Giving the rising interest in naturally grown foods; several studies have contrasted various features of organic and conventionally grown foods in relation to consumer attitudes, perceptions, and preference for organic foods. This paper aims to explore consumers' willingness to consume organic foods; the extent and attributes of consumer knowledge and awareness about organic food as well as consumer attitudes and preferences for organically grown foods. Articles from different peer review journals were used to develop this paper. The findings of this paper show that human health, food safety, attitudes and perceptions and willingness to pay for a price premium are some of the factors influencing consumers' willingness to consume organic foods. Therefore, there is a need to create more awareness in the food industry relating to the health benefits of consuming organic foods.

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This paper examined the barriers to research and publication efforts of senior female academics in South African and Zimbabwean universities. The qualitative research approach was employed and semi-structured interviews comprising of 10 female academics with more than ten years of teaching within the university system were used as a sample and data were thematically analysed. It emerged from the study that the majority of female academics in South African and Zimbabwean Universities did little research and publication due to heavy teaching workload, lack of scientific training and unavailability of workshops and inadequate funding. Moreover, lack of confidence, ignorance and lack of collaboration among academics were other major barriers established by the study. The paper recommends that the career trajectory of females be enhanced by providing ongoing training on scientific writing, adequate funding and promotion of co-authorship.

In early 60s and 70s, agriculture is one of the key sectors of the Nigerian’s economy. The decline in agricultural production is attributed to the drudgery nature of traditional farming system mostly practice by farmers in the country and the influence of rural farmers on career choice of their children. The study therefore aims to assess the influence of head of farm families in career choice for their children using a descriptive statistics. Simple random sampling technique was used in selecting 120 rural farmers from Oyo State in Nigeria. Results show that 50% of the respondents were in their active age, 86.7% were married, 61.7% of the respondents had a household size of 3-6 family members, and 45.8% of the respondents had no formal education. The results of the Chi-square analysis further reveal that variables such as age, marital status, and household size, level of education, secondary occupation and membership of social organisation were statistically significant at 1% signifying that all the socio-economic variables have a significant relationship with the choice of career for the farmer’s children. To unlock farmers’ perspective on career choice ambition choosing for their children, the study suggests that more attention should be paid to improve traditional farming systems by several stakeholders and government, by providing farm equipment such as tractor and other farm implements which can make farming less rigorous, profitable and enjoyable to the rural youths in the rural communities.

Agro-ecological farming and conventional farming are two methods to food production. The word ‘agro-ecological farming’ refers to a diversity of agricultural methods that seek to provide food by using available natural and local resources rather than off-farm inputs that is sustainable, socially and environmentally acceptable. Recent debate about the advantages of agro-ecological farming over conventional systems has centred on each method’s capability to increase output in the background of several and diverse biophysical and social limitations. An appraisal of the literature suggests that agro-ecological farming can offer some benefits to small-scale farmers, but that precise methods must be tailored to soil-climatic conditions, local climate, labour availability, training as well as organic inputs availability.