Projects
Agricultural development, technology and value chains in developing and transition countries. KU Leuven
This thesis is about agricultural development, technology adoption and value chains in developing countries. It first focuses on the transition economies of Central Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe before exploring the dairy market in India. Though they display great heterogeneity, what joins these two regions is a strong dependency on their respective agricultural sectors to alleviate poverty and maintain food security.
The first ...
Innovativeapproach for nitrate reduction in agricultural regions PCG-Vegetable Research Centre
Value chains, technology transfer, food security, and agricultural development. KU Leuven
My research focuses on how food value chains can be (re-)organized to overcome technology and output market failures, increase value chain efficiency and improve farmer welfare and food security.
Essays in Development Economics: Evidence from East Africa KU Leuven
This dissertation is divided into four chapters, each built around a different research paper that falls under the broad field of `development economics'. The analysis in all chapters is mostly empirical, relying on primary data collected in recent years from East Africa. Of course, theory plays a key role in directing the analysis. Chapters 1 and 2 study different aspects of female empowerment and household decisions in Tanzania. Chapters 3 ...
Value Chains, ICT and the Transformation of Food Systems: Evidence from East Africa KU Leuven
Agricultural value chains around the world are changing rapidly, not only in terms of scale and scope, but also when it comes to the technologies used and in their relationship with traditional (religious) practices. Yet, agricultural productivity remains low for different crops and in different countries. This PhD thesis investigates reasons for low agricultural productivity and explores simple solutions using ICT in two distinct contexts: ...
A discrete element approach for simulating the compression of fibrous biomass KU Leuven
Due to the growing world population, the agricultural sector needs more productive and more energy-efficient agricultural machinery in order to adequately address the growing demand for food and biomass. Therefore, the sector significantly invests in the optimization of agricultural machinery.
Historically, the optimization of agricultural machinery was done by trial and error. Design improvements of agricultural machinery are still ...
Monitoring of cutting and processing quality on a forage harvester’ KU Leuven
In the agricultural sector, innovative methods are continuously developed to optimize agricultural processes with the ultimate purpose to obtain, in a sustainable way, a higher (quality of) yield from the same land. Agricultural vehicles should therefore be controlled in an optimal manner: machine settings are often suboptimal. A better processing of crops is realizable if real-time monitoring can be used for analysing the effect of the ...
Extended production cycle in laying hens KU Leuven
Laying hens are kept in production until the age of 75-80 wk, but the actual egg production period is only 55-60 weeks long, as young pullets start producing eggs approximately at 20 wk of age. During a single laying cycle a hen can produce on average 360 eggs. Extending the egg production period and keeping hens longer, possibly until 100 wk of age would not only contribute to increased profitability but also to more sustainable food ...