Samples of dried shea fruit pulp were collected from tree populations in Mali, Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, and Uganda. A variety of analytical methods was used to measure total soluble solids (TSS), crude protein, and mineral contents.
Indigenous and local knowledge systems as well as practitioners’ knowledge can provide valid and useful knowledge to enhance our understanding of governance of biodiversity and ecosystems for human wellbeing.
Agriculture is the human enterprise that is most vulnerable to climate change. Tropical agriculture, particularly subsistence agriculture is particularly vulnerable, as smallholder farmers do not have adequate resources to adapt to climate change.
Herbal medicine has been used alongside modern medicine and many continue to rely on it for their health care despite the increasing use of modern medicine in Ghana. Herbal medicine has played a significant role in health care delivery, since time memorial.
The challenge of producing food for a rapidly increasing population in semi-arid agro-ecosystems in Southern Africa is daunting. More food necessarily means more consumptive use of so-called green water flow (vapour flow sustaining crop growth). Every increase in food production upstream in a watershed will impact on water user and using systems downstream.
Farmers’ local knowledge of soil fertility and management strategies plays a significant role in fertility maintenance of farmlands and also contributes to the participatory development of interventions to sustain farm productivity.
Ethnopedology, a hybrid discipline nurtured by natural as well as social sciences, encompasses the soil and land knowledge systems of rural populations, from the most traditional to the modern. Using this statement as a starting point, the first part of the paper defines ethnopedology in terms of conceptual scope, methodological approaches and dominant research themes.
Sustainable intensification of smallholder farming is a serious option for satisfying 2050 global cereal requirements and alleviating persistent poverty. That option seems far off for Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) where technology-driven productivity growth has largely failed.
Climate change is a world wide phenomenon that has huge implications on economic, social and ecological challenges to the global community and to smallholder farmers especially in low income countries.
Climate change is one of the potent challenges facing smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa in the recent past owing to the pattern and magnitude with which it presents the extreme events such as floods and drought.