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Urban crop farming as a variant of urban agriculture is a rising phenomenon in food and income generation especially in the developing countries. It is useful in fresh food supplies, recycling of urban wastes and poverty alleviation. However, as an informal activity, the greatest challenge it faces is accessibility to land. This tends to undermine the numerous contributions it can make to a city's development in terms of social, economic and environmental developments particularly its influence on climate change, fresh air supply and healthy living of the teaming urban population. There is therefore an urgent need to examine the potentials and risks associated with urban crop farming in order to identify factors that can enhance its productivity and economic viability by improving practitioners’ access to land. The purpose of the paper is to do this.

The study therefore conceptualized that land accessibility among urban crop farmers can be predicted from identified constraint variables. Respondents in some locations where urban crop farming was found to be thriving well within the Lagos Metropolis were randomly selected and administered with structured questionnaires.

The data collected were analyzed using factor (principal component) analysis which enabled the construction of a constraints analysis equation or regression equation.

The study identified five constraints affecting land accessibility among urban crop farmers with the most critical factors being affordability and security of tenure.

Although the value of community capacity building is widely accepted within scholarly literature, these initiatives thus far appear to have achieved very little impact in the achievement of community development aspirations. This paper aims to increase knowledge regarding specific priority areas which when targeted will result in more effective pathways towards sustainable development.

This study was performed through utilization of a qualitative strategy, which involved the combination of a number of qualitative methods and techniques including individual interviews, surveys, focus groups, literary review and policy analysis.

The investigation found that improving identified CSD priority areas, aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), seems to be the most effective strategy to enhance the ability of local communities to overcome sustainability challenges over time. SDGs 9, 4, 15, 16, 17 and 8 were identified as the areas of greatest significance for practical community capacity building for sustainable development (CSD).

This paper answers scholarly literature’s call for greater investigation into bringing sustainability research closer to society, to clearly define research direction and agenda. It also recommends ways to action the global goals locally.

Bangladesh has experienced a rapid expansion of shrimp farming in the coastal regions in recent years. The increase in both area and production has been influenced by the financial profit motive of rural farmers coupled with high international demands for shrimps and ecological congeniality for shrimp aquaculture. In the past the traditional farming systems in the coastal belts of Bangladesh centred around rice crop. In contrast, the introduction of shrimp aquaculture on a larger/commercial scale has developed shrimp‐based farming systems. Shrimp farming itself is less labour‐intensive than rice cultivation, especially when extensive methods of shrimp culture are practised. Hence, it has reduced on‐farm employment opportunities for rural landless. Nevertheless, shrimp production requires a substantial volume of labour in off‐farm ancillary activities, namely shrimp fry collection, shrimp feed collection, and shrimp processing and packaging for export. Most of this off‐farm work is performed primarily by rural women. This process has engendered a major shift in rural employment and occupational structure in the shrimp belt. Shrimp production has enabled rural women to earn more cash income and to become more active income‐earning members in rural households. While they used to contribute to their share of agricultural work in the homestead before the shrimp cultivation was introduced, now they work mostly outside their homes. This has forced them to stay outside of their homes for longer hours, which limits their time for household duties, more specifically looking after children. All these factors together have implications for the socio‐economic changes in the rural society. The findings that emerge indicate that a range of factors including rural power structure, centre‐periphery issue, rural‐urban migration determine the pattern and extent of employment. It is unclear whether greater employment opportunities for rural women have empowered them or have helped extricate them from various forms of discrimination and exploitation.

This paper aims to explore how a socio-digital platform can facilitate consumer responsibilisation in food consumption to encourage sustained responsible consumption and uncovers its possible impacts on different stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem.

Two-year-long case study of a socio-digital platform that aims to integrate consumers with the farming process; creating value for them and the farmers in India.

The process of consumer responsibilisation happens through three mechanisms; construction of a moral-material identity, vicarious self-artisanship and shared responsibilisation. Through these key mechanisms, the socio-digital platform could foster consumer responsibilisation and engender positive societal impacts by promoting both responsible production and consumption.

This study shows how the construction of moral–material identity could move beyond an either-or choice between moralistic and material identity and allow space for the coexistence of both. This paper highlights how a socio-digital platform can be leveraged to facilitate responsible consumer engagement in an aestheticised farming process.

This paper aims to guide policymakers to design digitally-enabled human-centred innovation in facilitating consumer engagement with farming and cultivating responsible consumers in achieving sustainable development goals.

This study shows how consumer responsibilisation can actually address market failures by enhancing the value created in the system, reducing wastage and cutting costs wherever possible, which drive better incomes for the farmers.

Previous studies have discussed heterogeneous motivations for responsible food consumption. However, this research explores the processes through which an individual reconnects to food production and the mechanisms that support this process in the long run.

The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.

This paper evaluates the impact of socio and demographic factors on the multidimensional poverty of smallholder arable crop farming households in Nigeria.

Data were drawn from the second wave of the LSMS-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture General Household Survey Panel 2012/2013. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics, Alkire and Foster Method (AFM) and logit regression model.

