An Outlook on Harnessing Technological Innovative Competence in Sustainably Transforming African Agriculture.

Agricultural value chains worldwide provide essential support to livelihoods, ecosystem services, and the growing bioeconomy. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic slowed down or reversed decades of agricultural growth and exposed the vulnerabilities of farmers and the food insecure in Africa, thus reiterating the need to build resilience, agility, and adaptability for a sustainable agriculture. Existing social, political, environmental, and economic challenges demonstrate that a path to faster sustainable growth is increased productivity through improved input quality, of which technical inputs are a part.

Resilience, endogenous policy responses to COVID-19, and their impacts on farm performance.

Policy measures aimed at containing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic had unintended consequences on economic activities globally. In this study, we isolate and investigate the short-term partial impacts of six such measures on the farm and nonfarm incomes of agricultural households and examine the related resilience factors. Using Nigeria as a case study, we find that the COVID containment measures had mixed effects on farm and non-farm incomes in the short run.

Freight transportation and the potential for invasions of exotic insects in urban and periurban forests of the United States.

Freight transportation is an important pathway for the introduction and dissemination of exotic forest insects (EFI). Identifying the final destination of imports is critical in determining the likelihood of EFI establishment. We analyzed the use of regional freight transport information to characterize risk of urban and periurban areas to EFI introductions.