Browsing by Author "Gotor, Elisabetta"

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    Management of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt: Evidence from Impact of Adoption of Cultural Control Practices in Uganda
    (Sustainability, 2019) Kikulwe, Enoch M.; Lule Kyanjo, Joseph; Kato, Edward; Ssali, Reuben T.; Erima, Rockefeller; Mpiira, Samuel; Ocimati, Walter; Tinzaara, William; Kubiriba, Jerome; Gotor, Elisabetta; Stoian, Dietmar; Karamura, Eldad
    Banana XanthomonasWilt (BXW) is an important emerging and non-curable infectious plant pathogen in sub-Saharan Africa that can cause up to 100% yield loss, negatively impacting sustainable access to food and income to more than 100 million banana farmers. This study disentangles adopters into partial and full adopters to investigate the factors that are relevant to sustain the adoption process of BXW control practices and quantifies the impact of adopting the practices. Data from a randomly selected sample of 1200 banana farmers in Uganda where the disease is endemic was used. A multinomial logit model was used to determine the factors a ecting adoption of control practices and augmented inverse probability weighting was employed to estimate the impacts of adoption on banana productivity and sales. Results show that training a woman farmer and having diverse sources of information about BXW control practices increased adoption of the control practices and reduced the disease incidences. Farmers who adopted all the recommended control practices achieved significantly the highest values of banana production and sales. We conclude that improving information access through farmers’ preferred communication channels, having women-inclusive trainings, and a combination of cultural practices are e ective ways for sustaining adoption of the control practices.
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    Responding to Future Regime Shifts with Agrobiodiversity: A Multi-level Perspective on Small-scale Farming in Uganda
    (Agricultural Systems, 2020) Marta, Kozicka; Gotor, Elisabetta; Ocimati, Walter; Kikulwe, Enoch; Groot, Jeroen C.J.
    We analyse the impact of two large-scale regime shifts caused by disease incidence or climate change, and associated crop productivity and price changes, on banana-based smallholders in Uganda. We evaluate these farmers' vulnerability and assess the potential of using increased crop diversity to improve their resilience. We further explore trade-offs and synergies between environmental, economic and nutritional outcomes faced by the farmers in their decision making when a regime shift occurs. We simulate the large-scale scenarios with the IMPACT model and use the results obtained to assess their effect at the local level using the bio-economic farm-household model, FarmDESIGN. Our results indicate that climate change can lead to a regime shift that expands revenue variance, increases soil erosion and reduces vitamin A yield for farmers. Banana disease can negatively impact income levels and species diversity. We show that under both scenarios farmers have scope to reconfigure their farms and recover farm performance. Specifically, we discuss the benefits of species diversity; increasing agrobiodiversity by adding new crops increases the farm's adaptive capacity and resilience, allowing for much higher revenues, on-farm crop diversity and vitamin A production. The conceptual approach and the method we developed can be applied to assess the local synergies and trade-offs between crop diversity conservation, nutrition, environmental protection and human nutrition that farmers face as a result of global drivers. Our results offer a further understanding of how biodiverse systems respond to regime shifts, which can inform effective policy design. Our method can be also useful to help farmers manage their farms in a way to better meet their complex needs.
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    Yield Perceptions, Determinants and Adoption Impact of on Farm Varietal Mixtures for Common Bean and Banana in Uganda
    (Sustainability, 2017) Nankya, Rose; Mulumba, John W.; Raimondo, Maria; Gotor, Elisabetta; Kikulwe, Enoch; Jarvis, Devra I.
    Crop variety mixtures (different varieties of a crop grown together in a single plot) have been successfully deployed in pathogen and pest management for several crops including wheat, common bean and rice. Despite the available evidence, promotion of this approach has remained limited in many countries, including Uganda. The factors that influence farmers’ adoption of varietal mixtures for common bean and banana were assessed, as well as the perceptions of farmers on the effects of mixtures on yields, through household surveys and statistical modelling. A three-year yield increase in both common bean and banana varietal mixtures in farmer fields, of 5.2% and 28.6%, respectively, is realized using robust OLS estimates. The study reveals that accessing knowledge on the importance of crop varietal mixtures and the skills relating to the approach are crucial for their adoption. Location of the farm significantly determined the perceived yield change, which calls for more research into mixtures’ suitability under particular contexts in respect to compatibility of genotypes, management practices and appropriate acreage for maximum impact. The positive effects of mixtures on yields make it an effective bioeconomy strategy. Policies that minimize the adoption barriers could improve the adoption of crop varietal mixtures on a wider scale.