily free funds of all categories of the population will allow to use its income in the areas of residence, in particular to direct them to the development of the agricultural sector. The creation of credit unions should be seen as encouraging the development of small businesses, including: promoting the development of production and processing of agricultural products in personal peasant and small farms, as well as the development of other small forms of farming in the agricultural sector and processing industry (including the promotion of the creation of agricultural service providers cooperatives); expanding the availability of credit resources for private farms and farms, as well as for cooperative units for the production, processing and marketing of agricultural products and services. Keywords: credit cooperation, credit union, population, personal peasant economy, farming, state.

After the policy of separating ownership rights, contract rights, and management rights to rural land, some Chinese farmers entrusted their land to agricultural social service providers. However, at present in land trusteeships, short-term behaviors exist, which are not good for the sustainable utilization of land. This article uses a dynamic game model to analyze the economic reasons for short-term behavior and to explore possible mechanisms. The study’s results showed that fluctuations in trusteeship prices encouraged farmers to sign low-price, long-term contracts or high-price, short-term contracts that allowed agricultural social service providers choose short-term behaviors. A variable-price system may avoid short-term contracts as a result of fluctuations in trusteeship prices, allowing both sides to build a long-term stable partnership, encouraging long-term investment in land. To ensure the sustainable utilization of land, it is suggested that both sides adopt a variable price system.

The Beginning Farmer Resource Network of Maine (BFRN) is a model for maximizing resources and improving farmer services through increased statewide communication and collaboration among a diverse group of agricultural service providers. Formed in 2012, BFRN is a cooperative network with shared leadership and no financial overhead. In a 2018 survey regarding BFRN's impacts, 92% of members (22 of 24 responding members) said they were more effective and efficient. The survey results also indicated that over 800 farmers had made positive changes as a result of members' participation in BFRN. BFRN's continuing high level of activity is a testament to the value this network model offers to participating organizations, agencies, and institutions.

If future rice production is to contribute to food security for the increasing population of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), effective strategies are needed to control weeds, the crop’s fiercest competitors for resources. To gain better insights into farmers’ access to, and use of, herbicides as part of weed control strategies, surveys were conducted in key rice production locations across SSA. Farm surveys were held among 1965 farmers across 20 countries to collect data on rice yields, farmer’s weed management practices, herbicide use, frequencies of interventions and information sources regarding herbicides. Markets were surveyed across 17 countries to collect data on herbicide availability, brand names and local prices (converted to US$ ha−1). Herbicides are used by 34% of the rice farmers in SSA, but adoption ranges from 0 to 72% across countries. Herbicides are more often used by men (40%) than by women (27%) and more often in irrigated (44% of farmers) than in rainfed lowland (36%) or upland rice growing environments (24%). Herbicides are always used supplementary to hand weeding. Following this combination, yield loss reductions in irrigated lowlands and rainfed uplands are estimated to be 0.4 t ha−1 higher than hand weeding alone. In rainfed lowlands no benefits were observed from herbicide use. Sixty-two percent of the herbicides sold at rural agro-chemical supply markets are unauthorized. These markets are dominated by glyphosate and 2,4-D, sold under 55 and 41 different brand names, respectively, and at relatively competitive prices (below average herbicide price of US $17 ha−1). They are also the most popular herbicides among farmers. For advice on herbicide application methods, farmers primarily rely on their peers, and only a few receive advice from extension services (<23%) or inform themselves by reading the product label (<16%). Herbicide application timings are therefore often (38%) sub-optimal. Herbicide technologies can contribute to reduced production losses in rice in SSA. However, through negative effects on crop, environment and human health, incorrect herbicide use may unintentionally counteract efforts to increase food security. Moving away from this status quo will require strict implementation and monitoring of national pesticide regulations and investment in research and development to innovate and diversify the currently followed weed management strategies, agricultural service provision and communications with farmers.

Ontario agricultural service providers were surveyed on their use of precision agricultural technologies. Global positioning systems are the most commonly adopted, while adoption rates for variable rate systems are significantly less. Enhancing adoption requires turning the vast amount of data collected on crop production into valuable decisions for the farmer.

