Latest News & Announcements

Agricultural production in Africa is mainly rain fed and highly vulnerable to climate change and variability. Extreme weather events like droughts, floods and high temperatures affect agricultural production and food security. Use of climate information services can have positive effect on agricultural yields, household incomes, food security, poverty reduction and enhance resilience against climate risks.

Maize is one of the food and commercial crop in Rwanda in terms of income generating activity to rural population. The production of the crop is however, severely constrained by both biotic and abiotic factors. Biotic factors specifically field pests namely fall armyworm (FAW) and Stemborer (SB) pests are ranked top in causing economic damages to maize production in Rwanda. Up to 23-50 percent of food supply in Rwanda is lost due to pest infestation.

Poultry feed accounts for 60 to70 percent of the costs of poultry production due to expensive protein ingredient that is a key component. Expensive feed has seen poultry farmers scale down production or abandon the enterprise despite the currently high and projected increased demand for poultry products. Insects like the black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) have been identified as the best alternative source of protein for poultry feeds.

The low productivity of the agricultural sector in Liberia raises serious concern and motivates the search for the various factors explaining the poor performance. Poor performance of the extension system and loss of attainable crop yields to insect pests by the smallholder farmers are two key factors likely to explain the unsatisfactory performance of the agricultural sector.

The Kenyan dairy subsector has a potential of improving household income and reducing poverty among dairy farmers through provision of regular income from milk sale. The subsector is however faced with various challenges including low milk yields per cow, seasonal fluctuations in milk availability and prices with reduced production levels during dry season, adulteration, fragmentation of milk production between small farms, milk collection costs, high level of antibiotics in milk, presence of aflatoxin M1 in milk and high level of microbial load among other challenges.

Dr. Joseph Ssekandi is an alumni of University of Nairobi who was supervised by Prof John Mburu , the chairman of the Department of Agricultural Economics.Dr.

Twiga is a company that creates technology platforms for aiding agricultural farmers to market tomatoes, potatoes, onions, watermelon and bananas by linking them to the market or buying their products and sell them to small scale vendors in the market. It mainly operates in the following counties; Nairobi, Machakos and Kiambu. Also Twiga Foods stores and grade the agricultural produce from farmers before they market them.

The agricultural sector is faced with productivity differentials among male, female and jointly managed plots especially in developing countries, which affect technical efficiency (TE). In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) gender productivity differentials vary between 4 and 40%, this negatively affects the overall agricultural output both at the household and national level.

The study sought to determine the economic efficiency of cassava production in two counties, Bomi and Nimba. Economic efficiency is the ability for farmers to produce using all available inputs properly and at the lowest possible cost (or at the highest possible revenue). Cassava is largely cultivated in Nimba and locally processed largely in Bomi. The two counties are more than 300km apart, with Nimba in the Northeast and Bomi in the Northwest of Liberia.

Effective communication channels have played an imperative role in the dissemination of critical information to farmers. There are modern information sources and media channels disseminating information on farming activities and practices in Kenya, however, dismal attention has been given to the effectiveness of such information communication channels in disseminating information to farmers, especially on Fall Armyworms (FAW).