Farmer participatory tillage trials were conducted in a highland Vertisol area of Ethiopia during the 1999 and 2000 cropping seasons. This participatory initiative clearly demonstrated that incorporating farmers’ knowledge, ideas and preferences could improve the wheat production package. A...

Cattle rearing in humid west Africa was nearly impossible in the past owing to the prevalence of trypanosomiasis, a disease caused by the tsetse fly. However, in recent times, with population pressure, jungle clearance, crop cultivation and tsetse control measures, the challenge has been...

Empirical studies on agricultural technology adoption generally divide a population into adopters and non-adopters, and analyze the reasons for adoption or non-adoption at a point in time. In reality, technology adoption is not a one-off static decision rather it involves a dynamic process in...

Agricultural intensification in West Africa is at an early stage and the process is taking place through various pathways. Population pressure and market access are generally considered as major factors driving intensification and crop-livestock interaction. In this paper both ecology and...

A system consists of its agro-ecological and socioeconomic components and interactions among them (so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). The interactions are neither linear nor unidirectional, so a certain degree of change at any point in the system may generate different...

The aim of this study was to assess the process and extent of sedentarisation among Fulani cattle owners in the derived savannah zone of south-west Nigeria. The results, based on a survey of 66 randomly-selected cattle owners, indicate an on-going process of settlement. Previously cattle owners...

A dynamic bio-economic model is used to show that, without technological and policy intervention, soil nutrient balances, income and nutrition could not be substantially or sustainably improved in a highland area of Ethiopia. Although cash incomes could rise from a very low base by more than 50%...

The incorporation of livestock into alley farming systems, in which food or forage crops are grown between hedges of multipurpose trees that are regularly pruned for mulch and/or forage, has been studied for over 10 years in Africa. Prunings from leguminous trees such as Leucaena and Gliricidia...

Alley farming was developed as a means of maintaining soil fertility in fields under permanent cultivation in Africa, as population pressure makes the traditional practice of slash-and-burn combined with fallowing unsustainable. It is an agroforestry system under which food crops are grown in...