Climate change poses a major threat to agricultural production and food security in India, and climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) is crucial in addressing the potential impacts. Using survey data from 1,267 farm households in 25 villages from Bihar and Haryana in the Indo‐Gangetic Plains, this study analyzes the factors that determine the probability and level of adoption of multiple CSA practices, including seeds of stress‐tolerant varieties, minimum tillage, laser land leveling, site‐specific nutrient management and crop diversification. We applied a multivariate probit model for the simultaneous multiple adoption decisions, and ordered probit models for assessing the factors affecting the level of adoption. The adoption of the various CSA practices is interrelated, whereas several factors, including household characteristics, plot characteristics, market access and major climate risks are found to affect the probability and level of CSA adoption. Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) adoption and its intensity also vary significantly between eastern Bihar, which is relatively poor and densely populated, and north‐western Haryana. Engaging multiple stakeholders such as farmers, agricultural institutions, agricultural service providers and concerned government departments at the local level is crucial for the large‐scale uptake of CSA. The study, therefore, calls for agricultural policy reforms so that most of the issues related to the uptake of CSA can be adequately addressed.

This paper examined service quality of multiple public and private agricultural extension service providers in Bangladesh. A total of 318 respondents from nine selected organizations were interviewed. The study also used key informant interviews, focus group discussions and informal interviews. Findings of the study revealed that all the selected organizations, irrespective of origin, had a significant negative difference between perceived and expected ratings, on all of the five service quality dimensions, namely tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and reliability. The five selected dimensions of service quality accounted for 74.6 % of the variation in client satisfaction with the extension service in Bangladesh. Major issues hinder service quality were poor logistic support, scarcity of fund for doing true extension work, less use of information communication technology, lack of co-ordination among research-extension and extension service providers themselves, and political interference. A demand responsive extension service is obligatory for the survival of extension organizations in a changing context.Key words: Service quality; SERVQUAL; Extension service; Multiple providers; Bangladesh.

Uptake and resistance: The rural poor and user-pays agricultural extension in Malawi

Constraints to the utilisation of conservation agriculture in Africa as perceived by agricultural extension service providers

Cooperation and competition among agricultural advisory service providers. The case of pesticides use

Pluralism of agricultural advisory service providers – Facts and insights from Europe

A crop height model (CHM) can be an important element of the decision making process in agriculture, because it relates well with many agronomic parameters, e.g., crop height, plant biomass or crop yield. Today, CHMs can be inexpensively obtained from overlapping imagery captured from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms or from proximal sensors attached to ground-based vehicles used for regular management. Both approaches have their limitations and combining them with a data fusion may overcome some of these limitations. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate if regression kriging, as a geostatistical data fusion approach, can be used to improve the interpolation of ground-based ultrasonic measurements with UAV imagery as covariate. Regression kriging might be suitable because we have a sparse data set (ultrasound) and an exhaustive data set (UAV) and both data sets have favorable properties for geostatistical analysis. To confirm this, we conducted four missions in two different fields in total, where we collected UAV imagery and ultrasonic data alongside. From the overlapping UAV images, surface models and ortho-images were generated with photogrammetric processing. The maps generated by regression kriging were of much higher detail than the smooth maps generated by ordinary kriging, because regression kriging ensures that for each prediction point information from the UAV, imagery is given. The relationship with crop height, fresh biomass and, to a lesser extent, with crop yield, was stronger using CHMs generated by regression kriging than by ordinary kriging. The use of UAV data from the prior mission was also of benefit and could improve map accuracy and quality. Thus, regression kriging is a flexible approach for the integration of UAV imagery with ground-based sensor data, with benefits for precision agriculture-oriented farmers and agricultural service providers.

