October 2010

Takaful: An Islamic insurance instrument

The Takaful concept evolved from individual common interest during the industrial era of the early 1900’s. Only eighty million of the world’s 2.5 billion poor are currently covered by some form of micro-insurance. Only 3% of the poor in India and China are insured, and only 0.3% of the poor in Africa are insured. In 23 of the 100 poorest countries in the world, there is currently no identified...

Author(s): Nico P. Swartz and Pieter Coetzer

October 2010

Crop diversification by poor peasants and role of infrastructure: Evidence from West Bengal

The question of sustainable income and employment in the rural areas seems to be very much dependent on the degree of diversification of land use towards cultivating various crops. In view of this, crop diversification has been an important issue of agricultural development not only in India, but also in other parts of the world. In India, the growth of area under cultivation in different states remained stagnant in the...

Author(s): Utpal Kumar De and Manabendu Chattopadhyay

October 2010

Adoption of agro-forestry technologies among small-holder farmers: A case of Zimbabwe

The objectives of this study were to assess and compare the levels of adoption of agro-forestry technologies between trained and untrained farmers, and identify specific factors that affect adoption of technologies. Data from 300 smallholder farmers selected by snowballing from villages where change agents had been trained by the International Center for Research in Agro Forestry was collected using structured...

Author(s): C. Parwada, C. T. Gadzirayi, W. T. Muriritirwa and D. Mwenye

October 2010

Evaluating agricultural policies of local governments in Indonesia after the implementation of regional autonomy by principal component analysis

Regional autonomy was implemented in Indonesia since 2001, in which most of the authority including agricultural policies was delegated to the local governments. This study evaluated the quality of the agricultural policies in local governments using principal component analysis. The survey was conducted with the local agricultural offices in 89 regencies in Indonesia to collect data of the office budgets, number of...

Author(s): Tomohide Sugino