The result shows that 84.34% of the households were headed by a male while 80.26% of the respondents were married with a mean household size of seven persons. The multidimensional poverty of arable crop farm households in Nigeria is 0.60, while the adjusted headcount ratio (MPI) is 0.27, with an average intensity of 0.45. We found that deprivation in the dimension of living standard accounted for 45.5% of the overall multidimensional poverty index (MPI). The result of the logistic regression indicates that household location, gender, household size and non-farm income are negatively correlated to poverty. The factors that increase poverty among households are the age of the household head and access to extension services.

The study presents an alternative means of assessing poverty among smallholder arable crop farming households in Nigeria. This study recommends that policymakers should focus more on improving the living standard of arable crop farming households to reduce poverty in rural areas. Similarly, concerted efforts should be made towards providing adequate health care and improved sanitation, supply of electricity and educational training that goes beyond primary education for farming household members.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a practical implementation blueprint for the attainment of food security for all Nigerians based on sustainable agricultural practices.

This paper conducted a critical review of 66 peer-reviewed empirical articles on various sustainable agricultural case studies. The evidence obtained from this review and the in-depth knowledge of the authors regarding the Nigerian agricultural landscape was used to develop a practical implementation blueprint for achieving food security in the country.

The food security for all Nigerians (FOSFAN) blueprint was developed and comprising of eight practical and interconnected steps. These steps take into consideration the synergistic effort of the government, the ministry of agriculture and its corresponding agencies in ensuring that farmers attain sustainable practices in their endeavour.

The findings of this paper will contribute to existing literature on food security and will also serve as a baseline for deeper empirical exploration of the impact of sustainable agricultural practices on food security in Nigeria (a country in the Sub-Saharan region).

The FOSFAN blueprint provides a practical and comprehensive step-by-step guide, which the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture can use to achieve food security for all Nigerians.

This paper is addressed towards the development of food security plan in the Nigerian context in which the Nigerian Government ensures the availability of food to all its citizens in a bid to achieve “Zero Hunger”, which is the second Sustainable Development Goal.

The FOSFAN blueprint is a proactive guide that takes into consideration the importance of cultural and socioeconomic nuances in the development of a sustainable agriculture policy in a developing country context.

Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and environmental dimensions of food at multiple scales. We argue that while the food systems approach strives to provide a comprehensive understanding of food production, consumption and environmental drivers, it is less well equipped to shed light on the role of actors, knowledge and power in transformation processes and on the divergent impacts and outcomes of these processes for different actors. We suggest that an approach that uses food systems as heuristics but complements it with attention to actors, knowledge and power improves our understanding of transformations such as those underway in the Mekong Region. The key transformations in the region include the emergence of regional food markets and vertically integrated supply chains that control increasing share of the market, increase in contract farming particularly in the peripheries of the region, replacement of crops cultivated for human consumption with corn grown for animal feed. These transformations are increasingly marginalising small-scale farmers, while at the same time, many other farmers increasingly pursue non-agricultural livelihoods. Food consumption is also changing, with integrated supply chains controlling substantial part of the mass market. Our analysis highlights that theoretical innovations grounded in political economy, agrarian change, development studies and rural livelihoods can help to increase theoretical depth of inquiries to accommodate the increasingly global dimensions of food. As a result, we map out a future research agenda to unpack the dynamic food system interactions and to unveil the social, economic and environmental impacts of these rapid transformations. We identify policy and managerial implications coupled with sustainable pathways for change.

The purpose of this paper is to explore enterprise diversification amongst wetland farmers in Zambia as a way of reducing poverty and improving sustainability. This paper identifies ways in which such entrepreneurial activities can be supported and applied more widely.

A qualitative study of Zambian farmers, based on a series of workshops and interviews held in Zambia with farmers and farm business advisers.

Despite adopting new technologies most farmers are restricted to the local market where their increased production holds down prices. However, a very small number of farmers are able to progress to production and marketing for markets in major urban centres hundreds of kilometres away, and considerably more are able to use the capital accumulated from wetland farming to diversify their household enterprises to reduce poverty and improve the sustainability and resilience of their livelihoods.

No work has previously been undertaken in diversification strategies of small-scale farmers in Zambia.

This study investigates implications of crop and income diversifications on consumption expenditure (welfare) of rice-producing households in Ghana. It further compares diversification by three rice production systems: two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice production.

Primary data were sourced from 225 rice farmers. Margalef index and three-stage least-squares were employed.

Majority of rice-farming households in Ghana diversify livelihoods. The extent of livelihood diversification differs among two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice-producing households. Credit, distance to district capitals, production purpose and number of farming seasons influence crop and income diversifications, and consumption expenditure of rice-producing households. While crop diversification reduces consumption expenditure, income diversification increases it. Crop and income diversifications positively influence each other. Consumption expenditure reduces crop diversification but increases income diversification.

Policy should be directed towards the promotion of more livelihood activities to boost rice farmers' welfare. There should be awareness creation and training programmes to enable rice farmers realize different economic activities within and outside the agricultural value chain.

Crop and income diversifications were measured as continuous response variables, unlike previous studies that used a binary response variable. The authors established a synergy among crop and income diversifications, and consumption expenditure (welfare). The authors further compared crop and income diversifications by three rice production systems: two-season rain-fed, two-season irrigated and one-season rain-fed rice production systems.