Factors influencing farmers' participation in crop intensification program in Rwanda

This article examines the role of the capital service market in increasing the use of mechanical technology in smallholder agriculture. Custom hiring services have been essential to the widespread use of agricultural machines in many countries where small farms predominate. In the past, some governments in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) had attempted to supply agricultural mechanization services when there was no demand for such services. Recently, however, demand for mechanization in SSA has been on the rise. Tractor ownership has also increased considerably among medium- and large-scale farmers, who use the tractors on their own land and also hire them out to others. Using the example of Ghana, we examine the behavior of tractor owners and the role they are expected to play in the development of mechanization in SSA. We use survey data from eight districts in the transition and savannah agroecological zones of Ghana. The survey covered 1,843 farming households, including 408 tractor owners and was aimed at characterizing the transition from smallholder farming to medium- and large-scale commercial farming, including patterns of agricultural-machinery ownership and patterns of demand for agricultural mechanization. First, we analyze the relationships between tractor ownership, farm size, and tractor service provision using correlation analyses. Second, we estimate a tractor service cost function based on the hypothesis that hiring a tractor service is not a perfect substitute for owning one, especially for large-scale farmers. Our findings suggest that providing tractor services significantly increases the rate of tractor use, a precondition for economic use of tractors. Agricultural mechanization service providers are primarily medium- and large-scale farmers. These farmers buy tractors even if they cannot make full use of them on their own farms, and they provide tractor services to fellow farmers. Smallholders' use of these services is quite high. Increasing tractor use is essential to counter any risk that may be associated with owning a tractor. Traveling to a different rainfall zone to provide services or extending tractor use during the postharvest period (e.g., for shelling) can help to achieve this objective. While service provision and markets offer strong potential for the widespread adoption of mechanization, medium-scale farmers in particular will be important for spreading the use of tractors among farmers in SSA. The findings presented here support our belief that mechanization can develop where there is potential for a service market, even under smallholder agriculture.

Abstract. The agricultural sector is in a unique position due to its strategic importance around the world. It is crucial for both citizens (consumers) and the economy (both regional and global), which, ideally, should ensure that the whole sector is a network of interacting organisations. It is important to develop new tools, management methods, and applications to improve the management and logistic operations of agricultural producers (farms) and agricultural service providers. From a geospatial perspective, this involves identifying cost optimization pathways, reducing transport, reducing environmental loads, and improving the energy balance, while maintaining production levels, etc. This paper describes the benefits of, and open issues arising from, the development of the Open Farm Management Information System. Emphasis is placed on descriptions of available remote sensing and other geospatial data, and their harmonization, processing, and presentation to users. At the same time, the FOODIE platform also offers a novel approach of yield potential estimations. Validation for one farm demonstrated 70% successful rate when comparing yield results at a farm counting 1’284 hectares on one hand and results of a theoretical model of yield potential on the other hand. The presented Open Farm Management Information System has already been successfully registered under Phase 8 of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Architecture Implementation Pilot in order to support the wide variety of demands that are primarily aimed at agriculture and water pollution monitoring by means of remote sensing.

The agricultural sector is in a unique position due to its strategic importance around the world. It is crucial for both citizens (consumers) and the economy (both regional and global), which, ideally, should ensure that the whole sector is a network of interacting organisations. It is important to develop new tools, management methods, and applications to improve the management and logistic operations of agricultural producers (farms) and agricultural service providers. From a geospatial perspective, this involves identifying cost optimization pathways, reducing transport, reducing environmental loads, and improving the energy balance, while maintaining production levels, etc. &amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; This paper describes the benefits of, and open issues arising from, the development of the Open Farm Management Information System. Emphasis is placed on descriptions of available remote sensing and other geospatial data, and their harmonization, processing, and presentation to users. At the same time, the FOODIE platform also offers a novel approach of yield potential estimations. Validation for one farm demonstrated 70% successful rate when comparing yield results at a farm counting 1’284 hectares on one hand and results of a theoretical model of yield potential on the other hand. The presented Open Farm Management Information System has already been successfully registered under Phase 8 of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Architecture Implementation Pilot in order to support the wide variety of demands that are primarily aimed at agriculture and water pollution monitoring by means of remote sensing.

