Online Agricultural Risk Management Training

Technical Training Program "Agriculture Sector Risk Assessment"

The World Bank, through its Agricultural Risk Management Team, has developed a methodology for assessing risk and subsequently conducted risk assessments in nearly 20 countries. The World Bank has synthesized its experience and developed a technical training program on agricultural sector risk assessment to allow practitioners around the world apply this methodology and integrate it in general agricultural policy work. The program was originally introduced as a two-day training in Johannesburg, South Africa, in May 2015.

The program includes core principles for assessing agricultural risks, as well as current state-of-the-art practices in risk assessment and management. The hope is that development practitioners will acquire the skillset to better analyze the agricultural sector, the tools for qualitative and quantitative assessment and for prioritizing mechanisms, and the ability to understand and manage risk more systematically and strategically. >>Download the Traning Material

CRiSTAL Food Security 2.0 User's Manual. Community-based Risk Screening Tool - Adaptation and Livelihoods: Focus on Food System Resilience

CRiSTAL Food Security is a decision-support tool for local-level government staff and development practitioners to support climate resilience of food systems at the community level. It aims to help users to understand the key elements of a community food system and their sensitivity to climate variability and change; the resilience of food system elements to climate variability and change, and how to improve it; and what indicators can help monitor the evolution of community food system resilience over time.

CRiSTAL Food Security is mainly targeted at local-level decision-makers, such as municipal or district-level government staff, project managers of development organizations and local community leaders. The tool consists of a series of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and produces as a main output a series of automatically generated reports based on information entered into the spreadsheets. This manual guides users through each analytical step of the CRiSTAL Food Security tool.

>> Download the User's Manual in English >>Download the User's Manual in Spanish

World Bank Supply Chain Risk Assessment Training

Developed by the World Bank, this training program is a “how-to” guide in conducting Supply Chain Risk Assessments (SCRA). It captures the experience and examines lessons learned since 2009 from analyzing risks across a number of agricultural commodity supply chains in developing countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia. More specifically, it provides step-by-step guidance for development practitioners on how to best leverage SCRA as a tool for assessing critical risks and promoting evidence-based decision-making for improved supply chain risk management.

This course can be accessed on the here.

Access Agriculture

Access Agriculture is an international NGO which provides agricultural training videos in local languages. The videos can be downloaded and a DVD copy is available; the audio tracks can also be downloaded by radio stations.

Below are links to a few videos available:

CassavaBase

Cassava, also called manioc, yuka or tapioca root, is a major staple crop. It is the main source of calories for half a billion people in the developing world. Cassava is one of the most drought-resistant crops, as well as a hardy crop that can be stored in the ground as a fall-back source of food for times of famine. Africa is the continent which relies the most on cassava to feed the population. Despite the importance of cassava for food security on the African continent, it has received relatively little research and development attention compared to other staples such as wheat, rice and maize. The key to unlocking the full potential of cassava lies largely in bringing cassava breeding into the 21st century.

CassavaBase provides access to data and tools for breeders and researchers, including genomic selection algorithms and analysis capacity, a cassava genome browser, cassava ontology tools, phenotyping tools, and social networking.

Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) Innovations in Extension and Advisory Services

Smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women, produce most of the food we eat, often with minimal support and outdated technologies or practices. They are seldom reached by extension and advisory service providers as their needs and demands are not well articulated or understood. They also lack the resources, mainly financial, required to access much-needed inputs. Increased attention is now being paid to the issues inhibiting the full participation of smallholder farmers in value chains. Policy and institutional changes are critical in bringing about a transformation. To that end, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) recently hosted an international conference on "Innovations in Extension and Advisory Services featuring information on policy, tools and approaches, capacity development, and more. >>Learn More

ESRI's Training Website: Geospatial Data & Tools

ESRI (November 2012) | ESRI offers a collection of free and low cost training for their products, as well as for learning more about geospatial data and tools in general. Some of the free trainings provided by ESRI that might be of interest to the FARMD Community include:

For a full list of trainings and online access, please visit ESRI's Training Website.

Great Lakes Cassava Initiative | Training Materials on Cassava Production in the Great Lakes Region of Africa

This course was developed by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) for staff and partners as one of the six course curriculum for the implementation of the Great Lakes Cassava Initiative (GLCI) project. The curriculum includes: Working with adult learners, Use of GPS, Farmer group management, Cassava pests and diseases, Cassava multiplication, and Cassava stem dissemination. All of the courses in the curriculum were originally published in an e-learning platform- Agilix Brain Honey (GoCourse) and were taken as e-courses by participating partner staff. Subsequently, to make these courses more broadly accessible, they have been made available in HTML and PDF formats. Accompanying training materials include ‘Visual Aids and Guidance for Cassava Field Workers’ and ‘Sample Lesson Plans for Facilitating Farmer Learning Sessions in the GLCI.

This course can be accessed on the FARMD Website.

USAID | Integrating Low-Cost Video Intro Agricultural Development Projects, a Toolkit for Practitioners

USAID projects and other implementing organizations provide training to farmers and other parties along the agricultural value chain on a wide range of topics. This toolkit is designed to help these projects and organizations use low-cost video to augment the traditional agricultural development activities and extension services they are providing. It is important to stress that this toolkit does not assume that video media is the most appropriate solution for disseminating agricultural information. Rather, given its growing accessibility due to the increasing availability of low-cost digital video cameras and editing software—and the increasing use of video media in donor-funded agricultural development projects— this toolkit aims to enable practitioners to develop a more systematic approach to using low-cost video as one of the mediums through which they share information with farmers.

This course can be accessed on the USAID Website.

USAID | Interactive Radio for Agriculural Development Projects, a Toolkit for Practitioners

This toolkit is designed to help USAID projects and other implementing organizations use interactive radio to augment the traditional agricultural extension services they are providing. In addition, it aims to provide practitioners with a foundational understanding of what is needed to create compelling radio programming. It is important to stress that this toolkit does not assume that radio is the most appropriate solution for disseminating agricultural information. Rather,

given the fact that radio continues to be the most readily accessible communication tool in much of sub-Saharan Africa, this toolkit aims to enable practitioners to develop a more systematic approach to using interactive radio as one medium through which they share information with farmers.

This course can be accessed at the USAID Website.

World Bank Agrisk Training | Online Training Courses

The risk management courses offered by ARMT aim to educate agricultural enterprises and associated institutions on how key agricultural risks may best be managed. All courses focus on risk assessment and the development of risk management programs that can help manage risk.

Risk Mitigation for Smallholder Agricultural Production in the Caribbean Course

Weather Risk Management Course

Coffee Price Risk Management Course

Cocoa Price Risk Management Program

Cotton Price Risk Management Course

World Bank Agrisk Training | Additional Training Courses

In addition to the five courses listed above, the Coffee Price Risk Management course and the Designing Index Based Weather Risk Management Programs courses are also available in Spanish. All of the above courses are available on CD ROM (available from the Agricultural Risk Management Team (ARMT) at the World Bank).

There are also training materials available from past World Bank ARMT in-country trainings: