Search

The low rate of technology adoption has long been a key constraint on improving productivity, income and yields in farming, particularly in developing countries where market-based systems of production are not well developed, the subsistence economy remains strong, land is held under communal tenure and family labour is the backbone of production. We examine three case studies of technology adoption to explore key socio-economic factors facilitating or constraining adoption. Our case studies cover an array of adoption situations from different parts of the developing world: 1. The socio-cultural barriers to the adoption of new technologies to control Cocoa Pod Borer in Papua New Guinea; 2. The role of land pressure on differential adoption rates of cocoassie yams amongst ethnic groups in Ivory Coast; 3. Taking account of gender relations to facilitate successful adoption of a new oil palm initiative for women smallholders in Papua New Guinea.

African countries of the Guinean gulf are traditional red palm oil (RPO) producers and eaters. Nowadays oils and fats consumption per capita is regularly increasing as a result of economic development. In parallel, health problems associated to obesity, type 2 diabetes and vitamin A deficiency are booming. In the southern Cameroon, people are using both industrial and artisanal RPOs. The production of the latter, sold on the informal market out of any quality control, is rising due to the development of small-scale mills. In such a context, our aim was to relate the chemical quality of artisanal RPO to producing conditions, and to depict the factors which determine the housewife choice criteria for specific culinary applications of RPO. Chemical analysis of RPOs sampled at 32 artisanal producers after a survey revealed that the variability of the production conditions, related to the proximity of oil palm development actions, is leading to a variability in RPO quality, especially for FFA contents. All RPOs were rich in vitamin A and E, confirming their nutritional interest. Unselected local planting material, are producing a fluid RPOs that corresponds to a traditional quality standard. Socio-economical surveys were conducted with 124 housewives, 29 cooks and 18 retailers of RPO from Yaoundé. The results evidenced three categories of RPO quality for housewives. The RPO consumption habits are depending mainly on housewife native region and age, with purchasing criteria primarily based on the physical aspect of the oils. The supply chain comprises oil traders that mix artisanal and industrial RPOs, others selling segregated RPOs with local names while final traders currently home-fractionate artisanal RPOs. Omnipresent on the market of Yaoundé, the red oil is still an indispensable ingredient for the consumers of today. Advertising should be done in Africa and worldwide to highlight the nutritional qualities of RPO.

Agroforestry systems (AFS) are multi-species systems comprising cropped and associated spontaneous species, including trees. The species in AFS provide different levels of regulating, supporting and provisioning ecosystems services (ES). We assume that the provision of ES depends on the functional characteristics of all associated species and their spatial layout in the AFS, which we call here the “functional motif”. We propose the concept of Ecosystem Service Functional Motif (ESFM) defined as the smallest spatial unit that is relevant to understand the provision of all the targeted ES, at a given time. This ESFM is useful to determine the smallest scale at which data should be collected for relevant upscaling of AFS functioning. As a proof of the ESFM concept, we use it to describe existing AFS covering a wide range of species richness X spatial organisation. We show, for each AFS, the ESFM for various types of targeted (multiple) ES at various stages in the development of the system. We finally discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ESFM concept for (i) analysing the AFS functioning, (ii) designing improved AFS according to ES targeted, and (iii) modelling such AFS.

The low rate of technology adoption has long been a key constraint on improving producti-vity, income and yields in farming, particularly in developing countries where market-based systems of production are not well developed, the subsistence economy remains strong, land is under communal tenure and family labour is the backbone of production. We examine four case studies of innovation to explore key socio-economic factors facilitating or constraining adoption: 1. new replanting program for oil palm smallholders in PNG, 2. new selected oil palm planting materials in Cameroon smallholdings, 3. Cocoa Pod Borer control methods in PNG, and 4. high yielding planting materials amongst cocoa growers in PNG. We assess the propensity to adopt along a number of socioeconomic dimensions including intra-household relations, particularly gender relations; tensions between modern and traditional farming prac-tices in terms of labour mobilisation, land tenure and the indigenous values underpinning production, consumption and distribution. The barriers to technology adoption and innovation are not simply technical and nor are they because smallholders lack the relevant knowledge and information to facilitate adoption. Rather, proposed technologies and innovations are often incompatible with indigenous values, habits, and socio-cultural institutions that can make adoption difficult for farmers. Improving adoption rates requires a closer alignment with indigenous social institutions and values.

International audience

International audience

Oil palm smallholdings represent about 80% of the oil palm area in Africa, while only 40% in the world. Smallholders hide a huge diversity of farm situation, from family farms to business farms, which can be in competition for land access or in synergy sharing the use of a small-scale mill. In Africa, smallholders have 3 main cropping systems: oil palm plantation with a spacing design, wild grove and isolated oil palm trees in food crops plots. Planting material is the main yield limiting factor in all these main cropping systems. Smallholders generally need technical support from local development projects or agro-industries to plant selected palms. Actual spontaneous development of oil palm smallholdings shows a lack of technical support for smallholders, a lack of local access to selected planting material. Cirad and PalmElit are proposing to build partnerships between development actors to create local inclusive business projects aimed to improve smallholders' competitiveness in Africa. In such inclusive projects, high yielding and low lipase PalmElit seeds are particularly adapted to improve competitiveness of existing unselected smallholdings and of new smallholdings. (Texte intégral)

Introduction: African countries of the Guinean gulf among them Cameroon, are traditional red palm oil (RPO) producers and eaters. Nowadays oils and fats consumption per capita is regularly increasing in this countries. In parallel, health problems associated to obesity, type 2 diabetes and A vitamin deficiency are booming. In the southern Cameroon, people are using both industrial and artisanal RPO. The production of the latter, sold on the informal market out of any quality control, is rising thanks to the development of small-scale mills. In such a context, it seemed necessary to assess the chemical and physical quality of artisanal RPO and to relate the recorded quality differences to producing conditions. This work aims to determine the physicochemical characteristics of RPO to the extraction conditions met with small-scale mills.The impact of factors such as planting material, length/storage time between harvesting and treatment of palm fruits and type of extraction process on the composition and thermal properties of RPO are explored. Methodology: RPO samples were collected from 32 local artisanal producers after a survey. Artisanal extraction processes were analyzed as regards to RPOs parameters characterizing their nutritional (tocopherols, carotenoids, fatty acid and glyceridic composition, oxidation level) and functional properties (lipolysis level, thermal properties). Results: Collection of RPO samples: 32 artisanal producers from 4 different production regions were interviewed and tracked. The planting material was identified, the production processes described and 32 samples taken. In 3 producing regions (Center, Littoral and South-West), most of the producers are using continuous small scale mill (Caltech type), manual and motorized ones while in the last region (West) more far away from oil palm development actions, producers are using locally designed motorized water extractors. Oils samples were also collected from a local industrial. Physicochemical characteristics of the RPOs: The physicochemical analysis of the RPO samples shows quite homogeneous fatty acid composition and solid and liquid phases with palmitic and oleic fractions representing 15-35% and 85-65% respectively at 25 degree. -carotene content presented large variations (380-990 ppm) depending on the planting material and/or the region. Free fatty acid (FFA) content depended on the artisanal process. It reached 30% in some samples from Western region. In all samples oxidation markers remained very low while aflatoxins were always below the detection threshold. Conclusion: The highest variations in RPO samples were found in β-carotene and FFA contents. The artisanal RPOs in Cameroon are very acid with FFA content far superior to edible oil standards. The results evidence that FFA content in RPO from small-scale process reach high levels in some samples is closely related to the time and method of storage of bunches/fruits before the oil extraction.

Introduction. In recent years, we assisted to a rise of concern about sustainability issues, by public authorities and by society at large, which is officially captured by the signature of the 2030 agenda and the conception of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. As a consequence of these trends, new needs are emerging in terms of assessment of value chains including agricultural ones. Value chains have been assessed historically using a socio-economic approach often coupled with the agro-technologic one. These two approaches consider the social and the economic dimensions of sustainability but do not account for the environmental impacts of value chains. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods were developed with a focus on evaluating this dimension. More recently, Social LCA, following the life cycle thinking approach, was also launched to include social-economic considerations in the analysis. In order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the sustainability and contribution to sustainable development of value chains, multiple parallel analyses should be done. However, the results so produced are often hard to compare and integrate. Thus these assessment efforts reveal to be expensive and inefficient. This paper intends to addressing the issue of initiating a fruitful multidisciplinary dialogue and investigating the possibility of integration of the above discussed methods. The paper will therefore confront these different perceptions, by mapping their similarities and differences and taking into account the lexical ambiguity of the vocabulary (synonymy, polysemy, etc.). The final objective of this work is to bring the different methods as close as possible and to propose a multidisciplinary harmonized frame-work for assessing the sustainability of agricultural chains. This framework will consider, on the one hand, the system representation and, on the other hand, the data types required by each approach to produce the assessment. Methodology. The construction of the harmonized framework is conducted using a knowledge management approach. It is based on an ontology developed according to the NeON methodology. Discussion and conclusion. This work started in June 2016, through a series of meetings and will proceed during autumn 2016. Associated to the ontology, a thesaurus will manage the lexical ambiguity of the vocabulary. A first operational outcome of this work will emerge within the EuropeAid programme “Inclusive and Sustainable Value Chains” (2016-2019), where CIRAD experts as part of the AGRINATURA consortium, are called to assess the sustainability of thirty agricultural chains in developing countries. The harmonised framework will facilitate the coordination and joint work of experts of different disciplines involved in these assessments and will allow the identification of a harmonized dataset required for the different approaches. The latter will improve data collection efficiency, in terms of costs and of employment of time. The harmonized framework will also contribute to develop a CIRAD Knowledge Base System devoted more broadly to the investigation of the topic: “agricultural chains & sustainable development” (2016-2019).Finally, building the harmonized conceptual framework is the first step of a broader effort to develop an interdisciplinary method for assessing the contribution of value chains to sustainable development. Later steps will require a strong investment in the underlying theory of the four approaches in order to generate a general inclusive theory. (Texte intégral)