Despite the rapid growth in the use of modern communication media to improve access to agricultural information, local information networks remain an important means of communication among rural folk. This study examined informal communication networks of rural farmers in the Ahafo Ano south district of Ghana to determine how they can be harnessed to improve the provision of agricultural information. The objectives were two-fold, to: (i) identify local information networks and characteristics of the key communicators and (ii) determine how the structural properties of the networks affect the flow of agricultural information. Snowball sampling was used to select respondents from three purposively-selected communities in the district. Sociograms were used to reveal the ties between network actors. Key communicators of agricultural information were found to be significantly older and had higher farm output than the rest of the population and tended to occupy leadership positions in their community. Thus, extension service providers should target such key communicators when introducing new information and technology as they can serve as essential channels of information to other farmers in the community. It was also observed that network density values were generally low indicating that the networks are open to diverse sources of information. Low degree centrality measures indicated frequent sharing of information among several central actors rather than through one central person. Agricultural extension service providers should identify such farmers who can serve as intermediaries between actors to help disseminate information in rural communities. Keywords : key communicators, farmers, rural communities, social networks, extension agents

This paper critically evaluates the transition from crisis to development in northern Uganda from the perspective of agricultural service provision. It contributes to debates on how efforts to link relief to rehabilitation and development may bypass the underlying challenges in linking humanitarian aid to prevailing national development policies and structures. This paper is based on research into agricultural services undertaken in Pader district, northern Uganda, between 2010 and 2012. It studied the interplay between humanitarian interventions and the parallel development of the government’s agricultural departments and services in northern Uganda. The article brings out how Ugandan agricultural policies do not suit the post-conflict realities of northern Uganda. The evolving policies affect power relations and processes of inclusion and exclusion in northern Uganda. As a result, at the time that the government is ready to integrate northern Uganda into the mainstream development of agricultural policy, the gap between addressing humanitarian needs and development has become larger.

This study was conducted in Delta State, Nigeria. In the study, a two-stage conditional likelihood procedure and new data from Delta State, Nigeria were used to identify the correlation of rural-urban migration at the individual, household, and community levels, with special attention on agricultural services. Two surveys were conducted to get the data. The first set of data were sourced from Delta State Agricultural Development program (DTADP). The data included household and community level survey which were meant to assess ways of making agricultural service provision effective for small holder farmers. The survey was carried out in six (6) local government areas (two (2) from each agro-ecological zone) from the month of February to June, 2011, and data on markets, agricultural service provision and infrastructure were included in the survey. The second data were sourced from survey which covered 450 households (10 randomly selected household per community) from 45 communities (15 communities per LGA) in three (3) of the originally surveyed local government areas (one (1) from each agro-ecological zone)which were revisited in May 2012. The three Local Government Areas were selected to represent differences in agricultural productivity and level of agricultural service provision. Households in the most densely populated communities in Delta Central Agricultural Zone looked better off than Delta North and South agro-ecological Zones in terms of proximity to market, infrastructure and agricultural services. In all the agro-ecological zones, males were more prone to migration than females. In terms of level of education, there were significant differences between migrants and non-migrants. The results of the econometric analysis are in consonance with the theories of human-capital and network variables and assets, that these variables are salient correlates of rural-urban migration. While considering endogeneity of agricultural services, the findings indicated that agricultural service improvements which have the objective of reducing economic isolation of rural communities have the capability of promoting mobility of labour and free up farm labour for rural-urban migration by reducing costs of transaction and production.

PurposeThis article investigates the extent of multiple knowledges among smallholders and connected non-farm agents around Mount Elgon in Kenya and Uganda in order to build the communicative competence needed to scale up conservation agriculture production systems (CAPS).Design/methodology/approachOur methodological approach examines local conditions through the analysis of farmers and non-farm agents’ perceptions of agricultural norms and practices or technological frames across four sites. Responses to a list of 20 questionnaire items characterizing three ideal types of technological frames (conservation agriculture, conventional modern agriculture, and risk averse agriculture) were analyzed through inter-group comparisons and multiple regression.FindingsThe findings indicate that there is a fundamental gap between the perspectives framing the knowledge of farmers and those of the service sector/community agents with respect to agricultural production norms and practices. Specifically, agricultural service providers and other community agents are significantly more supportive of conventional modern farming than farmers, and significantly less supportive of mixed crop and livestock farming; however, farmer perspectives also vary across sites.Practical implicationsRecognition of multiple knowledges, their relationship to agro-ecologies and the technological frame gap between farmers and non-farm agents is important for effectively negotiating dialog among farm and non-farm knowledge networks.Originality/valueOur exploration of variation in local knowledges provides insights into how individual proclivities, adaptation to the agro-ecology, and a supporting set of network partners contribute to the mindset changes needed for establishing CAPS.